So yeah, on Saturday we got up way early like 545 and got ready and
then took a bus with just the missionaries going to the Leeds mission
to a chapel in some town I cant remember the name of, I really don't even
know where it was. Anyhow we got oriented and taught by the senior
missionaries and the Assistant to the President missionaries and we had
interviews with the President and got taught by him and fed lunch. My
companions from the MTC are both going to the Manchester mission so I
said goodbye to them for good probably on Saturday morning.
After
all the orientation a bunch of missionaries showed up for a transfer
meeting and all the outgoing and ingoing missionaries bore testimony and
then we were assigned to our new trainer companions. My companion is
Elder Jaeger and he is really great. He's from Southern California and
he's been out on his mission for 17 months. He has been a zone leader
for the past 7 months or so and now he's been assigned to be my trainer
and our district leader. He is very obedient and knows his stuff but is
also super nice and funny and easy to get along with it's nice.
We
moved into a flat with two other elders, Elder Diaz and Elder Wright,
both from Utah, who are both funny but also very hard working
missionaries. Our flat apparently is one of the nicer flats but it is
still rather small and amenities are slim. Were at the library now down
the street renting the computers for an hour, we might pay for another
hour if were not done.
Sister Thompson is a nice
old widow from our ward (North Shields ward) who is in a wheelchair and
loves the missionaries. She fed us lunch after stake conference
yesterday. Oh yeah btw yesterday and the night before that was stake
conference. It was great but I was really tired and it was hard to pay
attention. Anyways yeah sister Thompson took a picture of us and sent it
to our parents, apparently she loves to talk to missionaries moms. Do
you know the Sims who live in Calgary? Joe Sim was in my area apparently
for a long time and his mom knows sister Thompson. But yeah she is nice
and drives us around places sometimes and she said that if we need to
get things mailed to us to send it to her house because she is almost
always there to receive it and is more than happy to get it to us when
we go visit her, which is often.
Some rules I
wasn't aware about that I found out yesterday: We have to wear suit
jackets all the time in public. So all those trousers that we bought are
not going to be used because they don't match my suit jackets. Also
there's a new rule in the mission because of injuries that we are not
allowed to play any sport at all. No basketball. No football. Nothing at
all ever. On the bright side a lot of movies are approved for us to
watch and tonight were meeting up with some other elders to watch a
movie I think.
Yesterday we spent some times
knocking on doors around our area, in a neighbourhood called Marden. We
talk to everybody on the streets too. I haven't taught any investigators
yet. We are white washing our area which just means that neither elder
Jaeger nor I have been in this area before so all the information we
have on investigators is in the area book and that's pretty much it,
it's almost like starting from scratch. You could probably find marden
where we were yesterday on google maps but if you look for the actual
township of North Shields - that's where I'm staying.
I'm not feeling
too homesick yet but I miss my guitar a lot. I'll probably be homesick
soon. Love you guys and I miss you lots. I'm feeling a lot better now
that I have a good companion and I'm out in the field.
Also the people here talk really funny. This area is
where the Geordie accent is from and people say things sometimes and I
jsut say ''what was that?'' Instead of hi they say 'yaright' and they
call us canny lads and they use the word champion a lot, like how was
your day? 'It was just champion'.
Also another story. On Friday night (our last night
at the MTC) we went to the temple for one last time. I felt the spirit
more strongly in that session than I ever have in a temple session
before and I remember thinking a lot about certain phrases and thinking,
'did they ever even say those before?' I had entered the temple with a specific question in
mind and as I sat in the Celestial room I prayed again and asked
Heavenly Father my question, which was just how to be a better
companion, and answers started pouring into my head and I felt
enlightened and inspired. I was thinking through all of these thoughts
and the spirit witnessed to me that all of the qualities I need to have
to be a good companion in the mission field apply to the
relationship I'll have one day with my eternal companion, and dealing
with people now will help me understand how to be a better husband and
father someday. I also felt inspired that I knew that I would return
here one day , or to some temple one day with my eternal companion. I've
realized that that is my primary goal in my life, to be worthy to be
married in the temple and raise up a family in the Gospel of the Lord,
and I know that that is what my future has in store for me. I love the
Lord.
To continue the story I was walking back
from the temple to the MTC after the session and a man came out of the
stake center and invited us to come in to get some cake because they had
just had a cake competition and therefore had an overabundance of cake.
This morning I was reading in first Nephi chapter 1 and he talks about
tender mercies of the Lord. That was a tender mercy, coming out of the
temple already on top of the world and then ''hey free cake''. It was
wonderful.
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