Blessings From On High

Note from the editor:

OK before I go into Brandon's letter.......I am getting the blog done very early because its a holiday Monday and i don't have to wait till after work to do it. (This wont be the norm from now on)  This blog is a King Lamoni story in a smaller scale. Read the story in the Book of Mormon. (Alma chapter 17,18,19) The missionaries go into an area with no investigators, teach the king and because everyone knows the king many are taught. Like I said in a smaller scale though) Also a great story of the Lord providing for his servants. Note whenever you see some brackets (..........) that's my comments

Enough of me ......No on to Elder Fisher's letter.

Hey there everyone.

I love the idea of the retro photo each week. (We are starting to send Elder Fisher pictures of the kids way back, funny pictures that may had been forgot...1 or 2 each email) Still haven't got a camera but I'll look for one today.

This week was a pretty good week. We had a lot of people at church on Sunday. Still working with Martin and Steph. They will take some time to progress because of the many concerns but they are doing good and are still feeding us. Most of our investigators that we are teaching right now came from them. They seem to know everyone. We met a less active through them and she's trying to turn her life around. She came to church and really enjoyed it and she's reading her scriptures like crazy. We have other really good potential investigators as well that we are trying to set appointments with. Many of them are busy. We managed to meet one this week finally named Dean. He approached us on the street! It was like two months ago but we finally got in contact with him. We later found out that he knows Steph. He wants to become a missionary and asked what he had to do. We told him we could help him but he's moving to Australia soon. Hopefully we can teach him everything before then and if not the missionaries in Australia will have to take care of him. 

We have a pretty busy week planned ahead of us. The past couple of weeks have gone by fast. This area is starting to come alive. Hopefully I can walk fast enough...

We went to the Davanzo's this week for the second time. They are members within our ward boundaries but they go to a different ward so we decided to get to know them. They are super nice! They love to feed us. After we left their house we got a call from them. 

-Sister Davanzo said "Elder Fisher how many pairs of shoes do you have?" 

-I said "One good pair."

-"And I'm guessing they're not the ones you were wearing today are they?"

-"Actually they are."

-"Come back to our house as soon as you can."

After the appointment we had at the time we stopped by on the way home. They gave me two new (hardly used) pairs of shoes and £30 to buy another pair. They didn't notice my busted camera though...

Please continue to have fun and I'll talk to you next week!

Happy Mothers Day

Thank you to the members over there in Crowthorne who allowed Elder Fisher and Elder Brown to use their Ipad so that we could spend an hour Skyping Elder Fisher. He looks so good and so happy. He said he doesn't miss home and he's doing very well.
For those who are wondering, he has No English accent so far. Still sounding Canadian. It was great to see him so happy. It was even nice to see his companion Elder Brown and chat with him. Very nice gentleman.

Because we had an hour to talk with him he only sent pictures to us Sunday so here's the pictures.

The Thairs kids and I...: seeing who can make the scariest face:

Me with the puppies! We are so cute together. If you don't love puppies you are in fact a villain.

Below is the best breakfast I've ever made: Chocolate pancakes with strawberries  banana, and chocolate milk to drink.

And here is the most epic picture I've taken so far with my camera. Also the last picture I took before it broke. Possibly too epic for my camera to handle. View with caution.

Mothers Day

(Sorry everyone for being late with Brandon's Blog. With the holiday over there and Justin's rugby game here i haven't been able to get it posted till now.) 


Hey so............was another bank holiday so the library was closed. That's why I'm e-mailing today. 

I'm excited for Sister Fisher's mission! I'm so exited! When does she report to the MTC? I guess I can get all the details when we Skype on mothers day. We will have to do it in the morning before church (for you). It will be after church for me. Probably 2:00 here and 7:00 where you are. I hope that works. Some members will be bringing a laptop/iPad to the church for us to Skype on after the meetings.

I enjoyed hearing about Shelly Hill's acquaintance in Lethbridge that has a sister that lives over here. Sounds like Sister Lynnstickles? who takes our Book of Mormon class. We have a Book of Mormon study class every Sunday at 4:00 for members and investigators. Maybe something you can try at the Claresholm ward. We've been trying to get more activities for people to bring their friends at the Bracknell ward and we've been asking members for ideas and encouraging them to organize it (because us missionaries can't really do much organizing). Do any of you have some good ideas? One thing our ward does is a monthly quiz night. Elder brown said his last ward did a monthly fitness night. I thought that would be a cool idea.

I've been working on a sketch on my free p-day hours and Elder Brown's sister does art on the computer so we're getting her to colour it and we will make a poster. Hopefully next p-day we'll have time to take it to a printing place.

 I'm curious to know if you've all been checking out the areas I've served in on Google maps street view much. Check out some of the houses in Finchhamstead. I think Ringo Star lived in one of those houses. You can check up on that though. Talk to you on MOTHERS DAY!

Out of time now. See you Sunday!

A better picture of the trailer..

Picture tells the letter

Hello it's me again. Good to hear from you as usual even though you couldn't think of much to say. Don't worry I understand how that feels more than anyone. I think most of my letter will be told in pictures (I actually have some this week). I am very exited to hear about where Sister Fisher is going. I kind of wish I didn't guess Australia now that I know so many other people guessed it. That would be a cool place to go though.

So this week actually went by pretty fast compared to recent weeks. However I can't really remember allot of what happened this week. A lot of knocking happened, and a lot of stopping by less active member's homes who were not in. All in all a lot of walking. And some pretty bad weather for walking as well. Steph came to church again and this time brought Martin and they both enjoyed it. Richard loves church! Martin thought it was long but he's right so I can't argue. Steph seems to have more concerns now but they're easy ones to resolve and she shows that she trusts us by asking right away. That just shows that she's actually investigating and not just going with it. We gave them a baptismal date but it's not very solid. She said she wants to pray about it. We'll see how committed they all are when we next see them. They still have some word of wisdom problems but we'll see how we can help. Elder Brown and I want to try to get the ward to have more firesides and activities for members to invite friends to. We'll see how that goes.

I saw this picture in a members house and I thought one of the apostles looked like Christian Bale. Also I thought this ad in a train was unintentionally funny...

Just a cool trailer I saw last week and one of the posh houses in our area. There are a lot of rich people here.

We were knocking on a less active members door and this bird just flew up and landed in front of us. Elder Brown touched it but it flew away when he tried to pet it.

Best Guess

Thank you for the pictures of your trip to the black hills. All the pictures came through. I love the pictures you sent me. It looks like you had lots of fun. And leaned lots. I'd like to see Mt. Rushmore one day. I've heard that it doesn't look as big in real life as it does in pictures. I've heard of the Crazy Horse one as well. I wonder why it's taking so long for them to finish. Didn't the head get complete a long time ago?

I like the Thairs family. Brother Thairs is the ward mission leader and he's a huge movie fan. He's always quoting movies. He's pretty funny and so are his kids. They love the missionaries.

As for the guess on where Britt is going on her mission, I think Sister Fisher will go to Australia. Elder Brown thinks she will go to Germany.

As for the question that you asked about visiting any historical sights yet. We haven't really visited any historical sites over here. There are of coarse many old churches around that we come across but we haven't really looked for any historical sites to visit on a p-day.

Things here are going pretty good. We've been working with the people I told you about last week that Elder Brown found on exchange. They are really nice people. Martin and Steph are a married couple and Richard is a friend of theirs who has come every time we visited. He is 66 years old and the others i think are in their 40s. Mandy is another friend of theirs and she's been there for a couple teaches. Steph seems to be really accepting it well but Martin is a bit skeptical. It's not that he doesn't believe it or doesn't want to believe it; he just has lots of questions. That's not a bad thing; he has lots of really good questions and we keep telling him that it's good to have questions but we have to remind him that we can't teach him everything at once. Richard and Steph came to church and they both really enjoyed it. Martin didn't want to come because he didn't think he had any nice enough cloths. But Steph is trying to talk him into coming and they are feeding us this week. They're super nice!

My companion is from Kalispell Montana. His closest temple is the Cardston Temple.

So here are some pictures. The first one is of our district (with the zone leaders) and the second one is an older picture of the district before Elder Moulin left. I think he should be home now!

Finding the lost sheep

Hello everyone!

So this week has been another slow week but it's been a better week. We found some nice people to teach. Last Monday we were looking for a former investigator and we knocked on their door to find out that they don't live there any more. The person that answered seemed interested though. He was busy but he told us to come back later that night and we did and shared a lesson with him. His name is Adam. He's a nice guy who is recently married, has a little boy, and is training to be a baptist preacher. He had a lot of questions but we have another appointment with him later today and we'll teach the plan of salvation which may answer most of his questions. We got some other investigators that Elder Brown met while we were on a companion exchange. We had another visit with them on Saturday and they seemed really nice. They all read at least something from the Book of Mormon when we saw them and we have two appointments with them next week.

We also knocked on a inactive members house on Saturday. His name is Richard. His house was a little hard to find. He's a really nice guy (in his 30s). He invited us in and offered us some orange squash and we got to know him. He said he hasn't been to church in over 14 years and hasn't had much connection with the church except for family members. But he said the church has been on his mind and he has wanted to become fully active by the end of the year. He's even talked about it with his wife (maybe just partner) who  is not a member and she has a Book of Mormon. They are moving to Bracknell so that means they will be closer to the chapel. We'll see if we can do anything to help them with their move but the sisters will have to fellowship him because they cover the Bracknell area.

Well that's all for now. Talk to you next week.

Blue Cheese Icecream

This week was better than last week. Only because we had a few service projects to keep us busy. Street contacting was starting to stress me out. Just because we have been doing too much of it and not seeing much success. But because of the service projects and some dinner appointments we've been doing a lot less contacting this week. 

We have also contacted almost all the people in our potential files now that they are more organised. We have been able to clear up some information on who has moved, who's still interested and who's not. We actually have a few appointments coming up now with some of them as well as some people we have found on the street. 

All this work should have made the week go by a lot faster but this week has been extremely slow. It feels like it's been a long week. In fact, this whole transfer so far has been really slow.  

I really enjoyed conference. There was a lot of good stuff that I think can help me to stay positive. I can't really think of a best talk; I think for me the talks as a whole tied together really well. Over all it motivated me and helped build my confidence. I often feel like the lord is trying to communicate directly to me whenever I listen to conference talks.

Good to hear about the weather you're beginning to enjoy. It's starting to rain again over here but it's not too bad. I love the MTC picture you sent me. [One of mine (mike) that grandma found from 82]. If you find any more of those be sure to send them my way. 

I did get your letter this week. Justin's picture looks funny. Tell him to shave.

I saw the craziest thing the other day. There is a really nice ice-cream store at one of the train stations and one of the flavors they had one day was blue cheese ice-cream. I also saw a banjo ukulele. I wanted it so bad! Too bad it's so expensive.