The greater your sorrows, the greater your capacity is to feel joy. How true that is!!

Hey guys!

 So this week has been pretty crazy. 

The beginning of the week was a very low point for us,

 but the end of the week was a high point for us! 

Towards the beginning of the week, 

our spirits were pretty low. 

This area has been quite rough during the past month.
Hours and hours of trying to find new people to teach and nothing
comes of it. And, we've been having troubles discerning spiritual
promptings. After some inspired counsel at zone meeting on
Wednesday on "promptings of the Spirit", 

we had decided that we would follow through with ALL 

thoughts and feelings we received throughout
our days and act on them.

One night, we were biking after a dinner 

appointment and I was in front leading.

 We passed this guy that was shovelling some leaves
into a bin outside of his house. 

I felt the need to assist this guy, but kept riding. 

Later down the road, I stopped and 

Elder Hill said, "What's up?" I told him 

I felt like we needed to help that guy.

 He said he had felt the same. 

So, we turned around and biked back

 up there and asked if he needed help. 

He said, "Oh yes! I wish you guys had come
yesterday when this pile was much bigger." 

We laughed and began go assist him and got talking. 

He's way into music so we talked a while
about guitars and whatnot. We, of course, led into religious talk. 

He most definitely wasn't interested in church 

but thanked us a ton for the help! He is slightly disabled 

and was struggling with it so he was very much grateful for our help. :) 

We were happy for following a prompting and he was happy for the service.

 'Twas a win win situation. :) 

You never truly know what can come from just loving and serving someone!
I would be lying if I told you I acted on ALL 

the promptings I received in the past week. 

There are, however, some important lessons that I have
learned about this topic:

 1) Personally, you feel better after acting on a prompting. 

2) The more you act, the more you receive and the easier it is to recognize. 

3) Something may not always come from doing what you are prompted to do. 

Towards the beginning of my mission, I
was confused when nothing came from acting on a prompting. 

I would say, "Lord, why did you prompt me to talk to that person

 or do that thing if nothing would come from it?" 

I've come to the realization that if God rewarded us EVERY

 time we acted, how would we truly grow from that experience?

 If you were rewarded every time you did good, 

who would ever do bad! 

And it truly teaches you what faith really is.

 Faith to act, and not knowing whether something good will come of it. 

Anyways, enough preaching. ;) haha

Throughout the days, we tract a lot. Sometimes it can get quite
boring, especially when no one is interested! 

So, we come up with fun little challenges to do while 

in the conversation,just to keep ourselves entertained. 

The funniest one was I challenged Elder Hill to
stretch during the conversation, like full on stretch his muscles. 

So, we were talking to this old guy and Elder Hill just starts stretching
in front of this guy. I was trying so hard not to laugh during it!
Finally, the old guy insults us and laughs to himself 

so I use that as an excuse to bust out laughing 

(you know, so it seems like I'm laughing at his joke, even when I'm not). 

It was SOO funny! :) 

That really lightened our moods and actually 

had a few good conversations with people after that!

One of the days, we went to Kingdom Hall to see if we could have

 a New World Translation (standard for the JWs). 

They were all looking at us funny and stuff.

 The guy told us to come back another day to grab them. 

So we did. 

We expected them to be all bash aggressive but they
were actually quite nice about it! Twas cool:)

The first half of the week was rough for both of us. 

Satan has a habit of getting to your head and stuffing it with discouragement. 

But, something happened on saturday that made it ALLL worth it:) 

We decided to go by a former investigator named Teresa, 

'bout 45 probably. All we had basically was a name and an address.

 When we met her, she was so excited to see us! 

She had been taught by sister missionaries in 2013
and was progressing well with them. 

The sisters eventually got moved
out and replaced by Elders and that's kinda when she lost contact with
the missionaries. The missionaries never stopped by her! 

She loved church when she was going but after the sister left, 

she felt she didn't know anyone so she stopped going. 

So, we got to know her background. 

Apparently she has read and prayed every day for the past year

 or so and she has found comfort through that. 

We were so freaking happy!!

 It just made all the suckyness of the past month totally worth it:) 

She is out of town for the next week or so in Wales

 so we have set to teach her in a week from this Tuesday.

 She was like "I can't wait to get to church now that I know you two!" 

I'm hoping the ward will do some great fellowshipping with her. 

I am so excited!! Can't wait to start teaching her. :)

So, as you can tell, this week contained both extremes. 

Very difficult, but very rewarding. 

That's the gospel isn't it. It's the greatest:)
Weather wise, it has been quite glum. Overcast most days. I think
there was one day that was nice weather. It's getting very cold now,
and the rain continues. Apparently, there's been some pretty bad floods
in Scotland though, so it could definitely be worse!

 Yeah! That's about it really.

 I hope your guys' week is awesome:) Love you all! 

Have a great week.

 Cheers!

Elder Wright

Happy New Year!! 2016

Happy New Year!! 2016. 

Officially the start of my "black year". 

That's the full year in the mission where you are a missionary. 

Why the color black? No idea. 

 This week was alright! 

Well....not as far as the weather goes. 

It's been terrible as far as the weather goes. 
It has rained everyday for the past week. 

Which isn't as fun when being a missionary. 

But hey, there's not much we can do about the rain! 

We showed up to 3 dinner appointments this last week

 just soaked through and through. Haha!

 It definitely makes you appreciate the good weather
when it comes! (If it ever will) 

So yeah, that has been quite fun really. 

One day, we figured that it was just too rainy to tract, because 

 the wind was blowing all the rain into this one guy's

 house when he answered the door. 

We decided to go to a tower flat and just

go tracting in there, where it was nice and dry. 

We had district meeting in Coventry this week.

 We also interviews with the mission president. 

Good stuff! Twas very nice. :)

 Most definitely the highlight of this week was teaching

 this less active guy named Phillip. 

We got to talking about his life and just getting to know
him. We moved into how he joined the church

 and what his concerns are now about it.

 He said he felt he was, "too caught up into the church" 

like too committed I guess you could say.

 Then he started raising up doubts about the church and Joseph Smith.

 We feel he may have gotten caught up in some anti material or something.
He also talked a little bit of thinking about the "mysteries of the kingdom".
Luckily, back in his life a while ago, 

he said he had gone to the temple to do baptisms 

and he felt the spirit strongly and he could not
deny that experience. That is the main thing that kept him having a
belief or even letting us into his home for that matter. 

We began to clear up his concerns by teaching some

 of the doctrine from the Restoration. 

We bore testimony of the Book of Mormon as the
keystone of our religion and how everything relies on that book. We
showed him the Mormon message "Testimony of the Book of Mormon" 

by Jeffrey Holland which brought the spirit into that meeting so much!!
It was so strong there! We bore testimony of the prophet Joseph 

and we knew that he was feeling the spirit. 

He knew he was feeling the spirit. 

He even told us "I have felt something here today" and thanked

us a lot for coming. We are very hopeful in bringing him back!!

 Oh man, it was so good. :)

 The scriptures are just the bomb.
I love them! I have developed a love for them out here on the mish!
Truly the words of life. :) I just read through the conversion
stories of King Lamoni and his father. 

Ammon and Aaron were awesome in the gospel! 

Lately I've been reading the institute manual while
reading also, just to get a little more out of it.

As far as investigators that we have here in Chelmsley Wood, there are
a few but none of which are very solid. We are very much hoping to
find a solid new investigator here pretty soon! The ward here is still
great! Hopefully they can see that we as missionaries are here trying
to work hard! There is some great potential here in Chelmsley Wood, we
just have to reach it.

This week was also full of some really weird things that happened. 

We went to this one tower flat to go by a less active's ho

use and we just heard screaming! 

We were like "What is happening! Get out!!" 

Then as we were going to a lesson, we walked out of our flat 

and saw this big orange fungus looking thing in the grass.

 We could not explain what it was or even how it got there!! 

Weird orange fungus part 1.

Weird orange fungus part 2.

Weird orange fungus part 3.

      

Just ridiculous. But yeah, some weird vibes

this last week. Don't know what that was all about.

Sometimes, while tracting, it can get kind of the same old, same old.
So, to switch it up every once in a while, we will challenge each other
to do something or say something during the tract. 

Some of the different challenges include: 

say good morning if it's the evening 

and the other way around, 

use the word "Apple" at some point, 

make a heart symbol with your hands,

 talk about their garden, etc. 

It makes it fun sometimes! Haha!

 We've had some great moments doing that. :) But yeah!

One thing I've been missing lately is the temple! I so wish there was
a Birmingham Temple! The best thing ever, though, was working in
the temple for that month or so before I left! I would HIGHLY encourage 

missionaries that are waiting to go out to work at the
temple before they go!! 

It seriously is the best. 

 I'm benefitting from that even now out here! Seriously so good. :) 

I was thinking randomly the other day....when we have a big old family trip to
England after my mission is done, we will all have to go through the
London and Preston temples together as a family!! 

That would be so cool:)
Well, everything is alright over here! 

Hopefully everything is alright over there in the states. 

Stay dry, stay warm. 

Cheers mates. :)

Elder Wright

"I'm dreaaming of a WET...Christmas!"

"I'm dreaaming of a WET...Christmas!" 

Well hey, it's a reality over here so you no longer have to dream about it;) 

Hey all!! Merry Christmas! 

It's been a pretty decent week this week. 

Things here in Chelmsley Wood are coming along slow but steady! 

Let us start earlier in the week. :)

Last Monday we tracted into this atheist guy and had a very long, 

deep conversation with him.

 (About an hour and a half. Felt like 10 minutes though!). 

His main point, (along with many atheists)

 was why would a loving God in heaven just sit back and allow 

terrible suffering to happen to people. Which is a very fair question to ask! 

We of course tried to lead into agency and the plan of salvation.

 He brought up some fair points that we honestly did not know how to answer.

 We did bear powerful testimony to him.

 It was cool though, because towards the beginning of talking with him, 

he was absolutely "no, you will not sway me. You can't ever come back." 

By the end of talking with him, we got his phone number, 

gave him a Book of Mormon and a Plan of Salvation pamphlet, 

set up another time to come by, and we were all

laughing together and joking around a bit!

 It was great. :) 

It was cool to see how his attitude changed about the whole thing.

There truly is so much joy that comes from serving the Lord!! 

 He truly does bless us for it. We are crazy lucky to have the
knowledge that we have. If you think about all the different religions
out there, ours has the full truth!! It's so great,, :) You just
deepen your appreciation for the gospel on the mission and you
experience it all firsthand. I was reading today about Amulek and Alma
after they taught Zeezrom. It sounded especially rough for Amulek.
Shortly after his conversion, he served that mission with Alma where
they were persecuted, bashed, physically and verbally abused, he lost
all his money and home, his own father and family disowned him. Talk
about trying the faith of the righteous man!! Amulek went through all
of that when he was trying his best to do what was right. He is truly
a hero. When you think about people like Amulek and especially the
Saviours own suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane, all your problems
just naturally start to diminish. And then you feel bad that you ever
thought your "problems" were problems. 

Man, I just love the gospel:)

Wednesday, we had a zone conference in Leicester. 

It was 3 zones: Nottingham, Coventry, and Leicester. 

I was able to see friends from Leicester and Notts!:) 

Thursday we had a zone Christmas Eve party in Coventry! 

That was pretty fantastic! It was rough traveling there

though. We had to bike to the station

 (which was a headwind, uphill, and rain bullets in the eyeballs).

And then we took the bikes with us so we could bike to the Coventry chapel.

 Pretty crazy experience! Haha:) But it was fun.

Then it was Christmas!! It was a fun day. 

I played Christmas hymns for the church service on Christmas morning. 

Which, by the way, the Christmas service on Christmas morning

 was a great way to start off the day! 

It started at10:30am and we read Christmas poems and sang

Christmas carols. It was a good way to start the day focusing on the

true meaning of Christmas. :) We then went to the Morleys for lunch.

After "Christmas Dinner" there, we played games with them

 (Rummikub and Uno) Then in the late afternoon, 

we went to bishops house for Skype!! 

That was so fun to talk with the fam! :D It was nice to catch

up with them and to actually hear their voices again! Then we

spent the rest of the night at the Gates home playing some 

Disney Trivia.

Turns out Saturday was another Pday for us 

because it was Boxing Day or something. So that was nice! :) 

Not a super eventful week to be honest. 

A lot of people here just do not want to talk to you on the

days leading up to Christmas, and if they do and are slightly

interested, they tell you to contact them after the New Year. Haha We

have found some new people to teach, 

but won't be able to see them until after the New Year.

That's about it honestly! The ward is still pretty cool! They feed us

well here so I might get a little bit fat. Haha;)

 Pack it on for the winter! 

Speaking of, it's not too cold yet....which is very unusual

for here! It'll probably drop in temp soon though. Anyways, that's

about it folks! Hope you had a great Christmas! 

Enjoy Star Wars for me! :..( 

Love ya tons! 

Cheers mates.

Elder Wright

Happy Christmas From Across The Pond

Hey there! So, you are probably wondering where I am right now. 

I will tell you that I am no longer in Nottingham... Sad days. 

A goodbye photo with Oz.

I was only there for 4 weeks! But hey...oh well. 

So! Let me break the news to ya. 

Get ready for this....hahaha. I'm in a small-ish town outside of
Birmingham called Chelmsley Wood! 

And, guess what....I'M WHITEWASHING AGAIN! 

I'm starting to wonder what I did in the pre-existence

 to deserve this. Hahaha! ;) Nah, it's not that bad, white washing. 

It's kinda fun actually! This is my third time whitewashing. 

Elder Smith (my last companion) got called to be a trainer 

so I was moved out of there. 

I'm whitewashing with someone from my group again! 

 Elder Hill is his name. Interesting lad. But yeah. 

Let's just say this may be a looong transfer. And, it's a 7 week transfer. 

Goodbye picture with Elder Smith and the Sisters at

 Ward Correlation Meeting.

Chelmsley Wood doesn't have the best reputation apparently...but, I've
found that its not as bad as people were saying! :) 

Some of the nicknames of Chelmsley Wood include: 

Chelmsley Hood, 

Chav-sley Hood
(if you don't know what a chav is, look it up. Haha), 

Chelmsley Weed.
 Oh, and do you remember that story of the bishop here in
England that got mugged and ran over?.....that's the 

Bishop of our ward here!! Pretty crazy stuff. :)

The huge bonus of Chelmsley Wood is that the ward is FANTASTIC!

 So far, they have all been really cool people:) 

The ward consists of 3 major families. The ward is pretty small though. 

There's probably about 50 or more that were at church. But yeah! 

Bishop is kind of sensitive about the whole situation 

that happened with him and doesn't like to bring it up.

 But, he is so cool! He's a convert of about 6 years. 

We went to his house for lunch on Sunday. 

First thing, we go into his house and he puts Lord of the Rings

 music on quietly in the background. 

It was so cool! The ward mission leader is great. 

We met him the second day we got here and he took us out to 

put flyers in doors for a Christmas carol concert on Sunday. 

He's way focused on the work and it's really cool! 

It's always nice when you have a good ward mission leader. :)
We're hoping to turn this area around. The past missionaries
 slacked (Bishop was like, "I won't say much, but I will say this.
I'm glad that they're gone.") So, we're hoping to get the work
here going along! It's rough too, because the past Elders 

didn't do a great job keeping the area book up to date either.

 I feel like we may be doing a lot of member work and less active work. 

That was one of Bishop's vision; bringing back a lot of the less actives.
There's a family here, the Gates, that are just awesome!! 

They're all very musically inclined and they did a cool instrumental

 piece at the ward Christmas carol concert. 

The dad was on the guitar, mom on the penny whistle, 

daughter on violin, daughter on the accordion, and
future son in law on the bass. 

They played a cool folk Christmas song.
It was so cool!!  And, they all play a thousand different instruments.
I'm excited because we'll be at their place Christmas evening. Yes! :)

This is a video of looking out my window.

That's about it!

Thanks for all the support back home. Truly! I love ya guys! :) 

Hope your week rocks! Happy Christmas from across the pond.

 Cheers.

Elder Wright

Merry almost Christmas!

                                            Hey guys! Merry almost Christmas! :) 

This is just the best time of

year...I mean cmon! I love it!

(Gotta feel bad for the J Dubs!) 

Us looking fly in our British suits.

This week was a good week. On fast Sunday last week, 

we fasted that we might be able to find more opportunities 

to teach people and have lessons.

We definitely have seen improvement in that aspect! :)

We were able to meet with a guy named Scott. 

This guy is elect. 

He has been taught the lessons a ton in the past 

and knows a lot about the church. 

His wife is a member (less active though).

 He was interviewed in the past for baptism but it didn't work 

out because he was living with his girlfriend. 

But, now they are married so that's taken care of! 

We met with him and had a good lesson, 

committed him to be baptized on January 2nd! 

The only issue is he is a very busy man

with work and everything so it's just a matter of being able to

quickly go through the lessons with him. 

He was at church and he seems pretty excited for his date!! 

It makes me very happy. :)

Nottingham.

Throughout the week, we were able to get some number 

of lessons on doorsteps while tracting. 

Tracting...it's not as bad as some make it to be!

 We will also play games and stuff while doing it 

to make it fun. :) 

One game we play is; you have to guess what the person 

will look like based on what you see around their yard. 

You never know what you're gonna get behind that door!! 

Hahaha! It's pretty great though. :)

And then of course, there are always....ALWAYS the rude ones.

 But hey!

Also, some weird people behind those doors. 

Spiritualists, witches, fat hairy shirtless men

 (which actually turn out to be new investigators! Haha), 

the ones that just stare at you with wide eyes for like 5

seconds and then shut the door. 

Then there are the more traditional religious people you meet. 

Atheist ("There is no proof!") 

Pantheist ("God is nature and the universe") 

Born Again ("Oh I've been saved for 8 years now") 

CofE ("We're pretty set in our roots") 

Muslim ("Not interested.") 

Oh, the fun people you meet on the mission. I love it!

On Saturday, it didn't stop raining all day. We had our

waterproofs on and still....you just kind of have to accept it. 

Accept your fate! You're gonna be wet. Haha :) 

That day was full of being cold and wet but it was our most successful day.

 It was so much fun!

We'd be going door to door, doing our thing, all wet. Then we'd just

be like, "Man, what are we doing?? We're so crazy!" Haha 

And then continue on our way, making it fun! :)

I finally got a bike!! Yes! For those that didn't know, my last bike got

broken through the transfer process. The mission home had a spare

that they gave me. It ain't great but it gets the job done! 

I am so grateful for bikes.

Let me tell you....it is just so much more efficient than walking! 

Whoever invented the wheel...bless your heart.

 Walking to the store to shop used to be like 35 min. one way.

 To bike, it's like 15 min. And downhill on the way back. :D

 That's fun flying down English hills on a bike! Mmm..

We had the Christmas ward party on Saturday which was pretty fun! 

The music was super loud and it was hard to hear people talking.

But there were some funny games being played! 

Here is a video of one of the games. So funny! But yeah:)

The Lord very much did bless us with a good week this past week!

 And I am ever so grateful for it. 

The mission thus far has been the greatest thing ever. 

Seriously. If you're considering it...DO IT. 

Coolest thing ever. Hardest thing ever....but also the coolest. :) 

Thank you guys so much for all the support! 

Love ya tons. 

Peace be unto thine souls.

Cheers:)

Elder Wright

We went to a chippie just down the road

Hey there!! How's it been?? 

Funny story! The is Sister Lowder. 

She is from where my Aunt and Uncle live!

Small world in the church!

Nottingham has been pretty good! 

Kind of windy lately to be honest. Temperature is starting to drop again. 

But it has been amazingly nice the past week as far as weather goes!

 It's December and it might as well be summer!

 (Now watch...a giant snowstorm or something will come tomorrow) 

But Christmas here is going strong.

I have officially been on my mission for 4 months. 

Crazy beans? Yes! It's gone by way to fast. 

I can't even believe it. I love the mission! :)

This week has been pretty decent! 

We've been trying to have more street lessons with people. 

If we can teach any kind of doctrine and say a prayer, it counts as a lesson. 

That's one thing our ward mission leader has been pushing us to do. 

To have more street lessons and it's been going alright!:) 

This week we're going to be doing more member stop bys in the evenings.

 Tracting and GQing are less effect after 7pm. I'm way excited about that! 

We are going to start to fellowship the ward a little more. 

 We have decided our area just isn't good for GQing in town centre. 

In fact, it's pretty terrible. But, we have surprisingly found a lot of success tracting!

 So, that's been pretty cool:)

Oh man, it was funny. 

We have been improving a lot with our lessons. 

Meaning, people were actually keeping their appointments.

But one day, 3 lessons were no shows and 

when it came time for dinner, we showed up and the family

 totally forgot and told us to come another day. 

As we were walking back, Elder Smith said, 

"Man, three lessons and a flogged DA!"

Hahaha! We were laughing about that.

 It was totally opposite to what 

had been happening in the past week:P So funny!

We're having a lot of fun together! It's been a blast! 

We laugh a lot. (Maybe even too much) 

We are always trying to find the funny in all situations! 

One night we had been tracting for a while. We went

up to the next door, and I knock and then step back and just hear

this *crunch*.  I wondered for a bit. Like, "What could that have been??"

I figured it was plastic or something. Then I looked down and beheld

tiny snail remains all crushed and smeared over. 

 Apparently my face just dropped after I realized it was a baby snail.

 Then we laughed for like 5 minutes. Just random things like that 

happen all the time on the mission! In the moment, it's hilarious. 

It's hard to explain it. But sometimes the little silly

 things make you so happy!

We quote movies a lot. Well...mainly two movies. 

Knight and Day and Remember the Titans. Such classics:) 

It's a lot of fun! 

We went suit shopping last Monday with our district leader

 at a shop called Slaters. They were being tailored and we returned 

Thursday before district meeting to pick them up.

 We looked pretty fly as we were walking with our new 

British suits through town. Haha;) That was fun.

I went on exchange with Elder Mordue to Boston. 

It's about a 2 hour drive from here. That was fun! 

We were able to go by less actives that day. 

Then later in the evening, we had a lesson with one of their investigators. 

It went super well! 

We taught the simple truths of faith and repentance to her.

 It was fantastic! We followed the Spirit and resolved some things with her. :)

 That was a ton of fun. We then went to the flat later

 for dinner (around 8) to finish off the day. 

We cooked some pasta bake and had a dodge fest!

 (Dodge is "deep doctrine") 

It was nice to be able to teach the simple truths of the

gospel to their investigator and it was also nice to have a little

reward of dodge later on. Hahaha :) 

The next day for lunch, we went to a chippie just down the

road from their flat. The owner knows all the

missionaries that have come through Boston. 

He's so good to missionaries!! When we went there, 

we ordered a large cod and large chips. 

He started throwing on the chips, scoop after scoop,

 pile after pile. He was like "tell me when to stop!" 

After the pile was just too big to bare, he slapped a giant piece of cod 

over the top, poured on salt and vinegar and wrapped it in paper.

 It was originally going to be £7 but he was like 

"For you guys, we will make it £5" hahaha!

 It was so great. We walked off and we're just like "Bless that man!"

 It was so much food though. Both of us 

(even with how hungry we were) could not finish it all. 

Best fish and chips I've had...by far.

Diabetes? Probably. Delicious? Most definitely. :)

So yeahhh. Things are purdy good!

 It was a good week. :) Not much else to say really. 

I hope all is well!

 I will report back in a week from now.

 Cheers!

Elder Wright