Hello family and friends.

I've been getting songs by Duran Duran stuck in my head lately so when I'm finished my mission I'll definitely have to start listening to them.

Last week went by so fast. We've been busy with a lot of things. Every Wednesday we have a district meeting at the chapel but in this zone they always gather as a zone for the last Wednesday of the transfer to have a big pancake breakfast, and then we split off in our districts for our meetings. This zone does a lot of things together. We also had General Conference of coarse. It was really good.

 I want to print off a number of the talks later on to go over in my study time. We went to Pauline and Tim's (the Welch's) house for the Sunday Morning session after they fed us lunch. (Because of the time difference we watched it live in the afternoon.) Sam went to the Saturday session and the priesthood session and he really enjoyed them. We still haven't been able to teach him but I feel like he's learning a lot from coming to church. We are going to move his baptismal date back and just meet him when we can. We moved the baptismal date for Bennett. He's doing good but we've had a few lessons cancel and we feel like he needs more time. He feels like this is good for him because he said he wants more time to read and pray. 

We gave Isaac a tour of the chapel. He's a less active we found from Ghana who moved here five years ago and hasn't been to church since. He really enjoyed it and seeing the baptismal font brought back memories for him. He had a big smile on his face. He has forgotten many things so we are teaching him all the lessons and answering lots of his questions. Things are going good, still keeping busy.

Out of all the conference talks, I liked the talk by Joel Klingblat about spiritual confidence. It was the Saturday afternoon session. There were some pretty unique topics this conference.

It sounds like winter is getting close back home. It is cooling down in England as well, and we are getting some cold days. It's been a really dry summer but now it's raining. When the sun is out it's nice and warm.

And I still don't know what I want for Christmas. Don't send me too many sweets. Actually it would be cool if you could send me some stuff you can only get in Canada. I can't think of any examples.

Busy week

Hello everyone.

Thanks for the photos. Don't you have the original digital copy of the family photos? I thought they were on Facebook. It doesn't feel like that long ago but Justin definitely looks younger it those pictures. How's Sister Fisher? Was she nervous? Did you drive her down to the MTC or did she fly?

We had a long week; but it feels like it's been very productive. We've picked up some new investigators and had lots of appointments. Lots of them have canceled appointments but we end up seeing most of them in the end. Our investigators just like to make things difficult. 

Sam is still hard to visit. We are going to have to pull him out of class on Sundays to teach him. He's still coming to church and he gets involved in the classes and I feel like he picks up on everything really well. He's still super busy during the week. He over-works himself. We did get to meet him on Saturday at a caffe but it was hard to teach him as he kept falling asleep. He doesn't get enough sleep throughout the week because he works too hard. 

On Sunday all the missionaries spoke in sacrament. It was Sister West's last sacrament meeting before she goes home because next week is General Conference. I'll bet Sister Fisher is exited for that! How's the cinema coming along?

The ward here is wonderful and they feed us a lot. Are you still feeding the missionaries?

 Sister Fisher. I remember in the MTC the chefs served us a nice cooked breakfast every morning but on Sunday they just left out cold cereal for us. It might be different though with much more people.

I didn't get the stuff i lost last week while traveling but I've replaced most of my stuff though. The biggest thing was my shaver. I've been using disposable razors (the kind with only one blade) so hopefully today I'm getting a new shaver. Elder Heninger had an extra towel and I bought a new shirt from Primark (only £5). They have some nice cloths there for cheep. That's where I got my suit. I'm thinking of getting a new pair of trousers there to replace the ones I lost.

Hello people.

Good to hear from you and see the pictures from Kaitlyn and Wade's wedding! It looks like it went very well. Congratulations! Send more pictures! What are they doing for their honeymoon? I hope they have lots of fun.

We had a stressful companion exchange where all the plans went wrong. First, after meeting in our aria we traveled all the way to the other missionary's flat to find that the missionary I was with left his flat keys with his companion so we had to travel back to get them. Then I left all my clothing and hygiene stuff for the exchange on a train and never got it back. It all just put my mood down along with other things but we had a string of small miracles Saturday night that lifted me up. A former investigator saw us on the street and got off his bike to talk to us. He wants to meet with us again and go to church. We met with him that night at his mothers home and talked with him. He has had a rough past and now has drug addictions. We think he may have been on drugs wen we met with him because he was shaking and scratching himself a lot. But he did seem very sincere; he wants to change his life and he believes we can help him.

Thanks also for the family photos. Send me one that has the whole family in it (like the one that Sister Toone took with all the leaves).

Good Luck Bri- uh... Sister Fisher!

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.