Stake Cultural Event

Sorry I'm e-mailing today. We couldn't do it yesterday because I was sick all day I just stayed in bed all day. 

Sams baptism went well. He seems very happy. He fits in with the ward very well and they are doing a good job fellowshipping him. You can tell he was very exited and he has lots of support. He bore a powerful testimony in gospel principles class and said he wants to do missionary work. After the baptism the stake had a cultural event at the stake center where all the wards in the steak represented a different culture. Our ward of coarse was representing Africa. Particularly Ghana. There was lots of food from different cultures and everyone dressed in their traditional outfits. Sam let us borrow some of his African cloths so we fit in quite well. Unfortunately we couldn't stay long. We had to leave before the dances started. I heard one of the wards did the haka. 

My companion and I are trying really hard to set up appointments to keep us busy. It's getting more and more difficult to set up appointments. I don't know how Elder Heninger did it so well. He seemed to be able to fill in the days with no problem. Even when appointments canceled. I've been calling lots of people but still can't seem to get enough lessons. Maybe people are getting more busy as we get closer to Christmas. 

We currently have two baptismal dates but we may need to drop one because he's just too busy to meet with us. I've only met him once and haven't seen him since. Our other baptismal date has been away so we haven't been able to see her for a few weeks. Daniel S (a young man in our ward) brought one of his friends to church last Sunday. The sisters are teaching her now. It's really exiting because you can see how exited he is about it. He's doing a really good job.

And the hot chocolate in England sucks too

Moves are coming

Hello to everyone.

Moves is coming up and Elder Heninger is leaving. He's going to Guernsey which is off the coast of France. He's super exited. My new Companion will be Elder Darcy. He's from Ireland. He was actually my district leader in Crowthorn after Elder Moulin left.

Sam is getting ready for baptism and things are going good. He should be baptized on Saturday and we're really happy with the trust and the relationship he has with the ward. He asked for members to do his baptism as well as his confirmation. He's been asking many people to come and he's really exited. He's still as busy as ever but he managed to find time to feed us. We did a lot of service last week which makes me feel good. We finished that guys garden; we dug out some bushes which was very difficult. We got a return appointment with him too. His name is Marvin, he's Jamaican. We also helped the new ward members (the Cheungs) with moving giant tiles into their new flat and came back another time to help tear out their kitchen. They're completely redoing it. They haven't moved in yet but they want to feed us Chinese food some time. They're really nice. We have been having a hard time meeting with our other baptismal dates and investigators because they keep canceling appointments but we keep trying.

Elder Quentin L. Cook will be visiting the Europe Area and he is scheduled to talk to the missionaries from the England London and England London South Missions on November 25. That's pretty exiting. It'll probably be really crowded though.

This is a drawing I did for Elder Heninger in his journal.

New Finding Ideas

Last week went really slow. We had an exchange without warning which was annoying but at least I didn't lose anything. We also had some service witch went pretty good. It took a long time clearing up this guy's back garden but it looks better now and we have another appointment to come back. We were going to have Sam's baptism this Saturday in between sessions of stake conference but the bishop said to move it back to next week because we wouldn't be able to confirm him the next day. But that will give us more time to prepare him and make sure he's ready. I can't really think of much else to say but we've met a few new investigators and had a few lessons cancel as usual. We met for the second time with a lady named Adjoa. She really likes the lessons and understands them surprisingly well, but she talks a lot and it's hard to stay on topic. She also seems unwilling to change religions for now.

We were asked to try new finding ideas and that lead to many of the appointments we had last week. The list that my companion and I came up with consisted of many different kinds of events that would require much planning. We didn't have much time to plan these events so we simply decided to switch up our approaches. It was mostly just asking a simple question like "what makes you happy?" or "what is your view on religion today?" but we also tried simply going around asking for service opportunities witch led to the garden clearing activity we had last week.

Church was Good

My companion and I did a lot of finding last week. We've been asked to try thinking of new finding ideas so we tried to mix things up. We mostly just switched up our approaches. We tried going around just asking for service. That didn't work too well. People just don't want to be helped. We did get one service opportunity out of it though. We're going to help pull weeds out of someones garden. It's a garden of weeds. It needs to be done. Now we have lots of potentials from the last two weeks and so we're planning on doing all we can this week to contact as many as possible. 

Church was good. Issac came to church for the first time in five years. He met the bishop and made plans to move his records to the ward. It turns out our bishop knew his bishop back in Ghana. He was able to tell Issac that his bishop back at home passed away a couple years ago. Issac was able to meet lots of the people in the ward; they did a good job to fellowship him. We were also able to meet the new family in the ward. They didn't need us last week for service but today we'll be helping them move things. They moved here from central London but they're originally from Hong Kong. His name is Gabriel Cheung and they're a young family expecting a child. Sam was also at church. He acts like a member already but he still doesn't have the time to meet with us. We met with him twice last week and we want to meet with him twice this week but he says he's just too tired after work. We'll talk him into it. We had a few good teaches with new investigators and hope to get more. Over all things are going very good.

Hey Sister Fisher I got a hug in the male from Tanis too!

 It's been really nice and warm lately. We had rain yesterday and today but it's supposed to get nice again for the week. The rain here is like Sister Fisher said: like a mist. It's usually like that though sometimes we get drops.

Our ward is mostly Ghanaian's. It's a nice ward. The Sintims have us over every week and over-feed us with African Food. Pauline Welch is the missionary mother of the ward. They have all the missionaries over every week. They're the ones that pranked me. Our ward mission leader is really good at keeping up-to-date about our investigators as well as less actives. He's a busy guy but I think he mostly tries to focus on organizing members to fellowship the people we're working with.

Elder Heninger is a cool guy. He's really friendly and outgoing. We get along really well. He likes camping and hunting, especially duck hunting. He also likes sports. Oh and snowboarding.

this is Elder Heninger

 No one cares about Halloween over here. Everyone just wants Halloween to get out of the way so they can start celebrating Christmas.

Now to answer Mums question.

I wish I learned a language. There are a lot of people around here that speak multiple languages and I've always wanted to learn one but I've never been able to decide what language I wanted to learn. Right now I want to choose between Mandarin, Japanese, German, Italian or Spanish. I know I took French in high school but that class sucked. I also wish I learned piano.

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Happy Halloween

It has been a really long week. Saturday felt like a week alone. We spent the whole day contacting and it was very productive. We basically have our whole week planned. To be honest I can't remember what we did the rest of the week. We did have an exchange and that was successful. No one ended up losing anything. 

Sam is off work at 4 every day this week so we will be able to meet him multiple times. If we need to move his baptismal date that's no problem but I don't think we'll need to. Issac will be able to come to church soon. We taught him how to study the scriptures and he said he'll have a lot less questions for us so that's good. 

We've been doing some work with less actives and I think it's been productive. We had a less active family at church and that was a nice surprise. Sam wasn't there because he had work. But that's okay because he's been going every week since I've been here. 

I've got the Halloween card you sent me this morning. Thank you so much! I hope you all have a happy Halloween. I didn't really have a Halloween last year but this year I think the zone are planning on doing something. People don't really care about Halloween over here. It just gets in the way of their Christmas celebrating. Seriously; I started seeing Christmas calendars in stores at the end of September! Halloween night will be busy because we have a dinner appointment and then we're helping a new family move into their home. It will be good to get to know them. It sounds like they're a young family.

Hurry up and kill something so you can send me some jerky.

Have a good week and a Happy Halloween.

things are squirly

We had Zone Conference (three zones together) last week and we took pictures of all the people from my MTC group who were there. We had a really large MTC group. I'll send the photo in this e-mail. Other than Zone Conference not much has happened last week. 

We've met a lot of new people last week but haven't been able to stay in contact. Many of them canceled appointments while many just don't answer their phones. But that has given us opportunities to find more new people. We have a lot of people to call and lots of return appointments that will hopefully lead to new investigators. Sam is still doing okay; there's not much to say about him. We only have a few lessons to teach him and were slowly managing to get that done. We also have to make sure he understands the restoration completely. Issac really wants to come to church. He's finding a job that will give him Sundays off. He has a hard time forgiving himself and others but we showed him the gospel library's app and he loves it. He's been reading lots of church books and listening to lots of talks and telling us about it. We haven't been able to see other baptismal date Bennett. We stopped by his house a number of times but he's never there and he never answers his phone. We may have to drop him if we can't contact him at all this week. But other than that things are going good; we are seeing small miracles each day and keeping busy.

I'm exited for Halloween. Last year we didn't do anything but this year I think the zone will probably do something. I'm exited to see your costumes. People have already started letting off fireworks for the fifth of November. That will probably go on until weeks after the new year.

From what I hear we wont be getting any IPads in our mission for a long time. I'll probably be done by then.

A question or two for Sister Fisher: What day is P-Day for you? And How's the chocolate in America? I hear it's not that good but I've never really bought chocolate while visiting America.

We've been doing a lot of contacting at the park. We're giving out a lot of cards but no one is calling us back for some reason...

Halloween Costume

Hey people.

So we had a dry summer but now it's raining, and it's been on-and -off for the past week or so. I almost forgot how exited Mum is going to be for Halloween. I can't wait to see the decorations. Tell Justin to not be a party pooper and actually dress up. I liked the idea last year of him dressing up as a zombie and Dad being Daryl Dixon. At least do the Daryl Dixon one because that would be easy. Baxter is so cute. Is he getting a costume? Is it a good idea to be feeding him ice-cream? He's a lucky dog.

The beginning of the week has been slow. We haven't been able to get a lot of appointments. I think it has mostly been to do with the fact that people are not answering their phones. We have been trying, and we've been stopping by peoples homes but they haven't been in when we try by. We've also had most of our appointments canceled but it's given us some time to do some contacting. We've found some people we want to get back in contact with. Hopefully we can start teaching them. The last couple days of the week have been pretty good. We had some good appointments. We met Isaac again at the chapel. He's doing really good. He's now searching for a job that he can get Sundays off. When we met him before he was having a hard time understanding things, particularly the atonement. We tried explaining but he seemed to struggle to understand so we gave him a gospel principles book and told him to read it. When we met with him on Saturday he seemed very exited about what he had been reading. He said the book had helped him to understand things and a lot of things make sense now. He even shared a missionary experience. He seems much happier now. We also met with Sam. I think we will be able to finish the lessons with him soon. We moved his baptismal date. He's very committed and I think he'll probably be baptized but I'm worried about his understanding. I think religion is almost like a hobby for him. He says he'll go to a church for a while and than get invited to another one and start going there. He's been baptized 7 times. I don't want him to be baptized just because we told him to.

I think my favorite toy may have been my Rescue Heroes play set only because it recorded your voice. And then the dog peed on it. I just remember melting all my toys.

Dad I don't believe that you drew that picture you sent me this past week. You coloured it in on your iPad right? That's better than I can do in terms of perspective and proportion and accuracy to body structure.