First e-mail from York came this morning. It wasn't very long, but it sounds like he's excited and doing well. Here's an excerpt:
"Things in York are pretty great. We actually had a baptism here to my surprise. His name was Robert Rosenthall and he has a great story. He is a middle-aged English man who has seen some obstacles in his life. He lost his wife and kids to an accident with a drunk driver some years ago which turned him to alcohol. Eventually a man of our ward who wasn't even his friend at the time referred him to the church. This member, Gary Horwell, started bringing him to church, helped him start to live the word of wisdom and scheduled him for baptism. Then the missionaries came and taught all the lessons. The missionaries didn't do much beyond the teaching, the members did everything else. The neat thing was that Robert was confirmed by a new member, Chris Cook who just received the Melchizedek priesthood. Chris was also brought into the church by Gary Horwell less than one year ago."
Sounds like at least one church member in York is anxious to share the joy of the gospel with others. From the way Eric talks, there must be others. He loves the ward he is serving in.
"York 2 is great. It is a really big ward. Probably similar to the ward back home. I think they get about 160 out to Sacrament meeting. There are a lot more families and very few ysa especially compared to Leeds 1. It will be exciting to get to know some of the families. It is also kind of nice being in a ward with one set of missionaries, you feel like people are a bit more interested in getting to know you personally. So yeah things are going good."
Not surprisingly, Eric is interested in working with university students again, especially Chinese students.
"We have just started to work the uni area. Elder Valdivia has only been here 6 weeks and hasn't really focused on it in the past so we are going to make it a big focus now so it will be pretty new to both of us. I can't really compare Chinese work here to Sheffield and Leeds yet."
It will be interesting to see how the number of Chinese students in York compares to those in Sheffield and Leeds, and to see if they have the same kind of success finding students to teach. There is one Chinese student that the missionaries in York have been teaching for some time. His English name is Perlin. He comes to church every week and continues to have the missionaries teach him, but isn't ready to commit to baptism yet. Maybe having a missionary there who speaks Chinese will help him. Other than Perlin, the teaching pool is small. Elder Hansen and Elder Valdivia will be looking for new people to teach over the course of the next few weeks.
Eric closed his e-mail by asking about his cousins who are also serving missions. He has a cousin Jared who is in Phoenix Arizona, and a cousin Erik who is in Denmark. Both are doing very well.
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