Saturday, November 15, 2014

Lucky me, we got a midweek email!

Jeremy was able to email midweek for a special occasion. His dad, Bryan got one and I got one.
Here's the one that he sent his dad:

It’s going good here I’m not teaching very many nonmembers yet but I’ve been talking a lot with the less actives. My companion says my testimony is like our secret weapon ha-ha so I guess I’m getting better at sharing it. We usually walk. This town isn’t very big but then we take busses to get out to the other little villages in our area. Our bishop in this ward lives right next to us and he is the landlord. He’s hilarious! I’m learning a lot, the other day my mission president gave us permission to email in the middle of the week because it was Remembrance Day on Tuesday. Remembrance Day is a holiday that celebrates the signing of the treaty on the 11th day of the 11th hour. In the middle of zone conference we had a moment of silence for 2 minutes. It was a really cool meeting. My mission president is a great speaker. He talked for about 75 minutes and the whole time all of the top half of the mission was on the edge of their seats listening. I was randomly selected to follow him and give a 3 minute talk on an attribute of my choice. So I chose hope because it’s the one I have studied the past month or so. He said I did a great job considering I had nothing prepared at all. I am learning a lot more then I ever thought I would out here. Sister Pilkington the president’s wife taught all of us a song that goes well with what we are doing out here. It goes like this...

 Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag

And smile, smile, smile

Just think of all the happy times we'll have

Smile boys, that’s the style

What’s the use of worrying??

It never was worthwhile

So, pack up your troubles in your old kit bag

And smile, smile, smile

 

It was great hearing every missionary in that packed chapel singing that song because it applies to all of us.

Here's the one for me:

So my mission president gave all of the mission permission to email in the middle of the week so we could tell our parents about Remembrance Day and our zone conference on it. Remembrance Day is celebrating the signing of the treaty that ended world war one. We had a moment of silence in the middle of zone conference for 2 minutes but they taught us a song that the soldiers from England would sing in the trenches. I sent it to dad. Its nuts the statistics of the soldiers from the small villages on England are crazy. They sent 16000 men out to the war out of the villages in our mission and only about 20 of the villages had all their sons return. The average life span of a man fighting the war from England was 36 hours. That’s crazy. Everyone in England buys poppies and wears them all the up to the 11th day of the 11th month (Tuesday) when the treaty was signed. I gave a talk on hope following the mission presidents 75 minute talk. I didn’t have anything prepared so I just went up and talked with a couple of scriptures thrown in too. My companion gave a 20 minute instruction on training models that are like roleplaying games to help us learn the lessons. It was pretty good, I got to go to both the north half and the southern half of the missions zone conference so we got a car and drove for 2 hours down to where we needed to be it was nice having a car for a day. It was fun. Today and this weekend hopefully it will be normal with less meetings so that I have the time to study and actually go out meeting people. It should be a good week, on p day after I emailed we went to a tk maxx which is basically tj max and I bought with much advice from my companion a coat that should last me for the rest of my mission, it better because it was £70 and that’s about 120 dollars. Lol so yea it has been a good week. Hopefully going to stay that way. I’ll talk to you on Monday.

 

 

Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Missionary Monday! November 10, 2014


A member is a cop here and let me get in the police car. That cop’s wife’s name is Tina Hall, she messaged you on Facebook like my first night here with a picture of me. Look at your messages, she talks to all the missionaries’ moms and girlfriends while they are in her house so you can talk to her! I got a coat and a blanket I’m going to go buy more today. I don’t know what I need yet but I think it would just be easier to just add money to the card but I would need a little bit more money because of the exchange rate here is crazy. I’m not really teaching anyone other than less actives and part member families. We met this guy walking down the street and we are going to teach him and his wife tonight it should be good, he’s a very....interesting man. He told us some old war horror stories that he has seen so it should be pretty good to tell him that he can be forgiven of all that. When I have more spiritual experiences I’ll let you know. I don’t know any suggestions for agency look it up in the topical guide and stuff and true to the faith is awesome to find explanations of stuff that would otherwise be hard to understand. I got your letter it took 10 days to get here so I wouldn’t send any food in those care packages. Tea is like dinner basically we eat regular food. I have had English fish and chips (so good) and fajitas that were not like any other fajita I have ever had because English people don’t know how to make Mexican food lol. I just got into Jacob in the Book of Mormon. I’ll talk to you next week!

 

Missionary Monday! Nov 3, 2014


Well my home address is

101 Washington Cresent

DL5 4BE Newton Ayecliffe

Great Britain

I’m only here for 12 weeks though that’s why they say to send it to the mission office so they can give it to me where ever I am. It’s way different here then Colorado lol. It’s not too cold yet but it is super green. The people are crazy friendly where I am at. They put me in this area that’s like the best area in the mission for my first spot. Not too many nationalities here where I’m at just English people. The food is pretty good so far I have had tea appointments every night of my mission so far, ha-ha they love us. There are the same categories of stores here they are just called different stuff. No Walmart’s just small super markets. I’m going to buy my suit coats from charity shops which are basically just goodwill’s so they shouldn’t be too bad. I’ll send a couple pictures I have now that I have a good computer to send them on.

I’m collecting a lot of stuff like good talks and I also have a goal to read the Book of Mormon by Christmas again and highlight everything that has to do with my purpose as a missionary. I’m going to do another one after this one but on a different topic so I need help coming up with another topic. I was thinking families or something along the lines as that. Oh and can you send pictures of everyone? I have like no pictures of my family! Or my friends for that matter.