Big Ben

Hello friends and family.

Last week went by way too fast for me to even remember what happened. We have been trying to contact lots of potentials. Many of them we only have their phone numbers. Most of them we haven't been able to contact because they haven't answered. We have had better luck with the less actives we have been trying to contact although some of them we have found out have moved away. 

A few of our appointments last week have been cancelled but we were still able to somehow stay busy. We work closely with the members and it feels good that they have our trust. It seems like the biggest problem with our investigators is that they are very busy. 

We finally got a baptismal date for Sam; he's been to church I think four times now but we've only been able to teach him for the first time on Saturday. I think we're hopefully seeing him every Saturday now because that's the only time he's free. So things are going good, we're keeping busy so that's good.

Last Monday up in London was nice. The Big Ben is not as tall as I thought it would be but it definitely is big. It looks smaller in the pictures I took than it seemed in real life (or we look further away in the pictures). We could only go half way across the bridge because the other half of the bridge is actually the other London Mission, so this is as close as we could get. 

There was a stand selling merchandise and they had two shirts for £10 so I got some t-shirts. I also got some post cards so I'm going to need some addresses. I've already got your's and grandpa Baker's but I need Kaitlyn's, grandpa and grandma Fisher's, and Braedon's if you can. Did you get the post card that I sent from the Romsey Abbey?

There were people at the top of this tower cleaning

Going to see Big Ben

Hello everyone.

Sounds like another busy week for you guys. Love to hear how things are going over there. I didn't realize the wedding is so soon. I can't wait to see the pictures! 

I'll be going up to London to see the Big Ben today for a zone p-day so I'll have pictures of that for you next week but for now, here's a picture of an inflatable Baptist church.

I got the pictures you sent of Uncle Dennis. I thought they were funny. I'll have to print it off and see if I can do a quick sketch in my sketchbook. I also got the temple pictures. They were very lovely photos.

Things are going good at the moment. We do see "the man in the dress" (I wrote you about last week) fairly often. We had a service project at their house pulling out giant weeds and they fed us after. They're a really nice family and they have us over often. We've been traveling around our area like mad trying to contact less actives on our ward list. Many of them were not home but we did get some return appointments and they all seemed happy that we visited. We've been doing a lot of contacting as well between visits and appointments and have been quite successful. It has kept us very busy. This week we want to focus on potential investigators. We've picked a list of ten people we want to contact by the end of the week from the area book on top of the ones we've recently met. Most of the investigators we have I've only seen once or twice so I'd like to see if we can meet them more often.

It Seems Familiar

Hello everyone, I'm settling in just fine here in Mitcham. It's nice to be back in London. It's not far from Croydon so it seems familiar. I'm glad to be using buses again rather than trains. And now I'm being well fed with lots of African food. I haven't had fufu yet but I'm sure it won't be long. Our ward is mostly Africans. It's a good ward and everyone is very friendly. 

 The Welch family welcomed me into the ward by pulling a prank. Elder Heninger was in on it. He took me knocking and didn't tell me one of the doors was a member's home. when we knocked the husband (who is a non-member) opened the door in a dress. He was very flirtatious and trying to make the moment as awkward as possible. After they reveled their identity they took us to a stake sports activity and all the missionaries in the zone were there. I'm still very sore from running. 

My new address is First Floor 8 Netley Gardens Morden GT London SM4 6JW England. 

My new companion is Elder Heninger from Utah and he's been out for 3 months. I was hoping not to get another American but he's a pretty cool guy. (Not that I have anything against Americans.) He doesn't seem like a new missionary. He seems very confident and seems like he knows what he's doing. So far we get along just fine.

Transfer to Mitcham

Hello

Sorry I was unable to e-mail yesterday because of a bank holiday. The week has been okay. We have been meeting with Kieran a lot and he keeps introducing us to his friends. Unfortunately they all live just outside of our area so we have to refer them all to South Hampton. I'm sure the missionaries over there like us very much. We have been having a really hard time contacting people we've been working with and haven't seen many of them in a while but we've been keeping busy with service and visiting less actives. It feels like it's been a busy week but not much has happened. I feel a bit slow right now to be honest. It's been a long week. I found out on Sunday that I will be moving to Mitcham tomorrow. It hasn't been long but I feel like I've been in Romsey for a long time. I think I will miss the Winchester ward but I'm sure the Mitcham ward will be nice. I can finally send you some pictures so I'll do that through a number of separate e-mails as there are a number of photos. First of all I finally got around to going inside the abbey and I got some pretty good photos of that. Also some pictures of when Elder Treadway and I went to get millionaire milkshakes to celebrate my one year mark.

Amazing Dinner Appointment

Hello.
This week has been fairly quick. We had an amazing dinner appointment at the Hamiltons on Wednesday and they invited Jacob there as well. I may not have told you about him. He's a young less active and we have been having a hard time trying to get a hold of him. We hadn't seen him since last transfers so it was good to see him there and I think he got a lot out of it. We've been teaching this guy named Kieran. He's 19 and we met him at an appointment we had with a former investigator. He's a really nice guy and he loves to meet with us. He said that he believes in God now because of us. He even said he wants to be a Mormon. He has a smoking problem but he wants to quit. He's a slow learner and has trouble reading but he takes it all in and really enjoys what he learns. We've been meeting him in parks and public places because we didn't know where he lived. Unfortunately we found out that he lives just outside of our boundaries so we'll have to refer him to the missionaries in South Hampton. But we may keep teaching him because he spends a lot of time in our area. He'll just have to go to the South Hampton ward. Which brings me to Fran. We have a similar situation with her. She lives in Farnborough but she works in Romsey. We still teach her because she spends more time here in Romsey but she is also in contact with the missionaries over in Farnborough. We met her when she saw us as she was driving and she pulled over to ask us for some literature. We gave her our number and we got a call from her later. She's very intelegent and asks a lot of good questions. 
I've got some pictures to send but I can't because the computers at the library are not connected to the internet for some reason and the one I'm on has no USB input. I'm exited to see the theater room all complete. Are you going to decorate it with movie posters and a big cinima sign on the outside?

Hello again.

 

Things are slowly starting to pick up here in Romsey. We already have a number of appointments lined up over the next few days. We are still having trouble contacting the former and potential investigators but we got a few new investigators. The problem is getting them to church. One of our investigators was almost definitely going to be at church but he gave us a call and said he was in the hospital. Another one just slept in. We have been trying to stop my the members more because Elder Treadway still doesn't know the members all that well. He hasn't met half of them because they all have been on vacation. The members here are really nice though. I imagine all of our potentials are gone on holiday as well. That would explain why we can't seem to find them.

 

I feel bad that I haven't been sending any pictures but I haven't been taking any pictures lately. I guess I just haven't been seeing anything interesting lately. I'll keep looking. I can't wait to see the "man cave" when it's done. It's good to see that you have been having fun lately. I feel like I could probably take on any hike by the time I get home.

Hello everyone, nice to hear from you again.

This week was better than the previous weeks. It went by pretty fast but that's because we had an exchange and a zone conference. We also got a few new investigators who seem really nice.

I would say it definitely does feel like it's been a year. (Since he started his mission) It hasn't gone by fast but it hasn't gone by slow either. It feels about right.

(we asked him in an e-mail if it was too early to start thinking about Christmas and what he wanted) It's never too early or too late to be thinking of Christmas. I can tell you're already exited. I do however feel as tough it may be too early to know what I need or want for Christmas. I'll have to think about it and get back to you on that.

So here's the conversion story that I didn't have time last week to tell. Back in the first week of my mission when I was serving with Elder Johnson we got a text from someone by the name of Dominic saying "Enough's enough; I want to be baptised". That's a pretty good text to receive. So we told him to meet us at the chapel and he told us his story. 

He was studying to be a minister but as he studied he found a few things that were wrong. He decided he wanted to find the true church so he made a list of what Christ's church should be like. He narrowed things down to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and thought "no that can't be right." so he made a new list and started again. After checking things off he again narrowed it down to the Mormons. 

After this he prayed that he may know if he should learn more. Later he was walking down the street and he saw two missionaries coming his way. He thought it must have been just a coincidence and just ignored them. As he kept walking he says he saw another set of missionaries. He decided to stop them and started taking the lessons. 

He investigated for a very long time and spent a lot of time studying the Standard Works, church history, and other church material. He knows the doctrine better than anyone. In fact, he suggested that if we ever have a question about doctrine we can just ask him. But he never got baptised. He called himself a "dry Mormon". Finally he felt he shouldn't put it off any longer and he still had the missionaries phone number. That's when he contacted us. We tried to set a date for him but he said he was going to be away on holiday for a while. After he left we couldn't seem to get any contact with him. We tried calling and texting him but got no answers. We never saw him again.

The Mission President sends out a mass e-mail to everyone in the mission each week to encourage and update us. This letter includes a list of people who have been baptised that week within the mission as well as the aria they got baptised in. The Presidents letter of the 30th of June has Dominic in that list stating that he finally got baptised in my first area.