Elder Matthew Ensign: Week 2: July 22, 2019

Week 2 has been CRAZY! First off, I sent it to the bcc thing so you all can reply to the email directly without everyone else receiving the email, sorry I should’ve been doing this in the first place. Anyway, it’s been a good week! I’m with elder fangilinin now, and he’s way cool we get along well. He’s from the Philippines and can speak fluent tagolog fluent English and he can speak very comfortably in Chinese. He’s also super good at basketball so we ball out. They finally opened the gym back up on Wednesday so we’ve played a lot of basketball. They actually call me the Steph Curry of the mtc, I’m not kidding you can ask anyone here lol. I also scored on THE elder brenchley 2 times so I’m big time. We also got a new elder in our district which is weird, because normally we only get new mandarin elders every 3 weeks, so he’s with elder packer now. None of us in the district can figure him out though, he does some pretty unpredictable stuff all the time haha. The Chinese has been coming along well though! I’ve probably learned somewhere between 200 and 300 words in all the time I’ve been here, but I don’t have an exact count. Every free time I have I’m studying though, it’s an absolute grind. I think you know the Chinese is coming along well when you have dreams in Chinese haha. I had a dream I asked someone if they wanted to get baptized in Chinese so that was weird. On Wednesday we got a new shipment of missionaries so I got to see more familiar faces! Email me if you’re coming in soon! I also learned the 2 most important phrases in Chinese. wǒ zuò mòxīgējǔanbǐng shí gōngzuò along with wǒshì yēsū jīdū hoùqí shèngtú jiào huì de chuánjiàoshì. The first one is I work at taco time and the second one is I’m a missionary of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. I’ll let you decide which one is more important haha. Scary thing this week is we have TRC’s on Saturday, where we teach a random investigator in only Chinese, so I’m gonna be studying extra hard this week. This week has been really fun though, I’ve finally got used to the grind and the gift of tongues is real. Every time the going gets rough, I have to remind myself that this is not about myself, but to bring others unto Christ. There’s nothing more important in my life right now than to help with the gathering of the children of Israel, and I hope all of you who are turning 18 soon (or 19 for the ladies) all choose to go on a mission, it’s seriously so important. Go read ether 12:27 as your motivation for the week. wǒ aì nǐmen!

Love,

Elder Ensign

Also the first pic is elder tumbokon, anyway there was a fire just outside the mtc so he asked me to take a pic of him haha he’s so funny... just wanted to share with you all

2: PTK

3: Elder Cotton

4: The new district

5: my new comp

6: Elder Mathews

7: movie night lol

8: me elder Ensign and elder fangilinin