Short email today. I am emailing from our missionary mum's. It's my birthday in 1 week!!!
Man its been pretty hard, I'm not going to lie. Elder McGregor has been sick, we lost like all of our investigators, and no one comes to church. It's just been a hard transfer so far. The Lord is definitely testing me and my diligence. I hope this week we can find those that are prepared. We have a goal to tract 1 street a day this week so we are working on getting that done and talking to everyone!!
Olivia wrote me and told me she was going to China and I'm so excited for Jake--he will be a good missionary!
This is my last week as a teenager! I can't believe my birthday is coming up. It's cool because there is a lady in our ward and her birthday is Feb 5 as well! It feels weird, I'll be 20, I'm Not to sure how to handle that.
I'm still in Walsall, this will be my 3rd transfer here! And my 3rd companion! Now I'm with Elder McGregor who has served here already. He has been out about 18 months. He's way funny and we are excited to hit the ground running and work hard this new transfer. I'm excited for this transfer, we have loads of potential for good to happen!
This week not much happened at the beginning of the week and then on Wednesday we had transfers. Saturday we went out with a member, Chris, who has just turned his papers in! We were GQing and doing some tracting. I prayed for a street to go to and we tracted it. I was expecting a larger street but it had about, hmmm, 4 houses on it hahaha. So we tracted that in about 30 seconds and we were walking to Chris's house for dinner. As I was walking by this house, I looked in the window and saw a lovely home with a man in the kitchen. I just thought, "maybe I should knock this door?" It was the most subtle prompting. I kinda kept walking on, but then I slowed down and was just looking at the house. Elder McGregor turned and said "do you feel you need to knock that door?" and I said "yea i do". So we went and knocked this door. The man answered and two amazing little kids ran up behind him. I just said, "Hello sir how are you? Me and my friend, we're missionaries for our church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and we're sharing a wonderful message with people today about how we can be with our families forever. What would that mean to you if you knew you could be with your 2 kids forever?" He said, "Well it would mean everything." He was an amazing guy and we gave him a Plan of Salvation leaflet and said we come by again next week. After when we were walking away Elder McGregor said, "Im glad you felt that because I did too." It was a cool little spiritual experience of the still small voice and how it really is still and small. You have to really listen for it. It was really cool.
Things are going pretty good here. I'm excited for the next 6 weeks and what we can get done!
Transfers were today. Elder Steed is trainning a boy (new missionary). He is whitewashing (both companions are new to the area) a brand new area. It was funny because their flat has nothing at all, so they had to go to Ikea and buy furnishings and what not. Interesting first day for his greenie.
So yes, yet again another new companion. I've been in Walsall 3 transfers and this is my 3rd companion.
I'm now with Elder McGregor, who already served in Walsall at one point. He is way cool and has about 6 months left. Everything here is going great. I'm excited for what we can accomplish this transfer--last transfer we commited a lady to baptism!
England is good, Walsall is great!! I can't believe I've been out about 6 months! It's insane how fast it really does go. The area is great. I love Walsall and don't want to leave, so I'm hoping I can stay here a while. I love the people, the members, everything about it. We are working really hard right now to help our investigators progress. We have tons, we just can't seem to get them moving forward. Some of our potential investigators either flogg us or don't have any desire to know more or continue seeing us. Me and Elder Steed are working hard and really want an investigator with a baptisimal date. That is our goal this week. Just like in the Mormon Message:
It's a new year, don't look back just keep moving foward. We were teaching a less-active member. He is from the Congo and he is awesome. We were talking about how we have to walk the path and how we continue to fall off this path and how God continues to pick us up to put us back on it again, and this man said the most amazing thing! He said, "It all depends on our willingness to walk the path. We have this simple plan God has created and the path we need to walk. Now it all depends on us and our willingness to walk the path we are on."
Loads of candy--there's a story to this.....
We went over to the home of a less-active family. She is the daughter of this really cool older couple in the ward who feed us like every Friday. But anyway, we are over there just getting to know them, and we're chatting it up. During this, she brings out some candy and feeds some to the boys and us. One of her boys is way cute, he's about 2. To picture him, picture the little baby on Ice Age (haha). He has a piece of chocolate and then she puts the candy away and he bawls his eyes out. Face plants it in the ground, and just lays there like Randy on the Christmas Story. She then says, "yeah, sorry he is a chocolate addict". So now its about time for us to go, and we ask if there is anything we can do for them. She says, "Yeah, eat some of our chocolate. So of course we say, "sure we can do that." She says, "good I'll go make some bags for you." Now I'm expecting a little ziploc with some candies---NOOO!! She comes out with this huge bag (like the red ones we have for Target and stuff). Ginormous bags loaded and overflowing with candy bars hahahah we just are like wow. Now at this point the little chocolate addict cannot take his eyes of that bag. He walks over to it and looks inside and of course we know what he's thinking-- WHAT ARE YOU DOING MOM!?!? He looks inside it, and then looks back up again. Now this is alot of candy. I picked it up and it easily weighed about 10 pounds. The little boy grabs the handles of the bag and starts dragging it across the floor toward the door. We are all just laughing, then his dad walked in and blocked the door and just started laughing. So the little boy resorted to his back up plan. . . . and he started attempting to eat the chocolate, but his dad stopped him just in time. It was hilarious!
Some ginormous miner guy in the middle of Wolverhampton. It was nuts!
We're at the Mac store again, we are at the bullring today just for a couple of hours.
On New Year's Eve we stayed up 'til midnight and watched a free fireworks show from our balcony.
It was pretty cool, I'm not gonna lie.
England is doing good! It's getting slightly colder and it is raining loads!! After church on Sunday we went by to see a potential investigator, we got to his house and knocked and no one was home. So we decided to flog 10 (knock some doors) and we knocked the door to the left and an amazing lady answered, she is way cool!! We were talking with her and midway through, it started off and on raining. As we left and it starting dumping buckets and we were still in our suits--we got soaked!!! It was soo funny hahaha.
Walsall and the people are good. We are working on trying to get back in contact with our investigators after the holidays and what not.
I realized I need to take more pictures and videos so I'm working on it. Plus I forgot my camera so I
will send loads next week sorry :(
You can find me on mormon.org (or you can type in Michael Barton on find people). And encourage everyone else to make one too!
