Elder Coleman Thompson: First Email from Hull

Hi guys!

So. I moved to Hull on Wednesday, and I met my new companion. His name is Elder Stahle and he is from... Bountiful, Utah. Sorry to disappoint he says.

But, Elder Stahle is awesome! He is I will say, very Mormon. But we are getting along so well! He has been out on his mission for just about 3 months now, he just got finished being trained, and he is so excited to be a missionary! Oh btw, Elder Stahle knows Elder Higginson, you remember him who served in our ward?

I'm living in a 4 man flat again! Yes! It's so much fun! I like the 4 man's so much better than the two man! We're living with the Zone Leaders, and they're great. Elder Slabbert is from South Africa and Elder Westergard is from Utah. They're great. Elder Westergard served in Newcastle when I was in North Shields, and I went on an exchange with him once when I was there and he is awesome.

Okay about Hull. We live like right next to the University of Hull. So we live like literally right in among all the Uni Students. Finding people is so easy here! We just walk around and stop Uni students and explain where were from and what we do and then we get their phone numbers and they wanna meet it's so easy! There's also a Senior Couple that live 2 streets over from us who have this big house where they hold student activities and where we can teach people, and it works so well! We are teaching a bunch of people and we have like 10 return appointments with potentials that we've set up for next week! I love it here so far!

The ward I'm in is the Hull 1 ward, and it's the biggest ward I've served in on my mission. The accent here is waaay different from the accent in Leeds/West Yorkshire and of course waaay different from the accent in North Shields. Funny enough I met a student yesterday who is from North Shields. I haven't met any Canadians yet though but I'm keeping my eyes peeled.

On Sunday we brought this guy to church his name is Olif and he is from The Congo, and he is a native French speaker, so I got to practice my French with him for the first time since Junior High, and I was shocked because I could carry a full on conversation with him! He told me that I sounded like I'd spoken it for a long time, in fact when I told him that I hadn't spoken it since I was 15 he didn't believe me!

Another cool story (kind of). We were one night walking through the Hull City Center, and this group of 5 foreign Muslim kids stopped us, one was like: teach me about Christianity, so we were like okay. So we proceeded to teach them the entirety of the first lesson right there on the street. I felt like a full on preacher from early church history, I had to like stand on a little ledge so they could all see me and Elder Stahle helped a little as well. It was cool but it's one of those things that they couldn't change religions even if they wanted to because their families would disown them, but one of the kids really wanted to read the Book of Mormon so I gave it to him, and who knows what'll happen to it.

We taught a bunch of Uni students this week. I probably taught more lessons this week than the last transfer combined it was great. Such a relief. I love it here.

I do miss the ward in Wharfe Valley though. That ward felt like home to me. This ward is still new and foreign. I miss a lot of the members there, but I'm sure I'll get to know the ones here very soon!

Love you guys!