Elder Coleman Thompson: Yet another Weekly Email

Punch buggies - when I served with Elder Faingata'a I made the mistake of introducing him to the punch buggy game, and I beat him the first day we played, and then he beat me every single day after that, he had eagle eyes.

Dad, I like that you use the Book of Mormon to relate to people, I do that all the time! For the last little while I've been studying the Book of Mormon and the New Testament, and I've been reading for the last little bit in the Acts, where Paul is travelling and teaching sermons and things, and I am getting so much out of it, there is so much doctrine contained in the New Testament and things that are personally relevant to me.

And Alex, Elder Stahle and I have been spending a lot of time around the university, but we're not allowed to actually go into the campus and proselyte there, so we just use the streets around the University, and it works really well. We've taught lots of students, but most of them now are finished exams and are going home, so our teaching pool of students is dwindling, but that's okay.

This week we found quite a few new people to teach! We found 8 new investigators, which is the most I've had in a single week in my mission yet, which is great! 5 of these 8 investigators are foreign, only three are English. Two of them are from The Congo, and they are native French speakers, so a lot of our lesson is translating things from French (Elder Stahle just sits there) and then another guy is from Cameroon, and his first language is also French, but he speaks English quite well. Two of the others are from Latvia and they're English is okay, but not perfect. They're all really nice people, but they sure do come from very different backgrounds and lifestyle's.

Okay now this week also we taught our English class for the second time, and there was 6 people in the class, none of whom spoke much English at all. But get this, each week we do two lessons, and the fourth lesson, so the one that I taught yesterday (elder Stahle and I take turns) was called ''Saying a Prayer in English''. So I was literally teaching 3 Muslims and 3 atheists about ''Heavenly Father'' ''Jesus Christ'' ''Blessings'' ''believe'' it was so funny. When we teach we just use phrases and make sure everybody knows what they mean and then we repeat them, we kind of chant them together, and then we go around individually and get them to say it to us to check the pronunciation. So one of the phrases I used without even thinking about it was ''I believe in Jesus Christ'' and we were all chanting it! 3 Muslims, 3 atheists and I all saying ''I believe in Jesus Christ, over and over'' It was so funny. And then after we went around and the Muslims were like ''I believe in.... God'' ''And the other lady was like ''I believe in Jesus... no no I no believe'' it was funny. The people love us.

The two guys from the Congo originally only accepted the invitation to learn about our church because I told them that I would also teach them a bit of guitar as well, but then they loved the Restoration and they want to try it out more.

It was super hot all week, but then this weekend the heavens were opened and we were drenched again. Luckily we have umbrellas, but those don't keep our trousers dry...

So another thing.. when you said that Will is getting baptized soon I was like ''What? I thought he was turning 7?'' so uhh.. Sorry Will I forgot how old you were...

We had an excellent week, it's fun here in Hull.

Love you guys!

Elder Thompson