August 30, 2010

Subject: Hia

Ok, first of all, I hear tell that Stonehenge is pretty boring. Secondly, Caleb, stop wearing my clothes. You have your own. Seriously. Stop.

Right so I'm in York now, back near Harrogate -- same stake. My companion is Elder Shen. He's from China or Taiwan. Actually he gets kind of upset when I say he's from China. So I'm in a university area again but a much posher university than before. The area is really posh and we’re struggling a bit right now because all of the students are going home so our whole teaching pool is leaving and anybody new we find is about to go home; but it will be alright.

It's kind of tough. My last Chinese companion didn't speak Chinese natively and most of the Chinese people we taught were people I found so they all spoke English. But now my companion speaks Chinese better than English so a lot of my days are spent almost entirely in Chinese. I think I’m becoming a worse teacher. I love the people we’re teaching though and I'm going to learn Chinese so it will get better. I was pretty comfortable in Huddersfield, figured I could spend the rest of my mission there. Thought I had things figured out so now I’m in York and sometimes I forget I'm in England because we spend all day in student flats and only meet people from china.

Oh we got kicked off the university yesterday so that sucked. We weren't even doing anything bad. We were actually visiting someone but they didn't believe us. Usually we’re street contacting there which we’re not supposed to do.

Lets see what else. You think with like 3 weeks of stuff to talk about I could do better at this. This week’s been pretty long. We had a two day leadership meeting. I know we're supposed to change on our mission but I still can't handle sitting and listening for long periods of time so I was losing it. I just wanted to go back to talking to people. It was rough. Then because our zone’s so spread out and it didn't make sense for everyone to travel back to their area just to come back the next day, we had 8 people sleeping at our flat which is never a good idea. The next meeting’s supposed to be 4 days so hopefully it doesn't happen.

Sorry about not emailing last week. We went on a hike with a bunch of recent converts and investigators. It was really good. I sent pictures. Yeah me. But we got back late so I didn't have a chance.

I'm fine with you signing me up for everything. I really can't be bothered. When I tell the students we teach that I don't know what I'm studying and that you’re signing me up, they get rather shocked.

Oh so I'm in a 4 man flat again which is always fun. My companion’s great. Chinese people are hilarious. So many things people say to him go right over his head. He's been sick and apparently Chinese hate western medicine. Their answer to everything is herbs and hot water. Lots and lots of hot water. This is interesting. He also poos by standing on the toilet seat and then squatting down. Strange. He's stopped now because we have an open door policy and we all made fun of him.

Things are going great. I love it. York’s going to be great -- better when people come back. Oh the other missionaries got their bike stolen so that sucks. Why did dad buy new bindings for my board anyways? Glad your going boating though. That’s always good. Sell the piano. Thanks for all that you all do. You’re great. Love you. The church is true.

Elder Cody Scott Johnson