Josh Mission Email May 18 2026: Round two

Transfer 1 is over! Anyone who is out on a mission/went on a mission can tell you, time is wild out here. Every day and every week seems to last forever but they also fly by. I’m having a great time out here, there’s a sense of routineness now which is nice because I feel settled and comfortable but every day is still full of new experiences and new people so it’s still interesting.

I’m still in the Mandarin Branch out here, my old trainer is gone, and now I have 2 new trainers. Elder Evans has already spent a couple transfers in Chinese work so he knows the ward and the language super well. He also did immersion for 11 years so he’s been able to teach me a ton. Elder Abbott is great too, this is his first transfer in Chinese work. He’s been out on his mission for about 6 months, but he actually LIVED in China for 7 years, so he’s got the best Chinese out of anyone on the mission. He wasn’t even originally called mandarin speaking, President Vance found out he spoke a ton only once he got to the mission. I don’t know how much time he is going to spend here, but he’s also a great missionary.

This week we were at a metro stop talking to people and I saw a guy with a fun hat walking out of the tunnel with his son so I went up to talk to them. We talked for a second and we talked about where he was from and where he was going, good fun stuff. As we were talking, I noticed that the people walking out of the tunnel were beginning to surround me. In seconds there must have been like 20 of them all crowded around me. At that moment he was telling me that they had another church they went to, and he says, “We’re Mennonites”. It turns out it was a whole Mennonite extended family coming back from some kind of trip. And man do I mean EXTENDED. Here I was thinking our church had big families. Anyways they were super nice and polite, I wanted to talk some more but they had to get going. Apparently there are some congregations around here, I hope I run into some more.

On Friday we had a KILLER finding block planned for prime time (that’s basically when we had a good route planned to talk to a ton of people in a few cool spots when most people are home or out in public). RIGHT when prime time hits, we get a call from one of our members who’s in his mid-late 70’s and he says something in Chinese I didn’t catch, but I did hear “BIG TROUBLE”. Turns out he lost his keys at the mall and was locked out of his car. He doesn’t speak much english at all so we had to sweep the mall asking people and stores if they had seen the keys. We had no luck, so we eventually had to call a locksmith for him who was 2 HOURS away. Once he got there it took like 1.5 hours for him to print a new key. We just ended up setting up chairs in the parking lot, making calls, and doing a zoom lesson. We tried kanji, which is this Chinese cereal with oats, beans, corn, and its all doused in what can only be described as sweet snot. It comes out of a can, and I was only able to eat a few bites. Elder Evans barely tried it before spitting it out, but Elder Abbott ate THE WHOLE CAN. Not a very effective nignt overall, I got a lot of help with call vocabulary and our zoom lesson went well. We’re also getting golden corral out of it next week 🤑.

Spiritual thought🚨
1 Nephi 18:3
“And I, Nephi, did go into the mount oft, and I did pray oft unto the Lord; wherefore the Lord showed unto me great things.”
We talked about this verse last night in our mission devotional, and it’s got a lot of gold in it. When we go to the Lord often, setting aside time to be with Him in sacred places, we gain greater access to His power and blessings. We can all see and understand great things through our decision to come to Him often with questions and a sincere desire to follow Him.

Love you guys!
Elder Banks