This is his weekly email, sent on his birthday. As you can see, he had a good day and the work progresses well.
Hey everybody,
This week has been an amazing week, but first I want to thank everybody for
the package of sweets and birthday cards everybody sent me. I was getting
worried that I wasn't going to get anything but it all came on saturday so I am
happy. Anyway, thank you all for the sweets (if I come home fat you will know
why :P) and for the cards everybody sent me, I loved them all. I also want to
thank whichever one of you it was who wrote to Elder Martin, I have no idea what
you said but thank you. I am not going to say who it was, but you know who you
are, and I know who you are as well so thank you.
So this week has been good. We have still been working with Paul, Godfrey,
Dhruba, Naomi, and we did try to see Lisanne but she got called into work (even
though it was her holiday) or we had District Meeting which sucks. But they are
all doing well. Godfrey will be the first to be baptized. He is amazing
and understands everything we teach him. He is so humble as well and he prays so
sincerely, it is amazing. When he prays he always thanks god for sending "his
brothers" (me and Elder Martin) to teach him the truth, it is amazing. And every
night he reads 10 pages of the Book of Mormon before going to bed. Thats more
that what I read of the Book of Mormon a day and I'm the one teaching people
about it. He is just so amazing. He made it for all of church yesterday
too.
Paul, except for briefly seeing him at the end of sacrament meeting
yesterday, We haven't really seen him for a while. He was due to give up smoking
on friday though, he is taking tablets to help him with that, but as far as I
know that is going well. We were meant to see him tonight, but he got called
into work. Although he and his wife alison have been faced with so much
challenges God has truly been blessing him, as he has a new job which will be
paying pretty well and things are starting to look up, so we will see.
Dhruba is doing amazing as well. He also excepts and understands everything
we teach him. This week we taught him about Tithing and he completely understood
why we do it, and that everything we have is from God, and he only asks for a
small portion back. It is amazing. He wasn;t at church on sunday, due to work
which means we may have to push his baptismal date back further until he can
come to church, but I will keep praying that he can somehow get sundays
off.
Naomi is doing good. She made it to church on sunday, and she really
enjoyed it. We haven't really taught her too much though, as the few times we go
around there we talk, and read from the Book of Mormon a bit then we have to
leave for our next appointment, but we will teach her next time we see her,
which will probably be tomorrow.
We also got to see Jo and Paul on saturday again. We were only able to have
dinner there as Jo wasn't too well, but he met Jo's brother Ed, who you can tell
is related to Jo because he asked virtually all the same questions Jo did. It
was great though and he is a great guy. He does engineering and is apparently
going to be on tv at some point (they are doing a more modern version of
scrapheap challange from the sounds of it and he is going to be a head engineer
on it) It will be called The Engineering Show I think, so keep an eye out for
it. We are seeing Jo and Paul again tonight though, so hopefully Jo will be
feeling better.
We have also started teaching a few more people. There is Jess, who is the
granddaughter os some members here. she had a lot of interesting beliefs, but
believed most of the things we believe, but had a lot of concerns which we were
able to resolve. We were hoping she would make it to church on sunday, but she
didn't and we haven't heard from her for a while. hope she is okay.
We also started teaching Mike, who is the husband of a less-active. Any
time we went around their 4 kids were there so anythign we had to teach we had
to focus on the kids and keeping them interested, but this week, we managed to
catch Mike in when it was just him. So we talked to him and asked if he would be
happy for us to start teachign him, and he said yeah he would. So anytime we go
around now we will have to focus the lesson more towards him.
Well moves week is this week. I don't find out until tomorrow if I will be
moving or not. What normally happens is anyone who is getting called to be a
district leader, zone leader or trainer will get calls on the monday before
moves (so far no calls from the president or AP's (assisstants to the President
for those who don't know) yet so that's not me) and then all other moves calls
happen on tuesday before moves then we actually move on wednesday. Just to give
you an insight into what it is like. I have a feeling that I will be moving but
we will see. I have definately seen reasons why I have been in here though, even
a miricle that happened this week that has shown me why I have needed to be here
at this time, and no one else.
On friday I was on exchange in Southmead with Elder Wu, who came out the
transfer before I did. He is just so amazing and so humble but anyway. On
saturday, before we exchanged back, we went to see a less-active there called
Paul. When he found out that I was from Scotland, he asked where abouts in
Scotland I was from, because he has a friend up in Scotland. I told him near
Edinburgh, and in the lesson, he called his friend to see where he was from.
Guess where? Edinburgh! So I told Paul the address of the Edinburgh chapel, and
his friend (he does have a name, his name is Craig) knew where the road was! So
Paul told him he should go there on sunday and craig said he would. Apparently
Craig has recently been going to a christian church up there and it has helped
him as he has been going through some hard times (long story short due to family
trouble he had to move from Bristol to Edinburgh and was real lonely) but when
he was down here he used to meet the missionaries with Paul down here and really
enjoyed meeting with them. And Paul had been praying for a way to introduce
Craig to the church but had no idea how. Then a Scottish (well... it is where I
live so it is home) missionary comes on exchange on comes to his door. So i got
Criag's details and passed them on to the Mission office to pass on to the
missionaries in Edinburgh. It is just amazing how the Lord works though, and I
can definately see that I needed to be here in Bristol at this time, even if
that is the only reason I needed to be here.
So that has been my week basically. The weather has gone back to being
poopy so you can stop being jealous. We even had thunder and lightning saturday
night and sunday. Luckily on saturday night it waited til me and Elder Martin
got back to the flat before chucking it down.
So thank you all again for your birthday wishes and cards and everything
(loved the mario wrapping paper by the way, i'm going to keep it so I can
decorate each flat that I serve in, starting with downend :P). It is good to
know that all of you haven't forgotten about me. First thing I read from all
your cards though was about Jake :( He is in a better place nwo though, and not
in pain anymore :) I am glad he waited until after I had gone though, because I
don't think I could have seen him get put down.
Well, it may be my birthday but I still have work to do so I better end
this email. Don't miss me too much, I know it is hard being away from all you
guys on my birthday, but the way I am looking at it, I have the rest of my life
full of birthdays, I only have these two years to serve the Lord, which is mroe
important? So back off to work I go (aye-ho! aye-ho!) That's a Snow White
reference if you didn't get that :P
Well love to you all!
Elder Mitchell
We also just received a letter telling us he is staying in Bristol.
No comments:
Post a Comment