This week has been so sweet. Lots of awesome things have been
happening and missionary work is really fun! I love it here in
Dewsbury!
The big news for this week - I've only been here for about 4 weeks but
I'm getting transferred already! I'm leaving tomorrow to go to
Bradford and I've been called to be a district leader again.
I don't know any of the Elders that will be in my district -
apparently they've all come out in their missions while I was home, so
it should be interesting. But my zone leader is Elder Rodriguez! I was
his district leader when he first came out on his mission in October
of last year! So I'm excited to work with him again!
But back to the beginning of this week! On Monday it was Halloween and
for the evening we weren't allowed to go out and work, so instead we
had to spend the whole evening deep cleaning our flat - which I didn't
mind because missionary flats can be pretty messy. So it looks great
now! But I'm moving...
On Tuesday morning we went and visited this fellow named Ray. Ray has
several children and recently went through a long divorce process that
lasted over a year and consumed a lot of his life. He just finished it
recently and has a lot more free time for his kids etc. He is also a
devout Catholic, so we went over and taught him about the restoration
- but he didn't agree. We bore our testimonies about the restoration
and urged him to read the Book of Mormon to find out for himself, and
he said he would! So hopefully Elder Erickson and his new companion
will be able to follow up on that!
Later on on Tuesday we went and taught Kevin with a member of our ward
and he has some pretty crazy concerns about the doctrine of our
church. It was honestly one of the weirdest theories about God that
I've ever heard.
Oh - this week we also had the Area Book Planner App introduced on our
iPads! So that made the week a little more disorganised because we are
trying to wrap our heads around using this new app! It's actually
going to be such a useful tool so I'm really excited about it! One of
the funny things about it though is that in order for us to be able to
use it in the UK, we aren't allowed to include a lot of specific
information on the app, so it's a little complicated in what we're
allowed to store on the App. But it's good! It's weird though because
we don't use planners any more, or area books once we transfer all the
records to the app, snd it's kind of weird to be a missionary without
having a daily planner on me, but I think it's a good change! Moving
into the future for sure. President Turvey is a lot more technology
savvy than President Pilkington, he actually worked in a computer
technology company for his living, so he's trying to introduce a lot
more technology into the mission.
And then on Wednesday Jenna's parents came and picked up Elder
Erickson and I and took us to a restaurant in Dewsbury! It was so
awesome! Jenna's family aren't members of the Church but they know a
lot about missionaries and the church and what we do, so the dinner
with them was great! They took us to this Indian food restaurant and
they knew the owner no all the staff and it was just really really
nice!
Oh and that morning was district meeting and the topic was member
involvement in missionary work - and Elder Wayt asked me to do the
instruction. It was actually so good I talked a lot about things that
happened in the YSA ward with Sam and Tegan in Calgary and in Dad's
ward with Mark and Diane. I also talked about being a member going out
teaching with the missionaries and how we can do a good job at it
here, involving members. So that was great too.
Thursday was great too, not too much happened, we had ward
coordination. Oh and it's starting to get really cold, and it was
daylight saving this week which made it start getting dark really
early as well! The sun sets here now at like 430-5 ish which makes it
hard to do any finding after it gets dark, so we've been scheduling
most of our appointments for the evening time!
Friday we taught this born again Christian guy named Matt, and he had
some concerns about our church and he Book of Mormon specifically. One
of them was that he believed in the bible and he thought that it was
not realistic that Nephi could have received so much revelation when
other prophets in the bible didn't receive as much revelation. We
talked it over with him and urged him to try to understand that God
speaks to all his prophets and that it's totally feasible for some to
write down more than others. We bore testimony of Joseph Smith and the
Book of Mormon and encouraged him to read it, so I hope he does!
On Friday was Guy Fawke's Night / Bonfire Night here, and for the past
two years that I've been here we've had to be in early for it, but for
some reason this year that wasn't the case! But all week I thought we
were going to be in early so I didn't make any plans for Saturday
evening! It turned out to be okay though we went and visited this
former investigator who Elder Diaz taught when he was in Dewsbury last
year named Andy! He is super sweet and agrees with the Restoration and
wants to come to church! He told us that he's had some hard times
recently that have opened his mind more towards the idea of God and
wants to learn about our church! Sometimes it's just the right time to
meet someone! So I'm excited for him, even though I probably won't see
him again.
We did have some time outside that night though and oh my gosh it
sounded like a war zone! In England you don't need a permit or
anything to shoot off fireworks, so this whole week, but especially on
the 5th, there were like loads of fireworks going on everywhere! It
was actually pretty crazy, like we were in this area called
Heckmondwike and we were walking along the main road and some kids
were shooting fireworks off down a side street, and the firework stand
fell over and shot down the street and exploded on the ground it was
cool but kinda crazy.
And then Saturday was Huddersfield Stake Conference! And Elder Moreira
from the seventy came to it as well! He's the same general authority
that came to one of the zone conferences last year in our mission! So
that was so awesome! Afterwards he also did a new member /
investigator session, and we brought Kevin. So it was just a few
people all gathered in a room listening to Elder Moreira basically
just bear his testimony! And president Turvey and his wife came as
well so that was awesome!
Also at Stake Conference I got to talk to a bunch of the members from
Huddersfield 1 ward! And that was so awesome! I saw some families like
the Vousdens, and the Pollentines, and the Greys, and the Tomlinsons,
and the Meads, and the Siswicks, and the Scotts, it was really cool.
There was so much more that happened this week too but I can't
remember it all and it's hard to type everything out! But just know
that I'm having such a good time here, and so many experiences with
helping people out and meeting new people it's awesome.
Tomorrow I'm moving to Bradford to a whole new zone and stake and ward
and missioanaries. So I'm going to be meeting a lot of new people! My
memory and skill with names is really going to be stretched, but I'm
excited to keep serving people!
Love all you guys!!
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