The Gate's Band And More!

Sup guys!:)

 

These people are the Gates. They are a great family in our ward.

Holy flip...crazy week!! 

Mostly because of something that happened at the end of the week. 

Just so you know, the weather has started to get a bit warmer! 

That is good. We are no longer wearing the fleece liners in our coats. 

But, with English weather, it could start snowing in the next 

10 minutes so you never know. Haha!

The beginning of the week was pretty normal. Nothing too special.

Wednesday we had zone meeting in Coventry. THAT was crazy. 

All our trains got cancelled because of some flooding

 so we arrived late to zone meeting. After zone meeting, 

we were heading back to go to the Hood when I got a strong prompting

 not to get on the train we were going on. 

So, we followed through with it! 

We arrived in Chelmsley Wood safely.

 I didn't know what that prompting was all about 

until later that evening. Because of all the train delays and that prompting

and everything, we had to switch up our plans for the day. 

In the evening we went to a town called Water Orton 

(which we had previously planned to go to in the afternoon). 

We were able to find someone that is never in during 

the day that we were able to teach!! And she seems

super ready to hear the gospel! We taught her the Resto on the

doorstep and she was like really excited and like, "This is really

cool!" Her name is Eve (which is fitting!). Cool stuff though:) 

Lesson learned, follow promptings because you NEVER

 know when something great might come of it!

T'was a good week as far as missionary work goes. 

We were able to see some fruits from our labors!

 So, you remember Teresa? The one investigator that has come to church with us?

 She cares after a guy named Bill and we randomly stopped by them one night.

 We were able to teach them together for the first time ever!

 Teresa wasn't able to make it to church, but BILL came! 

It was super cool:) AND a less active that we had taught

 was also able to make it to church! Good stuff!:)

A couple of funnies this week. I hadn't even had my nice new bike for

a week when I got a flat tire! Hahaha! Bike problem struggle is real.

Another thing that happened related to the bike probs...usually I clip

my helmet to the bike lock because I couldn't be bothered to carry my

helmet around. And I learned my lesson! A group of chavs were

persecuting us as we were tracting and we looked over and saw them

wearing my helmet yelling "Mr. Mormon!!" (Such a sad breed. Haha) When

we got back to my bike, my helmet got smashed through by the chavy

bruvs. Haha I'll send a video we took!

 Also, we were on this street,

and a group of little children came up to us. This little girl asked

in her tiny British accent "Excuse me, are you a bible basher?" Hahaha

So...now I get into why this week was crazy. 

Transfers is coming up next week and let me tell you...we are not staying together. 

But before I go into the details, we got some news on Friday during lunch.

Our phone started ringing and it was the APs calling. 

When they call, you know shiz nit is about to go down! Haha 

Long story short...I'm preggers!! Haha!

 I got the call to be a trainer starting next transfer!! Ahhhh!! 

:o Super crazy! I'm pretty nervous! I'll be training here in Chelmsley Wood.

 And Elder Hill is going to Peterborough! My birth place! Haha

This transfer is a bit different as well. So, transfers are on Tuesday's

now (which means we get the news on transfers on Saturdays) But,

the new "greenies" don't come until the 29th of March. 

So there's a bit of a weird situation for the two weeks before then. 

I'll be paired up with someone else, who also is training, in Coventry. 

So I'll be in Coventry for two weeks serving there and there won't be any

missionaries at all here in Chelms for a couple of weeks. 

Kinda weird situation!

But yeah.....training. Haha Man! It literally feels like I was just

trained! Like I said earlier, I'm a bit nervous for this! But it will

be quite the adventure! :D If any of you want to give me any advice

for training, feel free! I could use some:) haha Pretty eventful week

though!:) But yeah, that's about it really. Hope you all have a

fantastic week! Cheers mates!:)

Elder Wright

                                            3/7/16

More of the Gates Band

Sup peeps!!:) I have officially hit my 7 month mark! 

Crazy beans man.

But yeah. So, as always....let us chat about the weather first! 

There was a day that had the absolute most ridiculous weather

 I've ever seen! Last Wednesday. 

I experienced all four seasons in one day. 

And even crazier it was in the time of about 20 minutes! :o 

We were traveling to a town called Coleshill in our area. T'was just kind of

overcast, a bit chilly. Then we began tracting and it got a bit

warmer, a tad bit of sunshine. Quite nice! But no joke, what I'm about

to say is a true story. Warm-ish weather and sun shining and then it

started snowing for like 15 seconds and then stopped again!! Hahaha!

And then afterwards the sun was shining bright and it was warm. Weird

stuff! Haha:)

Just so you know, the bike that I have been using up till now was a

secondhand bike I had received from the mission home.

 It had a couple of problems with it, not too major. 

I have been getting flat tires a lot lately, but it's not a 

normal puncture one would get in the tube.

The way the hole is situated on the rim of the wheel makes it easy to

cut the valve of the tube all the time! After that had happened a

couple of times as well as the other minor issues, I decided I better

buy a new bike. So I did! It's a good one as well:) 

I'm hoping to take good care of it so I can perhaps sell it to a missionary 

towards the end of my mission. I'm just kinda scared chavs will steal it because

it's nice! We have two nice bike locks that we use when locking up

now. Before I couldn't give two craps if anyone stole my bike but now

I'm taking extra precautions;D  Also another side story, Elder Hills

bike was locked up to a pole outside of the bike shop for a few days

when we were waiting for my bike to come in. When we came back to it,

there was pigeon poop ALL over his bike and the lock!!

 Haha Looks like that pigeon had a nice feast of curry. ;)

We were able to teach many doorstep lessons this week! 

We also found a couple of new investigators which seem pretty dang cool

 so I'm excited to start working with them!:) 

The story of the work here is literally everyone is busy.

 Investigators, members, you name it. The only people

that aren't busy working or something are all the chavs that don't

have jobs! Haha But hey, we keep pushing on because we don't want to

give up on Heavenly Father (sounds cheesy but it's true!). I think

patient perseverance is one of the more important tests of mortality.

One morning, we and a few members decided to help Solihull Council by

picking up rubbish in one of the public parks. 

And oh man, that was great! :D It's pretty sad what

 we as humans have done to destroy this beautiful earth God created! 

There is just so much rubbish everywhere here! 

So, it felt good to do something about it:) 

We were loving it though! 

T'was a nice little switch up from the usual stuff. :)

The past seven months has been some of the most important in my entire

life! I can't even begin to explain everything I have learned. I have

learned just how significant the Gospel of Christ is in our lives, and

I never truly understood until now!

 I seriously can't even describe it in words....sorry. 

 Thank you all for all the love and support!

Cheers mates! 

Oh! Snd happy English Mothers Day

;D

Elder Wright

This Week We Learned The Answer To Everything Is....CHEESE!

Hello, hello! How's it going!? 

It's Elder Wright here. 

This week was alright! Full of some pretty funny stories!

 Let us start with the weather. 

Weather is cold right now but we have much enjoyed not having

rain for multiple days in a row so, that's been great! 

My wrist is getting better so I'm able to ride bikes!

 Bikes are so nice.

Tuesday was Elder Hills birthday! 

We had decided that we would go to this restaurant called 

Big Johns, which is apparently the UK's first

drive thru chippie so that's cool!:) But we just ate in. We had

decided to buy the biggest pizza they had with chips and smoothies. 

So we got the 20 inch pizza and my oh my....that beast was ferocious!

That was one of the biggest mistakes we've made yet. 

It just made us really lazy for the rest of the day

 (now we know never to do that again!). 

Makes me think of Elder Nelson saying that what you put into

your body affects your spirit.

 How true that is! But we had a good b-day for him:)

Funny story! 

We were tracting one day and we looked across the park

and saw this dog jumping like four feet into the air!

We laughed a bit, kind of played it off for a bit and continued. 

Then we looked back in the distance and saw this dog hanging

 in a tree by his mouth!! Hahaha So we had to get proof of this.

 We went up and talked to the kid and videoed it. 

So hopefully you guys can see the video with it!

We had a really deep conversation with this guy named Tony on the street.

Crazy, crazy, guy! Let me tell ya why. 

We get talking about the usual stuff (religion, beliefs, etc). 

Then we started talking more and more going deeper and deeper. 

This guy is brilliant! We were talking about God-physics basically. 

 Anyways, he then told us something that he's never told anyone about. 

He said he had a vision. In this vision he was walking through 

this tunnel and then saw the Saviour and the Saviour ushered him to follow. 

Jesus takes him to this spot where he is shown "the answer to everything". 

He then realized he was sleeping and knew he would wake up soon so, 

he started to shout out the answer to everything so when he would wake up, 

he wouldn't forget it. And no joke, this is what happened....he told us,

 "As I was thus shouting the answer to everything, I regained consciousness

 and shouted 'CHEESE!!!!!!'" No joke!! 

It was absolutely hilarious we just start busting up laughing!

 Then he went on to say, "I don't even like to

eat cheese!!" It was soooo funny!

The work right now is quite slow. We're trying to work with the less

actives here in our area, for I feel this is our purpose here. 

Personally, I love working with less actives! 

Just trying to rekindle what they've once felt.

 It can be sad when they don't progress on the path of happiness

even though you know they have felt the Spirit! 

We've also been trying to strengthen the trust that the

 members here have in missionaries. 

I think they are seeing that not all missionaries are lazy.

 I hope that we can make some sort of difference here!

We had a very humbling experience on Sunday night. 

In the evening, we watched most of the film 17 Miracles. 

Oh man! Just being able to see ever so slightly what it was like 

for the pioneers was very humbling.

I think sometimes we lose sight of what we are so blessed with. 

The pride cycle is demonstrated so simply

 in the Book of Mormon over and over again. 

In my studies this week, I read through Helaman 12 (a.k.a

Mormon's Lament). These things hit me very powerfully this week.

Man, the Gospel is just so great. 

And I've realized here on my mission just how important it is. 

I never truly understood until now! 

Alright, I'm done. Haha I hope you guys have a superb week:) 

Let us all be grateful for the knowledge that we take so much for granted!

 Cheers mates!

Elder Wright

Elder Hill got the prompting to,"Go with Elder Wright's feelings".

Hello!! 

This week was interesting!

 It all starts off with last Monday. 

Something went wrong with our emails. 

It was weird because it said they sent but apparently 

they didn't (so sorry if you didn't get an email on time). 

It was a mission thing because we got a call from the APs 

saying that we could take time later in the week 

to resend the emails again. 

On the way to the church to do that, it was a frosty morning. 

Quite cold. A thickness in the air. As we were biking, 

we turned into the path that led to the church 

and I slipped on some ice and hurt my wrist pretty bad! :o

 It's actually been healing very fast! (Power of prayer) 

It's funny because growing up we always had Dad

 if anything got hurt. After it happened I was like "Flip. What do I do?"

 Haha! We called the President and he told me to get it X-rayed.

 It's funny what things remind you of home! When I went to the hospital, 

it just reminded me of home. 

The smell, the scrubs, all the medicine. 

 I didn't think I broke it but we were advised to get it X-rayed anyways.

We had to wait in the hospital for 3 hours

 just to tell us it ISNT broken. Haha!

 So, that was good that it wasn't broken! :) 

But I have to wear a little splint thing. So yeah, that's my story!

We got an invitation from a former investigator to go to the

Fordbridge Centre to make ukuleles! He's way into making

instruments and stuff so he invited us to make ukuleles that we can

"carry with us on our travels". Haha:) So we did.

 It's a club thing where people go that have had history of mental health issues. 

We got talking to a lot of them about what missionaries 

do and why we're here. It was pretty cool!:)

A bit of good British humor !

Heads R coming off Shoulders! Hahah

Had a good lesson with an investigator named Yvette. 

She's from the Congo, speaks French

 (Language barriers man. Takes me back to Peterborough!)

We taught her about the Gospel of Jesus Christ 

which went pretty well! She loves the BoM and the teachings of it.

 It's just a matter of trying to get her to churchy!

But yeah, after the wrist incident, the week became very slow! We

kept trying to figure out how to get bus passes for a couple weeks

(because I won't be able to use my bike for a bit). 

Eventually we did get a travel card! We're trying to get to know the bus

schedules around here. There were a couple of times we were

sprinting to catch buses! Haha:)

So, sometimes we would make up funny stories to tell the members what

happened to my wrist. One of which is that I punched a shark! 

Some good laughs:) But we told this older member named Duncan 

(about 85 or so) that grew up in South Africa about that fake story.

 He went on to tell us an actually story he had where he was 

in the water with a friend of his and they saw a small shark coming at them.

  He kicked it and punched it and it swam away! Haha!

This guy was a daredevil in his youth. 

He's got some crazy stories! :)

Teresa was able to make it to church this week! 

She had been busy one week and then ill another week. 

But she made it back! She's doing super well too:) 

Still progressing so keep her in your prayers if ya could! 

She also said that her really close friend named Bill said that

he wants to start making it out to church as well so we are expecting

both of them next week! :D

Another cool story!

 We were tracting in a tiny village called Water Orton on Friday. 

We decided to pray for a street to tract...I got the

feeling on a certain street. Elder Hill got the prompting to

 "go with Elder Wright's feeling". 

So we went, started knocking. Several houses down, we

knocked and this guy answered. 

He looked at us...kind of smiled a bit.

His wife came to the door as well (they're older) 

and they were like "Mormons??" Heck yeah we are! 

They were like, "Come on in!"

 (Which is VERY rare to be let into someone's home tracting!)

 That was the second time on my mission. 

The British are very reserved people and just don't let you into their homes.

 Turns out they have Mormon friends in

the states and knew a bit about the church. 

They're pretty firm in their beliefs but we were able to give 

them a BoM and some pamphlets.

We had a good chat with him! So that was cool! :)

That's about it really! I hope you all's week was good!:) 

Have a great week. 

Cheerio.

Elder Wright

Hello From The British Isles

Hello from the British Isles! :) 

Typically when you say "island/isle"

you think of nice tropical breeze in the warm sun. 

Yeahhhh....not as much over here. ;)

Temperature dropped quite a bit but we have

enjoyed some sun the past few days. Woo hoo! :D

Not too, too much eventful stuff happened this week. 

We had a good Zone Conference that lasted for 3.5 hours last week.

  They talked a lot about the topic, "Teach Repentance and Baptize Converts" 

and also working with members and whatnot. 

It was crazy awesome! :) We left the meeting inspired which is very good. 

A lot of the training lately has been on working with members.

 (The Apostles called it a "gold mine").

Speaking of trying to work with members, there are a couple of less

actives that we are trying so desperately to get back to church. 

One is Philip. He's so cool!

 It's just a matter of him coming to church.

He's a part member family. His wife isn't a member.

 But our ultimate goal is to bring him back, 

start teaching his wife and get them on the right path! :) 

Another is Thomas Witts. He's had the same issue for the

past 5 years or so. They call him "Doubting Thomas"

 (which is really sad) because he goes through a cycle 

of gaining a testimony, then a concern pops up, 

he loses his testimony, we resolve his concern and so on. :/ 

But the last time we taught him, we showed him the talk by

Uchtdorf called "Come, Join With Us" which was absolutely perfect in

every way for him!! So, hopefully (keep fingers crossed!) he can start

coming back. Faith baby.

We met a guy on the street named Paul. 

He's one of those guys that's so crazy you almost think he's a genius! :D  

We had a fun talk with him about the world now-a-days. 

He supported the entire idea of a Restoration! 

We gave him the BoM and got his number. Then

the next day, we made an emergency Asda run to buy some stuff 

(lights for my bike and some "relaxing zen" air freshener.

 Make fun of us all  you want! Our flat smells like a flipp'n spa now. Haha) 

On our way home from there, we ran into him again! 

It was way cool! He started reading and told all his coworkers he met us.

Just imagine mad scientist type and that's Paul. Cool chap. :) 

Not a ton more happened last week. We have found that a

majority of people are very polite when they reject us! 

It's pretty crazy. Some of the British don't want to sound rude

 to you or anything so they'll say "We don't want to waste your time" 

which is really just code for "I don't want you to waste my time". 

Then the more sarcastic ones are blatantly honest. 

So, we have been quite lucky here as far as persecution!

 There was a pretty funny guy one time, 

he told us to go away and then slammed the door hard, and then

reopened it and slammed it again!! Hahaha Pretty funny stuff;)

Elder Hill and I are thinking of starting up a Book of Mormon

study class during the week. It'll be for actives who want to, less

actives, and investigators. Just to have a nice chill BoM

reading/study in the week. I hope it turns out alright! :)

Man, my testimony has grown

so much on the mission. It's just kinda stinky sometimes because we

want to share it but people are like "Eh, not interested" all day!

 If only they knew what the heck they were rejecting! Man,

 I love the Gospel. It all just makes sense.

Anyways, that's about it really! I hope all is well over there! :) Ta

ta for now.....innit.

Elder Wright

Daniel's 6 Month Celebratory Tie Burning Video

One night we were biking back to our flat and I looked up at the stars. Just serves as a reminder of how great God is! :)

Hey hey!! 

I have officially been on my mission for 6 months!! 

 Crazy! It's quite hard to believe actually. 

It's weird because I look back on certain things and it's like, 

whoa, that felt like forever ago.

 But at the same time, it's gone by way too fast! Man...:) 

We did our celebratory tie burning yesterday. 

If you don't know, it's a tradition to do the following: 

Burn a tie at 6 months, 

Burn a shirt at 12,

 Burn trousers at 18, 

and then a suit at 24. 

This week was alright overall!

 Let us start with the weather.

 The weather has been mental. So much wind! 

We almost got blown off our bikes a couple of times! 

 The theme song of this week was 

"Master The Tempest Is Raging". 

 We were able to enjoy a couple of cloudless days though.

That was much appreciated.

 One night we were biking back to our flat

 and I just looked up at the stars.  

Just serves as a reminder of how great God is! :) 

But the worst day as far as weather

(but probably the best day as far as missionary work) 

was on Saturday.

It literally didn't stop raining all day and it wasn't just mist.

 It was full on rain! 

There comes a point when one just accepts the

fact that.....you're going to get wet and just deal with it!!!

So we did, and made it fun! 

I had lakes in my shoes. 

But I'm very much grateful for heaters in the flat, 

for we were able to dry our clothes overnight. :)

Oh, I totally spaced it! If you haven't gathered already,

 Elder Hill and I are staying in Chelmsley Wood for another transfer!

 As far as changes to the district, not much. 

Only one change. Sister Grant (New Zealand) went to Newport 

and Sister Filoso (Utah) came here. 

The rest of the district is the same: Ofasi (London), 

Quesada (E'Spain), Hill (Cali'), Gombe (Zimbabwe).

Not too, too much is different as far as the work is going. 

We got a new investigator named Yvette, 

who was a former investigator from about 5 years ago. 

She's from the Congo, speaks French. 

Very nice lady!

 We brought a member named Godfrey out teaching with us!:) 

It was good to see him out teaching.

 Godfrey had been less active for a long while until about 3 months ago. 

Very cool guy! He's originally from the Caribbean.

 But that lesson went very well:)

One of our investigator's name is Robert. 

He's probably about 60 years old and suffers 

from PTSD and alcoholism.

 He fought in the Falklands a while back and has told

 us some gruesome stories of what he's done.

(I'll spare the details for ya;) ) 

Because of the haunting of all of his past,

 he masks it with alcohol now. Quite a sad life really! :/

Sometimes I think to myself, "What am I doing!

 I'm so young! I have no idea what it's like to be him! 

How am I going to influence this guy!"

The beautiful part about it is we literally can't, without some help.

God knows what we need to say to help him 

and as long as we are trying our best to have the Spirit,

 the Spirit acts as a channel between us and Heavenly Father. 

Then, hopefully we can help him in some way!

 But yeah....good stuff!

I was listening to John Bytheway and something hit home. I always thought a testimony was something you received. Once you received it, it was yours and you could enjoy it forever. But now I like to compare it with a garden.

 It's something you need to maintain, to work at. 

Make sure the soil is rich, you have good seeds, 

you nourish it and look after it daily, you

weed out the weeds. 

Sometimes growth can be so little that you can't

really tell that it's growing!

 But through perseverance and diligence,

you will be able to enjoy the fruit thereof. 

I liked the way he explained it! :) It's so true! 

It's sad watching people fall away

because their roots were completely malnourished. :/ 

The gospel is so true! I once had a minister of another church ask

us if we had ever thought of eternity.

 My comp and I just looked at each other and were like

 "On a daily basis!"

 But you end up thinking about it a lot on the mission. 

It all just fits together perfectly. :)

Well, that's about it really! :) 

I can now never relive those six months of my mission!

 Kind of surreal at times. 

Thank you all for the love and support! 

I wish you all have a great week...stay sweet.

Cheers.

Elder Wright

"What the hell are you doing here in England???"

Sup guys!! 

Sorry my email was short last week. 

We had to email early because we were traveling over to 

Warwick to visit Warwick Castle....which was awesome!! :) 

(pronounced "Warrick" here).

And THEY make fun of American english. 

Half the letters here are silent! Haha

 Very fun Pday. 

We were with the rest of our district and a couple

 of other sisters from Warwick. 

We toured around the castle on the inside, which had a really

cool wax museum type thing. Yeah! 

Then we saw a bird of prey show which was fun:) 

Here's a funny video with that show. 

It was a very fun Pday that's for sure. :)

The joys of tracting. 

I wonder what percentage of people reject us

right away and think we're JWs. 

It's quite funny though sometimes!

 Sometimes when we tract, right away when they open the door they'll say,

 "Are you Jehovahs Witnesses??" We'll tell them "Nope. 

We're Mormons!" and usually it's hilarious because they'll give like a sigh

of relief after that and say "Well then what do you want." 

 But, this one time, the guy says, "Are you Jehovahs Witnesses??" 

and you know, we say "Nope! We're actually Mormons!" 

Then the guy was like "Oh, that's even worse!! Sinners!"

 and then shut the door. He then creepily watched us

 tract the next 3-4 houses. Haha!

 Oh! Funny story too. 

We tracted this guy, asked him if he had any belief in God

and he told us "Nope. I'm a Jedi Knight" 

with a complete serious face.

We were like, "Tell us more!" Hahaha! It was funny. :)

One of our go-to GQ approaches is to ask people 

what they like about the area. 

Funny enough, about 99% of the time, the people say

"Nothing!"  So sad.. Sometimes after that, 

we will ask them if they could live one place in the world, 

where would they live. We then lead into the fact that we're 

not from around here and have only lived in the UK for 6 months. 

We tell them we're from the warmth and dryness

of Arizona and California and usually they'll say,

 "What the hell are you doing here in England???" 

Ohhhh yes:D...lead into gospel talk baby. Haha!

So, this week was pretty normal up until Sunday, 

which was a great day!

The reason it was great was because 

TERESA CAME TO CHURCH!! 

 At 10am, we were waiting in the hall thinking,

 "Come on! Come!" 10:10...still no sign. 

10:20...starting to lose hope. 10:30....saw her pull up in the

car and Elder Hill and I just smiled:D 

It was great! We had a great sacrament meeting. 

Then Gospel Principles class was good. We were kind

of scared because the lesson just happened to be about baptism 

and we didn't want it to seem like we were pushing it on her right away.

  But, it ended up being very good. 

She felt comfortable enough to voice questions she

 was having and there's a member named Godfrey

that was able to relate to her very well, so it was perfect! 

She was apparently very popular in Relief Society too!

 She said there was a lot of information in there  but she had a few questions

 about the temple and baptisms for the dead. 

Man, good day at church:)

She said she wants to set up a time to meet in the week

 and she also said she will come next week to church! 

I don't care how many bad days it takes...

when you get one good moment, it is so worth it.

We had a pretty cool experience with a less active of ours named

 Thomas (70's). He called Sunday morning saying he couldn't

 come to church because he was feeling sick. 

He told us he would like a priesthood blessing that night though. 

So we went over to his house Sunday night

and chatted for a while. 

 I then gave him a blessing of healing and comfort. 

The Spirit was strong there!

 It was awesome because after the blessing, he was smiling

 and amazed because his headache went away so suddenly! :) 

 Nice old guy, he's just going through a rough time. 

But nevertheless, a great guy:)

Transfers are this week! 

To be honest, I really hope we stay. 

We both feel like there is some unfinished work
we must do together here so we're hoping to stay for at least one more. 

Good stuff! The mission is the greatest!:) 

I love reading about missionaries in the Book of Mormon 

because I feel I can relate to them. 

Man, the gospel is so true:) 

I love it! 

Anyways, that's the major stuff this week!

 The great day at the end there made us very happy:)

 I hope you all have a fantastic week!

Thanks for everything. 

Cheers. :D

Elder Wright