Birthdays and baptisms...

Just a few lines reporting on his birthday....

Hey dad , I did have a good birthday thank you. I got the package from you guys, from Linda and dad, and the two packages from Becky, any others, they must have been sent to the office and I haven't got them yet but there is a conference on Tuesday so I should get them then.

It looks like you had a good time in Glasgow, I would like to go when I get back, but that can wait until next year.

Thanks for your emails and pictures and presents and everything.

I'll let you know about the baptism in my big email.

Love you

Elder Mitchell

Then his regular weekly email.

Hey everybody,

I hope this actually is my 68th email, I've lost count haha!

First of all, Cameron, I told you that you were coming to England London south! Haha! Congrats on your call, see you in a few months!

S the highlight of this week is that Tara got baptized on Saturday! I was a great service and there was a great support from the ward and a good turn out. The water was apparently freezing but it was okay for me as I was just witnessing, it was elder coons doing the baptism. I got to confirm her on Sunday too which was good. She was really excited though. I would attach photos but the computers at the chapel weren't working so we are currently at the senior couples, elder and sister Hom, and they let us use their iPads which is fun haha. I'll try and get photos sent soon.

Other then that, I have some, quite sad, but I guess also good news. Elder coons health wise is not doing too good. He has been talking to president and he will be going home at the end of this transfer. He is getting an honorable release though, because he tried to push himself to work this week, but it made him worse. So he is going home at the end of the transfer and I will be getting a new companion.

Thankfully though I have not spent too much of the time in the flat, our district leader has been able to come through a few times which has been helpful. Because of that we have just been able to get 20 lessons this week which is good.

I'm not sure how well this week will go, as president has told elder coons to take it easy this week, but I will keep myself busy.

Well thank you all again for the birthday cards and presents and everything. I love you all so much.

Elder Mitchell 

It's his birthday.....

I asked how his companion was doing and Elder Mitchell replied:

Hey Dad, Elder Coons is doing okay. We were al least able to go out and do some work this week. And our district leader was able to come and do splits with us twice last week, which really helped our numbers for the week haha!

That is exciting stuff to hear. It is good to hear people are coming back. And yes Becky has told me about her going out with the sisters and her helping them which is great! :) Hopefully the work will pick up a lot quicker back at your end :)

Down here, July was the highest baptising month for this mission in the last two years!!! Plus so far in August we already have 8 baptisms as a mission, with 18 scehduled for baptism next week, and 30 something the week after, so the work really is hastening. Hope that that news can help your missionaries (in livi I mean) get excited too, as it isnt a competition between missions, we are all on the same team!

Love you Dad

Elder Mitchell

His regular email follows:

Hey Everybody,

first off, thank you to all of you who sent an email, letter or package to wish me happy birthday. For all of you who forgot, it is tomorrow, so feel bad for not wishing me happy birthday! Just kidding! :)

Well this week has been good. Elder Coons still isn't feeling too great, but we have at least been able to get out a lot more then the previous week. It has also been helpful as our district leader and his companion came through for a workover on saturday, so with their help we got 14 lessons in 1 day! so that boosted our numbers quite well.

Tara is still doing great. Everything is set for her baptism on saturday! We are just getting the last few bits and pieces organised for it but it is all going ahead. The ward is also really excited as it is their first baptism since november last year, so the ward are really supportive. Hopefully Tara will get her friends to come along as well, that would be great!

Well other than that, again there isn't really much to tell, except we have a few more people we can potentially work with so that will be exciting.

Also, keep Elder Coons in your prayers, as he has to go for an MRI scan on wednesday.

Hope you all have a good week.

Love you all!!

Elder Mitchell

You may remember...................

Elder Mitchell had an eventful last moves.  He sent a picture of his suit case.  Here it is.......

What did he do to it?

Elder Mitchell and the month of July

Monday 15 July 2013

Hello everyone!!!

Sorry I didn't send this email on monday, we didn't have much time but at least now I can tell you for sure where I am this next transfer. The news is, I am staying in Wandsworth with Elder Coons.

So this last week and few days has been quite good. Since monday we have been in a tri as a missionary in Mitcham goes home this transfer so His companion Elder Sorenson has been with us. It has been good fun being in a tri again, but kind of awkward street contacting etc. His new companion comes today though so things will be back to normal after tonight.

Main thing that happened this week. We had a member ask us to come do service with him for a less-active called Joyce. We helped her weed her garden which was fun (except the heat) it was good though, she is a really nice lady and she really wants to come back to church which is great. She also has a 9 year-old girl named Tara who is not baptised. When we saw her last week and asked if she was baptised, we asked if she would like to and she said yes. She really wants to come out to church too as she remembers how fun it was when she was younger. We are seeing them again tonight so hopefully that will go well.

We got to see Ruth and Lisa again last week. Ruth's boyfriend was there as well. He seems a really cool guy, and he has met with missionaries before and even has a polish Book of Mormon, but he doesn't want to properly take the lessons yet as he says when he does he wants to be able to put his all into it, which is a good thing I guess. We were hoping to see them again earlier this week but we haven't been able to yet.

Joyce (our investigator) is doing well. She is still not very well, which is preventing her coming to church but since we first started meeting with her she looks a whole lot better, and both me and Elder Coons believe that she will get there eventually.

Felix is interesting. We are still trying to work out how serious he is about the church. He still came on sunday, and he was there yesterday when we saw his member friend, but he doesn't seem to take things seriously. He might just come to support his friend. We will try and work that out though.

Apart from that we have just really been doing a lot of finding. We need people who are going to make progress, but we only seem to be able to find people that we see once or twice and then they flog us. We will keep going though.

Well that is all I can think to tell you about my week. The only other thing I can think of to tell is that the whole of wimbledon seems to be going Andy Murray crazy after sunday (yes I found out he won, which well done to him). As you can hopefully see by the attached photo, they really have taken it too far.

I hope you are getting some nice weather back home. It's too hot down here, I'm dying! It was apparently 27 degrees on sunday, 27!!!! that's like alomst 27 degrees hotter then what I'm used to! I'm kidding, but it is ridiculously hot.

Well I hope you all have a good week.

I love you all!!!

Elder Mitchell

Monday 15 July 2013

Hello everybody!!

Greetings from what currently feels like the hottest part of the planet! (It's over 30 degrees, I start to melt when it gets to 25!...)

I'm trying to think what has happened in the last 4 days since I last emailed...

I guess the bast place to start is Joyce are Tara. We got to see them on wednesday which was really good. We had a really good lesson with them. It went really well. We have invited them to pray about a date for Tara to be baptised and we have been doing the same. They weren't able to come to church on sunday unfortunately as Joyce had to work, but she has changed her work pattern so she gets sundays off, so next week she should be here which will be great!

The other Joyce is doing okay. She is still struggling a little bit with her health. We are just trying to help her recognise if she is getting an answer to her prayers about baptism. She has been taught everything before by the sisters, but we are just going through everything again.

Felix is doing okay, he seems really eager to meet with us, and has invited us over to his house, without his member friend there, so he is opening up a bit more. He was at church on sunday as well. We are still not too sure about how serious he is though, but hopefully this next week or so we will be able to work that out.

Ruth and Lisa are doing good. They came to church as well on sunday. Ruth is moving back to Spain though as she has family that she needs to help look after, but she will be back in london once a month. Hopefully we can still work with Lisa though.

Yesterday we had a really good talk with our Bishop though. We just talked about goals for the ward for this year, and how we can help the work progress. That is something we are going to focus on, is working with the Bishop and the Ward and help them with their missionary work. Whether it is Home Teaching, or taking them on teaches with us, or them inviting investigators over for dinner or whatever, we will try and work out. We will probably try everything, just to see what works and what doesn't. Hopefully we will see some success from it.

Well that is about it that I can think of.

Hope you all have a good week.

Love you all

Elder Mitchell

Monday 22 July 2013

Hey everybody!!!

hope you are all doing well and enjoying the "lovely" summer we are having. I only put that in quotation marks because everyone says it is lovely but when you have to go around in shirt and tie its not so nice. Having said that the other day I saw my first cloudy day in about a month! It was still hot though.

So we have a bit a great news this week. Tara has a baptismal date for the 10th of August! We saw her on wednesday and had a great lesson with her and her mum, and invited her to be baptised on that date. It is amazing as they said that was around the time they were thinking of for her to be baptised, so I guess it is meant to be :) They both came to church on sunday too which was great!

Another Miracle we had this week, was with Ruth and her boyfriend. We got a call from Ruth saying her and Mikel (I dunno how to spell his name put its the polish version of Michael) had a long talk and he would like to get baptised was basically what came out of it. So we met with both of them the other day and had a good lesson with them. The unfortunate thing is that Mikel lives in north london so we can't teach him. We are hoping to at least refer him on to the missionarires in his area though.

So just to catch you up with our other investigators: Joyce we were really pushing to come to church yesterday, but she wasn't sure how she would feel healthwise, So we said we would call her on saturday to see how she felt. We tried calling and she didn't answer. I just hope we didn't push her too much, maybe she just isn't fit enough to come to church just yet.

Lisa and Felix both came to church yesterday which was good. Lisa came with Ruth for just sacrament and Felix came for the whole thing. We are hopefully going to see them both next week but I am not too sure due to events I will explain later.

Tomorrow we have our multi-zone conference in Crawley, its the first one I have been to in the east, I have always been out west or stuck in the middle so it'll be different. It should be good though.

Can I ask that you all keep Elder Coons in your prayers this week. He is still having problems with his stomach and this week (on wednesday) he has to go in for a procedure (I won't scar you with the details, I'm sure you can imagine) so just pray that all will go well and that they will find out what is wrong with him, as he has had this problem for 4 months now.

So that's about it from me this week. I'm trying to think of something whitty I can end my email with but I've got nothing.

Have a good week.

I love you all

Elder Mitchell

Monday 29 July 2013

Hi everyone,

So there isn't really much to tell you about from this week, it has been quite tough.

Elder Coons had his procedure on wednesday, they found some small ulsers in his bowels, but they also found that he has chrons disease. They have put him on medication for now, but it is likely that he will be on medication for the rest of his life. He has taken it pretty hard, and he is considering going home. We have spent most of the week in the flat though, due to him not feeling well, which I totally understand, but I'm getting a little frsutrated with being stuck in the flat with nothing else to do. I think I have solved my Rubik's cube about a gazillion times out of sheer boredem.

So due to that we have not been able to do much work. It has been a little frustrating for me, but there is not much else that I can do.

Tara and her mum made it to church yesterday though which was good. And Lisa and Ruth made it there as well. It was our Ward Conference which was good. The Stake presidency talked a lot about member missionary work which was really good. Hopefully it will get the ward excited about missionary work.

Other then that, nothing much has happened, except for our multi-zone conference on tuesday which was good. It was great to be gathered with all the other missionaries and to see all my friends, like Elder Bendall, and also to see Elder Pettersen one last time before he goes home next month. It was really good and really inspiring.

Well sorry this email is so short, but there is nothing much really to talk about.

I will keep you posted about the situation with Elder Coons.

I love you all

Elder Mitchell

Various photos of Elder Mitchell on his mission

Finally got round to adding some more photos.  You can see more if you search for Elder Mitchell on Facebook

Elder Mitchell in front of the London Temple with Elder Martin

The River Avon running through the City of Bath.  I remember this view well as I was serving in Bath on my mission and was there for 5 months

Elder Mitchell and Elder Holmes - companions

Name tags

Zone Conference

P day (Preparation day) and the missionaries went bowling.  Strange to think that over 30 years before, Elder Mitchell's father went bowling in the same bowling alley

The zone in the Paighton area

Elder Mitchell with The Thames and Tower Bridge behind him