I guess I'll start off this email the way any other conversation begins in England... with the weather! Honestly though, English people love to complain about the weather. I don't complain as much because I'm fascinated by it! It literally rained three different time whilst we were on one street. Go England! Down here on the coast the weather is really unpredictable, but I can always count on the salty ocean breeze greeting me each morning when I walk outside. It's pretty nice here in Bournemouth.
Speaking of Bournemouth, I've nearly been here two weeks! I'm still adjusting. Moving areas is tougher than I thought! Thanks to the amazing members and my awesome companion, I'm getting the hang of things. As I mentioned before, this "town" is huge! It's more like a city. I anticipated more elderly people, but there's actually a lot of youth here because there's a university. It's also extremely diverse
here.
This week has brought more miracles and blessings!:
-Zone Training in Bournemouth
-First ever Bournemouth English Class
-Spoke more Spanish
-Random investigator came to church
-Played football (soccer) with a part member family
-Got 56 referrals
Some members and investigators don't speak any English, so we decided to give the English class a try. A few of the members came, but sadly no investigators made an appearance. But I really enjoyed teaching English to Hispanic people! It was a good service opportunity and I got to learn more Spanish in return. Never thought I'd be a language learning missionary, but I guess I kind of am. We'll get more people there next week! There are so many Hispanic people here and they love to hear the Gospel. They always light up when they hear that the Book of Mormon was set in their part of the world. Mexicans are plentiful, and we are teaching one called Jasmine who actually showed up at church! Unfortunately she came too late, but she's determined to come to the English class. We feel that she will get baptized.
Alcidaas, our Columbian friend, also came to church. It was good to see him there. He has an important phone call coming up this week and has invited me to be his translator.
We are working with a part member family and the children love soccer (called football here). So we decided to set up a big football game at the chapel, and the family came! We had some good fun and made some more friends. There are some things we need to work through, but we want to help every family in the ward to become more unified through the ordinance of baptism. I love families.
I'll leave you with a bang:
While knocking a road that the Spirit told us to knock on, we accidentally knocked into a member's home. After some small talk we expected him to carry on with his day, but we were wrong. He asked us if he could come knocking with us. As it turns out, this old man knows everybody in his neighborhood, so he took us to every single door and invited the residents himself to hear our message. He did this for over 2 hours.... obviously filled with the the strength of the Lord! He gave us over 50 referrals and we are set to teach a few of them. Members can do wonders--go knock a street with the missionaries! You will feel good and The Lord will bless you for it. I understand that it's pretty hard to knock a street in Utah without running into members, but be creative. There is no more important work than this and I'm touched that the Lord would bless me with such a calling. I cherish my mission!
It's been a good week and we are looking forward to becoming better instruments in the Lord's hands this next week. Love you!
Love, Elder Thomas
ELSM
No pictures this week... :(
No comments:
Post a Comment