Elder Mark Ensign: Week 26: January 7, 2020

大家好!!

Transfers!!! Wow this past transfer went by fast, and this next transfer is gonna be CRAZY! It's literally nothing what I was expecting. AT ALL. So basically I'm moving out of YSA. I'm going to Kendal, the most northern area in my mission. It borders with Scotland (shout out to Elder Beam)! And I'm gonna be with an English speaking companion, elder smith, so it's going to be pretty hard to learn Chinese. Elder chen also got transferred out of YSA as well. So to put things simply, they split the Manchester zone in half, and now theres gonna be new zone leaders whitewashing into our area. I'm sooo sad! I'm gonna have to say goodbye to all the people I'm working with, to the Chinese group and all the chinese missionaries. And unfortunately theres only gonna be 3 Chinese missonaries serving in the YSA now, two of which are still in training. Last transfer there was 7! I'm kinda disappointed the way things are turning out, that neither me or Elder Chen will be able to keep working with all our friends, but I know that theres a purpose for this. I hope I'll be able to go back to YSA sometime soon!

But it was a good week! All the uni students are starting to come back which is soooo nice. We ended up finding a lot this past week. We didnt have a ton of success, but we were still able to find 4 new people to teach, which is the highest we've found in a while! And they're all really good! Too bad we won't be able to work with them haha

This past friday was so nice! We went to the temple with Michael! We're so happy for him, he really enjoyed it! We took a train to preston which is where the temple is, which ended up taking pretty much all day. But it was so fun! Michael also used a water fountain for the first time ever so go michael haha. Water fountains basically dont exist in England which is so weird! And kinda frustrating haha. Anyways, after we got back from the temple, we got unexpectedly fed by an older Chinese woman, WangWang. I got some truly authentic chinese food, complete with chicken feet. Not as bad as I thought it was gonna be haha. Elder Chen was chowing down, he said he really missed Chinese food haha. He ate so much food he was still full the next day haha

But really not much else has happened this past week. Just a little stressed with transfers coming and knowing that my language study plan had better be good cause that 1 hour a day is the only chance I'm gonna get to learn Chinese. But I'm a little excited i guess for it! Change will be nice. I'm gonna be serving in a small branch, teaching only english people probably, and in a small town. So itll be interesting to say the least. A lot different from Manchester haha

That's basically it for this week. I'll let y'all know how the new area is next week!

我爱你们!

—高长老