Good morning, friends and family! Today is a sunny day in London...probably one of the few we'll have this year! We have great reason to rejoice.
This week has gone faster than Elder McEwen going down a slide...and for those of you who don't know, that is fast! It's been a good week, nevertheless. It's a massive blessing to be serving in a place like London. The best thing about it is how many people there are. I think I heard that the population of London is approximately 8 million, so we never run out of people to speak to! I've done more street contacting here than I have in all my other areas combined. It's pretty difficult to get the message out to 8 million souls, even with a few missionaries and the Book of Mormon musical being advertised on literally every bus. I'm considering bringing a megaphone to preach from the top of the Shard today, but I'm not sure how effective that would be. What we need is more messengers...we need the members!
We've made a special effort to serve the members this week. Since everybody in London is busy as a bee, including the members, it's often hard to get into people's homes. As we thought of how we could serve, I began to think about brownies. As often as that thought comes to my mind, this time it was convenient! It occurred to me that everybody loves brownies, especially Costco brownies. The nearest Costco is across the river, but that was no problem--we sent our senior couple! Pretty soon we had some fresh brownies on the members' doorsteps. It's done wonders! One of the members has had us over 4 times in the last week. He's told us his conversion story and we've helped him become more involved in sharing the gospel. He's also given us £150 worth of sushi...his wife works at a sushi place and comes home with all the leftovers from the day, so we get them! Funnily enough, just as I was typing this he called again to give us more sushi! Sushi's alright, but I wish I loved it considering how much we're given. Not sure what to do with all of it. If you have any awesome ideas about what we can do with it, let me know!
In zone training this week we were taught about how to involve the Spirit more in the work by purifying our own lives. Missionary work is only effective when guided by the Spirit, so the best way to become a more effective missionary (and son/daughter of God) is to live in a way as to allow the Spirit to be with you more often. If we are constantly doing things that drive the Spirit away, then the Spirit will rarely be with us. 5 things we can do to ensure that the Spirit is with us are:
1. Have daily heartfelt prayer with Heavenly Father
2. Feast daily in the scriptures
3. Strive daily to be more obedient to God's commandments
4. Acknowledge God's divinity daily by recognizing and sharing miracles
5. Daily selfless service to another.
I know that if you do these things each day you will find a greater abundance of the Holy Ghost in your life and you will have greater joy!
Zone conference was also special because all of my companions who are currently serving were there! I rounded them all up and took a picture with of them. Then we had a group hug, and then I hugged all of them individually. Hugs are good! President Gubler calls them his "Mmmmm" medicine. Go give somebody a hug by proxy for me today. Thanks!
President invited our zone to come and to service at the temple grounds yesterday. Our group got assigned to work in the front garden to pull weeds. So we did that for couple hours straight and then went home! I've never been happier to pull weeds in my life. Anything is fun when you're doing it for the Lord. It's such a privilege to serve at the temple--whether it's inside or outside.
Our area is in better shape than it was last week. We now have a very solid investigator from Montana called TJ who has agreed to be baptized. He's reading the Book of Mormon daily, so now it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when! You all know how I feel about the Book of Mormon, so I won't go into my shpeel. Good book though.
Love the Lord, love the work, and love sushi...kinda. And I love all of you! Have a great week, hope you're all excited for general conference in a couple weeks time.
Love, Elder Thomas
ELSM
 |
| The London Eye |
 |
| All of my companions who are currently serving |
No comments:
Post a Comment