Oxford Pics

We've been having freaky weather. Have you ever seen the movie Sharknado?

And this is brother Iverson from the Oxford first ward.

Basingstoke

hello everyone.

Sorry I didn't realise that I haven't sent any pictures of Oxford yet. I'll be sure to do that. We switched flats with the sisters a few days ago so now were in Didcot. But we still go to Oxford often. The sisters left all their decorations up as well so it's a very girlie flat. We moved to their flat just a week before the actual transfer moves so we still don't know if any of us will be moving again; but there have been rumours. We were supposed to find out this morning but we got no phone call. Now that we're in Didcot we have to travel a lot.

Well... I just found out that I will be moving to Basingstoke. I'd better start packing. Again. I guess it was nice to be in the Oxford second ward for one week and get to know them as well. I'll be serving with an Elder Goldsmith. Another American. Basingstoke is not far from Crowthorn I remember. It should be good. It's too bad I haven't stayed here long.

Is the MacBook Justin's now? That's some interesting family history.

It's getting warmer. I feel like this year was colder than last year but I'm not sure. It snowed a couple of times in Oxford but it only stuck once. And it melted by the afternoon.

Note from Mike: I have several pictures that was sent as well and will add them tonight when i have more time. Stay tuned.

A Good Flogging

Hello people.

Not much has been happening. We've been doing a lot of contacting and setting up appointments and re-scheduling and being flogged. 

A lot of the people we've been meeting with this week don't really speak English so it's been difficult. They don't speak Albanian either. I felt really confident that we could get a baptismal date in the past couple weeks but we haven't been able to meet with our solid investigators. Eufrozina is still too busy to meet with us and we still haven't been able to contact Rose. But we  have some other cool people we are trying to meet. 

I found out this morning that we will be moving to the other Oxford ward. That's a surprise. I didn't see that coming at all. I'm trying to think how that will be. We will be going to the same building but a different ward. We're also switching flats with the sisters so we won't have the same investigators either. It's weird but I guess that's where I need to be. Hope you have fun in Vegas.

Stake Conference

Things are still going pretty good. We've been staying motivated and keeping busy. We haven't been able to contact Eufrozina all week and we finally got a hold of her a few days ago and she said she won't be available this week. She's really busy but she said she'll let us know when she's available. Same problem with Rose. We can't seem to get a hold of her. I'm confident that we'll start teaching both of them again soon. I just hope there aren't always these big gaps between each visit.
 I enjoyed the stake conference we had. It was good to see some of the members from the Bracknell ward. We've been doing a lot of member work this week and it's been good to get to know the members more. Oxford ward is really nice. We've been struggling to get new investigators because they seem to be busy. People are okay with giving us their numbers but they just don't have time to meet up. Hopefully we can find the right people who are willing to give up some time.

I still don't have a clue what I want to do for school. Find out what you can, I don't know what would be best for me.

Hungarian girl

It was a long week. Not much has happened but we're hoping for at least one new baptismal date this week with Eufrozina. She's the Hungarian girl we met on the street. She's really nice and seems to be very interested. The only reason why we haven't extended a date to be baptized is because we want to explain it more and make sure she understands what baptism is. The language barrier is a challenge but she can understand everything we teach her if we talk slowly and explain clearly. We've only been able to meet with her once yet because she's been busy but we want to meet with her as often as possible because she's the most promising investigator we have. And we haven't got many other investigators. We've met some other really nice people last week that we're hoping to get in contact with this week. Hopefully we can start teaching some of them as well. Last week has been a bit rough but Elder Lika and I have been evaluating and trying to find ways to improve and setting goals to keep things going. I think we both have a strong desire to improve.

When it comes to members in our wards, I never pick favorites but there is a couple from Edmonton in our ward called the Iversons. They're really nice, they had us over for dinner a few days ago. Brother Iverson looks kind of like Drew Carey. It's a mixed culture ward; lots of Chinese, American, English, French... It's a good mix of ages as well.

A little about Oxford now.  I've heard that Hitler during the second world war ordered not to bomb Oxford because he was so impressed with the architecture here and wanted to make it his headquarters.

It would be good to start applying for school now so you can start looking for me, I don't want to sit around doing nothing when I get back home.

Walk through the semitary

Hello people.

Another decent week in Oxford. We had a zone conference and that was good. It's helped me and my companion to be more diligent. And from that we've seen more blessings. We have a new investigator whom we are teaching for the first time today. She's really friendly and open and we're excited to start teaching her. She's from Hungary. She seemed excited to come to church but she couldn't make it this week. We're making goals to meet with the members more and gain their trust. I think that's vital especially in this aria. We're going to see what service we can do and try to teach the member lessons. We want to let them know that were here to help them do missionary work. We also had the opportunity to give a blessing to an investigator who was going to the hospital to check her lungs for something (I don't know but she was really worried). But we heard that she got the results and there's nothing wrong.

You can tell the members to make friends with the missionaries. Not just because they need food or even because they need to teach the members lessons and tell them what to do, but because missionaries make good friends. Members should try to get to know them more. That closer relationship can bring so much joy and even make missionary work easier or less scary for members; even exciting! I've seen it as I've worked with members here in England. Maybe it's because they realize that missionaries are people too.

Here's a photo of my companion in the dark and also another unrelated photo. We were walking through a cemetery and we found this. We honestly just stumbled across it.

Fisher Restaurant

Hello everyone.

I like Oxford so far. Elder Lika and I get along just fine. I'm still settling in and want to find a really effective way to work in the area. Contacting in this area doesn't seem easy but we've had some success. We've mostly been visiting less actives and it's been good. We don't seem to have many investigators so we'll have to find some. My companion is pretty cool. He's from Albania. He knows a lot about the Italian Mafia. He loves gangster movies. Oxford's pretty sweet, A lot of Harry Potter was filmed here. C S Lewis's house is in Oxford. People are telling me that Rowan Atkinson and Emma Watson have houses here. Most of the people here are students or tourists.

They knew I was coming