Yo-Yo

Hello.

How is everyone? Not much has happened this week. The heating in our flat has not been working this week. We've had it fixed twice now so we're hoping it stays fixed.

I'm adjusting to my new area well. I still don't know my way around very well but getting used to it. There doesn't seem to be anything too unusual that I've noticed yet but I'll keep looking.

My new companion started learning the yo-yo yesterday. He hit himself in the face with it.

The English accents are heavier up north. There not too heavy where I am unless they're from out of the country. There are lots of different accents in the city areas. I've never had a problem understanding people though.

We are trying to get new investigators to teach. We have a lot of really good recent converts here that we've been working with. The members are generally good at getting involved. We go on splits each week with a few of the young men. They are great. We have one investigator named Khai Thu. He is originally from Vietnam but lived in Montreal for a long time. He comes to church every week but doesn't understand why he needs to be baptised. It's a bit hard to teach him.

Keep having fun but din't party too hard. I will look forward to next weeks e-mail.

Basingstoke

Hello,

There is a Gorillaz song playing right now and I'm singing along. "It's Dare!" Turns out we e-mail at the Apple store every week so now I'm on a fancy new Mac as opposed to a really old library computer with Windows 98. So there is also music playing in the background. It's definitely not as quiet as a library. Wow another Gorillaz song; now they're playing stylo.

 It's lovely here in Basingstoke. It's small but it's not too small. The buildings all seem quite new. Travel is fairly easy; we do a lot of walking and we can get pretty much everywhere by foot but we also take buses to save time. It seems really peaceful.

There aren't a whole lot of people on the streets. It's definitely not as busy as Oxford. The people here seem generally nice. Not a lot of them are interested though. I think younger people are more open to at least talk but from what I can tell so far there aren't a lot of young people here. There's more than in Romsey.

The new ward is awesome. The families are so nice and I think the missionaries have a really good relationship with the ward. The members are very friendly and the bishop already had us over for pizza. They also seem willing to help with missionary work.

My new companion Elder Goldsmith is a good guy. He looks like Tintin. He's a good missionary. He's from Arizona and he's a Marine. I'm helping him learn how to play the guitar. He has a pink electric guitar that members in his previous area gave him and he only started playing on his mission. He's already pretty good. He's been out for a year and we get along real good.

I haven't received any letters yet I'll probably get them tomorrow. My companion is district leader so we will be going to reading for DLC (district leader council) and I imagine the zone leaders will bring post from the mission home. I'll also see Elder Lika again because we're still in the same zone and his companion is a district leader.

I hope you all get better. It's no fun vomiting and having bad dreams. I've been having weird dreams too but they're not scary, just weird. I hardly ever remember them anyways. Have a good week!

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.