This week was splendid!

Hey guys!! 

This week was splendid! :) 

 Pretty much the same stuff going on I suppose. 

The weather has just now started to get cooler in

the past few days. Winter is upon us! :o  It'd be a bonus if I

avoided the wetness and coldness this winter by having a car...we

shall see;) Speaking of!....Elder Hayes failed his driving test this

past week unfortunately. :/ Haha So we set up for another test on the

11th of October. Wish us luck again!! :D

So yeah, pretty much a normal as far as the work is going. The zone is

doing pretty well right now! Slight improvements each week which is

super cool!! There'll be a baptism over in Boston this weekend!!

Super exciting! :) Oh and conference, we're all super stoked for that

over here. One of the best times of year!

There was kind of a cool experience this week! There was a certain

day that we misplaced our phone at an investigator's house, although we

didn't know it was there at the time. After a DA, we noticed that

we had lost our phone so we decided to stop by a certain less active's

to use his phone to find our phone! Well anyways, we talked with him a

bit, and invited him to church! And he came!

He hasn't been in YEARS! :o He set up a time to meet with the bishop

later on this week and he's got a wife and a nine year old daughter.

It's super sweet!:D

Uni is in session now as well!! Loads of Uni students out wandering

the streets now, so it's cool to talk about their studies and whatnot.

A few of them are interested in meeting up so we shall see where that

goes. We have Nottingham Trent in our area so there are loads. We also

have a couple of students from various places that moved into the ward

as well so it's exciting to have a bunch of young bucks around. :)

That's really about all the excitement I have to share with you this

week...sorry. Haha Kinda boring. 

But hey! Hope you're all doing well over there:D 

Sure love you guys! 

Speak to yas soon:)

Elder Wright

What the flip am I doing here?? I'm 19 years old and I'm in a meeting with a Stake President and a Mission President discussing the missionary work for the eastern midlands of England!

My Zone

What is up my peeps! 

It's been a busy busy week for sure:) 

We had zone meeting, double district meeting with President, 

stake presidency meeting, and two sessions of stake conference.

 LOADS of meetings!! Hahaha That's the life innit;) 

It was really funny though because in the stake presidency meeting 

(meeting where we meet with our stake president and 

mission president and discuss the work in the zone) I

looked around me and thought to myself "What the flip am I doing

here?? I'm 19 years old and I'm in a meeting with a Stake President

and a Mission President discussing the missionary work for the eastern

midlands of England!" Hahaha

But yeah, things are alright for sure!:) This zone is way sick! We had

a lot of meetings all together this past week so, we saw the

missionaries a lot! :D We also had the chance to go to the District

Leader's areas and do a bit of finding with them which was a blast. One

of the times was really funny alright. So, we're on exchange with the

Notts 2 Elders and we go, all four of us, to Eastwood's area to help

them out a bit. I was with elder Faulconer. We were cracking up though

because we found this potential in their area but unfortunately he

lives in Liverpool currently. We were like "So, I'm from Notts 1,

Faulconer is from Notts 2, we are in Eastwood's area, and we just

found a potential that lives in a completely different mission." Haha

It was good fun though! It's nice to be able to go to other

missionary's areas and help them out a bit:)

A majority of the Stakes in our mission now require a lot of

reports for the missionary work going on in the stake. It's a

common thing to be at the church on the computer writing up reports.

Well anyways, it was pretty cool! We were at the church, and all of

the sudden a film crew comes into the building. Were like, "What

the heck is going on??" We noticed they had American accents as

well, so we were asking what was going on. Turns out the main guy

there helped out a lot with the church film 17 Miracles! They were

there filming something for the self reliance courses. 

But yeah, that was cool!:)

Were doing alright over here! :) Things are busy,busy and can

sometimes be a bit stressful, but for the most part it's a good time!

As far as our own area, it's working out alright. We've found some

pretty cool peeps to hopefully work with over the next few weeks. I'm

wanting to go by the prospective Elders from the ward a bit more.

That's a focus that they're having in this stake right now. Well, two

things really. 1) Less Active Endowed and 2) Prospective Elders.

Should be good! I do believe that's about it really. 

Sure love ya loads! 

Until next week. 

Cheerz.

Elder Wright

We were biking through what felt like a tempest, and cold rain was spraying directly into my eyeballs.

Hello from Nott'nam!.....again;) 

 I was here about 10 months ago. I can't believe that. Time flies I suppose:)

Nottingham is still doing alright. Since I was only here for 1

transfer, it never quite felt like home, but now is an opportunity to

change that. :D It's pretty likely I will stay here for 2-3 transfers!

Boy, oh boy, there are many hills over in this part of the country!

Probably not nearly as bad as Wales, but still, it makes biking an

adventure for sure. Man, I'm trying to not be bitter about us not

having cars. Let me tell you three moments in which it was very

hard for me to not be bitter about it! 

First one, the very first morning I had here, we were heading outside

 in the morning before traveling a fair distance to district meeting.

 As we were walking on the driveway, we looked and saw a perfectly

 good car just sitting there. I thought I heard it say 

"Come inside where it's warm and dry. Oh, don't worry, kick your feet up a bit. 

Just type in where you want to go and I'll take you there with little effort on your part."

 And then I realized, hey wait....that's OUR car we CANT use!

 

Second one, the mission home decided to let our district leader (who funny

enough is Campbell....the one I served with for 3 weeks!) use the

car for the time being until Hayes can get his license. That moment

when they came to our flat to pick up the car from us and they started

to drive away. They were all smiling and waving goodbye to us while we

stood there empty handed... And third one, on a particular rainy

day, we were biking through what felt like a tempest. As cold rain was

spraying directly into my eyeballs, the other set of sister

missionaries in our ward (STLs) drove past us all dry and waving to us

in their car! Hahaha! Ah man, amidst all the over exaggeration and

laughs, yes I do know the car isn't what the calling is all about. It

is a bonus for sure!...but the calling is a good opportunity to be

able to help out other missionaries with whatever kinds of things we

can. :)

The life as it is right now is alright! The ward here in Nottingham is

great so far!! I love it so much!:) I'm just going to go on

about some of them that I've enjoyed meeting. The bishop, so far,

is a lad for sure! He's this millionaire that you wouldn't even have

known he was one. Seems to me like one of the most humble guys ever.

He's super cool! :) There's also a few American families in the ward

that recently moved in that are cool. It took me a bit to

recognize their accent! It's to the point now where their accent seems

like the odd one, ya know? :o But yeah, there's another

member that got baptized about 9 months ago that is just a legend!!

Like seriously, he's definitely a "convert". Another thing..the ward

had a super cool ward activity this weekend too! They turned the

church into some kind of medieval Renaissance type theme. They had

 a small catapult for the kids, a cool dragon piñata thing, 

they even rented medieval horses that the kids were riding around

on!! Haha:)

We had a couple really cool teaching experiences this week!! The

first, we met a potential named Marcel that had been found a bit back.

We meet up with him and he brings three of his mates (they're all

black by the way). They're all non denomination Christians...they

believe in the core teachings of the bible and they live it! Anyways,

we did a lot of "how to begin teaching" in the lesson with them. The

more we heard about what they believe, we were thinking "Wait, that's

what we believe! Hey that's also what we believe!" They have so many

beliefs that are just crazy similar to the teachings in the church! We

taught them quite a bit in the Restoration. Oh man, it was so cool. 

Loads of smiles and soul, shouting "AMEN!" and all that kind of

jazz. Haha! :D It was so cool! I'm hoping we can go far with them!

The second cool experience was with a woman named Maria. She was a

media referral, meaning she looked online and kind of requested to

meet with the local missionaries. We met up with her in town and got a

table somewhere and just started talking with her. Really nice lady,

probably late 40s and she's been through a lot in her life! She hasn't

been too, too religious but she said she's willing to "start to open

the door". We taught her the full on Resto and man the Spirit was

strong for sure! We actually softly committed her to be baptized right

then and there! Miracle for sure!!:) Please pray for these people!!

Life is pretty good, innit. Wish us luck as we attempt to run this

zone here! We have some great teams here so it shouldn't be too

rough!:) Ah man, I love it all. Well, sure love ya guys! 

Talk to ya next week! 

Cheers:D

Elder Wright

Transfers always feels a bit like the Hunger Games.

 

What's up guys!! How you been? :) 

Things are going alright over here in Leicester! 

This is the last week of the transfers...which is crazy to be honest! 

Time has absolutely flown by! I guess a lot did happen in the

 past 7 weeks, but still! It's been a really good transfer! :D

Not too, too, much is new. I have some big news but we will save that

for the end! ;D We've been teaching Callum more and more since his

baptism. He's loving everything and is pretty excited for the next

steps in his journey! (Hint hint: Priesthood coming soon) The cool

thing is he's pretty tight with all the missionaries here in Leicester

and has been familiar with the missionaries for a while now. He's

actually thinking about serving a mission himself which would be super

awesome!! :) That's Elder Smiths story. He met the missionaries when he

was 17, was baptised a bit later and then came on a mission! Converts

"stories" are much more intriguing than the typical Mormon kid who was

raised in the church. Haha But yeah, it's been a really cool

experience working with him:)

Someone "soaped" the fountain. haha

We are still progressing with our Chinese friends! Ah man, they are

hilarious:) Hey, I've been learning some Chinese! 我是男人 That means "I

am a man." There's also 水 which means "water." 果 which means "fruit."

高富帅 which means "Tall, rich, and handsome." You got to get the basics

right!? Haha But yeah, we actually planned a lesson plan

with them! We are planning on either playing badminton or ping pong

with them in the chapel, and then afterwards doing a "private chapel

tour" them. The more you play it up the more they get excited.

The exclusive private chapel tour with the missionaries. ;) haha Yes!

Chapel tours have the opportunity of being absolute hits! If you do

them right, they're magical experiences! :D

We had a funny experience with the China folk. We played ping pong

with them (in which they absolutely destroyed us! They are so flipping

good it was amazing!! You know Forrest Gump?....yeah. That!) Anyways,

after ping pong they invited us over for a "huoguo" which being

interpreted means "hotpot". Basically you all just sit around this

type of kettle thing with your chopsticks and stick food in it and eat

and socialize. Pretty cool eh?? Well, the night came and we had to go

back to the flat to change. We forgot to charge our phone and as we

walked (bikes were out of commission) the phone died!! We knew where

we were supposed to meet them but there was no way of contacting them

to tell them we were there! :o We stood there for about 25 minutes

waiting but all was lost. :.( We didn't get to enjoy the huoguo!!:/ 

Oh well.. Haha

So hey, I got some big news for ya!! As you know, transfers is coming

up. The results are in. As a side note, transfers always feels a bit like

the Hunger Games. You don't know if your name will be picked

or not and you just wait in anticipation. Well hey.....they drew my

name!! :o I am not staying in Leicester any more which sucks!!

I love it here!:/ 
But yeah, let's just get into it I guess. I am leaving to

Nottingham again and am ZL over there.. Which....eh. We shall see how

it goes. I'm with Elder Hayes again as well which is crazy. Hmmm....

You wanna know the funny part as well? All zone leaders in this

mission have cars...that is except for us!! That's what I was

looking forward to a lot but then they told us neither of us have a

liscense. What?? Ah man, we shall see how this goes. It

is kind of crazy though because Elder Matus (my son) is replacing me

here in Leicester! That's the new news! I hope all is well for

you guys! :) Wish me luck. 

 Cheers guys!

Elder Wright

Thanks so much for the love and support! :)

What is up my peeps! How you living??:) 

The week has been pretty good!

It seems like just yesterday that I was writing emails!:o 

Time flies when you're having fun! :D 

Life is pretty good eh!

Weather overall has been quite nice to be honest. Not too, too much

rain lately which has been really nice! Apparently, it's been one of

the hottest recorded summers in a long while for Britain! :)

It has been a good week for sure!! :) 

We have seen Callum a few times since he's been baptized. 

Man, he really is a legend!! 

It's crazy to see how far he has come since he started 

with the missionaries only a couple months ago! 

There is a lot of opportunity with his friend Kearan as well. 

They were best mates growing up and they kind of

followed each other's views as far as religion goes. Before Callum met

the missionaries, they were both men of science. "Why are you always

judging me....only because I believe in science!" (Wise words from

Eskeleto. Haha) But seriously, so many people nowadays either choose

science or religion. Because somehow people think they can in no way

work together....hmmm. Anyways, since Callum has started to grow faith

and understand the gospel, Kearan has been tagging along ("For the

support of Callum" " but I think he's genuinely starting to get

interested for himself) Every Saturday we have sports in the mornings

where we go to Mandela Park and play basketball and football and. 

We actually have a pretty big group coming to it (that's kind

of how the fellowshipping with Callum and Kearan came to be.

 So yeah, good things are happening over here!:D

The other stuff that's been happening is our work with our Chinese

friends!! They are so funny. :) On Friday we went to a gym

with them all to play some badminton, which was pretty sweet!

Then afterwards they took us to one of their house and they cooked

some authentic Chinese food for us!! It was awesome!! :D We've begun

teaching them more and more about God and His ways. They loved the

Because of Him video. But yeah, as far as people we are teaching

that's about it!

There are loads of missionaries coming in for this next transfer. 

(it's that time of year!) There will be loads training as well. I

thought for sure I was probably going to get that call again but

nope!....the calls came out and I was not one of them. Dodged the

bullet. Haha JK....but seriously. ;D (Ah man...so we are currently in

city centre sitting at a bench writing these emails. As I was

pondering what to include in this weeks segment, a little girl walked

straight into a giant piece of metal and smacked her face on it.

She's mostly alright so I can say it was hilarious! Anyways, this

transfer has gone by pretty dang fast. At the end of this week, we

receive the news about transfers. Shall be interesting!! Well hey, I

do believe that concludes this session of the emails. 

Thanks so much for the love and support! :) 

Wish us luck...cheerio.

Elder Wright

Awesomeness at the end of the week...Callum was baptised!!!!

What's up guys!! Y'alright? 

Sorry about the shortness of all my emails last week. 

We didn't have too much time to email, unfortunately. 

It was a fun P-day though!

We went to a laser tag place with a few of the teams here in

Leicester. :) Today we should be going bowling or something. 

(The joys of having many missionaries!) 

This week was pretty dang good! 

As you know from last week, I am now with Elder Smith from

Jamaica. Kind of a cool tie as well, he knows Brayden Humphreys!!

(Member in my ward) Haha! 

Apparently they spoke at like a zone meeting or something 

before Smith came out on the mission. Haha:) 

Such a small world if you think about it..

 He's super cool! Really funny, relaxed, it's good stuff:)

He's just got that Jamaican vibe ya know. "Hey mon, no

problem!.....One Love🎶" Haha! He goes home in October so he's just

about done with the mish. But, the nice thing is, he is willing to work

if ya push him to it! :) Some missionaries just 

totally crash and burn at the end of the mission 

so it's good he's still willing to work!!

Overall not too too much happened other than 

awesomeness at the end of the week.....Callum was baptised!!!!

Yahoo!! :D It was so cool! He's doing well I believe. :) We had

most of the missionaries working in Leicester at his baptism and also

Elder Campbell came from Notts to see it. 

It was a neat experience for sure.

I always feel the Spirit super strong at baptisms. 

(If you have an opportunity to go to a baptism anytime soon...GO! It's great:)) 

But definitely was the highlight of the week for sure!:) 

He was found almost 2 months ago. 

His grandma is a less active member and the sisters 

in a different area found him and began teaching him.

Turns out he was in our area so we began to see him. He's pretty

legit! He didn't have a belief in God and his upbringing was quite

rough so it was cool to see him change and see his life change because

of the gosple!:) I guess the next step now is to try to get him to the

temple! Woo hoo!!

We were able to see the Chinese guys again as well! Unfortunately

they're not progressing too well at the moment. :/ We met them at this

super cool drum line thing in a park. They're way cool! It's just

a matter of being able to see them in a nice setting and be able to

talk more about the gospel and whatnot. 

Yup, life is pretty good right now! We will be trying to build up more

of a teaching pool as a district here so we shall see how that goes!

That's about it for now.

 Love ya peeps!

 Hope your weeks are jolly good! 

(I don't think I've heard anyone actually use that phrase

for real. Haha) 

Cheers mates!

Elder Wright

We got to have some SWEET Gelato!

Yo yo guys what's up!! 

How's it going?? Life is pretty good right now!
We've had a pretty major change in the last couple of days but we will
get into that a bit later.;) The week has been really good though!
I apologise as well but I don't have a ton of time to write so this
may be a bit brief;)

One thing that has been happening the past weeks is we've been
getting loads of Chinese students that were working with. And the cool
thing is they bring their friends as well and so it's like free
referrals. But yeah! So we've been teaching loads of Chinese. Anyways,
one night we decided to go out to eat with the Ni Hao's! It was loads
of fun:))

We got to have some SWEET Gelato! 

Flip! Time is running out! So, the big news...there was an ET
(emergency transfer) in Nottingham so Campbell got et'd there and I
now have Elder Smith from Montego Bay, Jamaica. He's way sick!! So
this should be good for sure:) Well hey, sorry but I gots to go!! 

Love ya loads! 

Cheers.

Elder Wright

What's up guys!! It's been a busy, busy week for sure! I think the

biggest news I have to share is........IM PAST MY YEAR MARK!!! I can't

believe it!:o Time absolutely flies! 

No doubt a lot has happened in the past year but it feels

 not so long ago that I was heading in

that plane leaving home, family, friends, and heading into the

unknown. But I can say that it has been an absolute great first year:)

It's all downhill from here...(time wise that is....probs not trials

wise though. Haha) For the year mark, we went to TGI Fridays to eat.

Burgers here are just not even close to the ones back home but they

were pretty decent!;) haha We told them it was my birthday as well.

(because in a very strange way, it kinda was. Oops! Haha) We burned

the shirt as well! There should be a video attached hopefully:D

It was a pretty eventful week! Before I forget...we finally got a

Persian Book of Mormon for the Iran Clan (3 Iranian guys I spoke of

last week). We went over to theirs and gave it to them. It literally

took us like 20 min to find the flipping Introduction! Haha In this

situation as well, they know so little English that they're basically

teaching themselves. We give them the Book, they read it amongst

themselves, and we dive in with Google Translate when we need to. Haha

They're such nice guys though! It'll be fun to see where it takes us:)

So we got some big news this week!! Some of the sister missionaries in

a different area have an investigator that is set up to be baptised on

August 20. They found out that he lives in our area so they had to

hand him off to us (sorry sisters!....blessings will come!) So it's

been super fun to be able to teach him! As of now, he seems like he's

still shooting for that and he's doing well:) Came to church with his

friend this week to our ward for the first time. We have some

legendary families in the ward that should be able to fellowship him

in well so that's good:)

We were blessed with some Chinese guys as well! One of them was a

potential that Campbell got a while back. His name is Allen. He saw us

walking in the street and came up to us waving to say "Herr-o!" (Sorry

but it's so true! Haha) We invited him to church and he brought two of

his friends to church as well! Tons of little miracles:) It was funny

as well because of the situation, we had to walk to church with all

the peeps. We arrived a bit late to church and some of the members

were wondering "Where are the missionaries!" But when we walked in

with like 5 people, it helped answer their questions.

 Blessings from God for sure!:)

Oh man...we met an absolute nutter this week!! His name is Gavinda.

 So we were walking through the park one day and we noticed this

guy standing all alone with this crystal ball in his hands like

playing with it. So we were like "Eh...what the heck. Let's do it!" We

asked him what he was doing. He explained that the crystal ball is for

levitation and he was meditating in a way. He had some time so we sat

down with him and spoke to him. We attempted to share the Book of

Mormon with him (and he accepted and wanted to read) but he quickly

got distracted and wanted to share with us what he thinks. He said

he's an extremely good healer and started going into how many guardian

angels he has. He pointed them out even!...he was like "I have one

there, one there, one there" as he's pointing to random places. Hahaha

He then described how with a spindle and a nut (and most likely hard

drugs as well) you can become some type of seer. 

Hahaha He was flipping nuts!

We had a fantastic lesson with the recent convert family from Italy!

They're so cool!! We taught them about the plan of salvation and it's

cool to see Eddy, the wife, learning all about the gospel. She wasn't

brought up with any beliefs or anything so this is a huge step in her

life. She's always been kinda scared about death and just overall all

the bad in life. We testified of the afterlife and how life continues.

By the end she was in tears!! The Spirit definitely told her that this

is true:) It's moments like that that make the mission so much fun!

But yeah, tomorrow we will teach them again and she's going to make a

nice Carbonara for us! Yes!!:D haha

So yeah, it was a good week for sure!! I'm loving it here:) Good area,

cool people. Mmmm:) Love ya loads! We shall speak to ya soon. 

Cheers!

Elder Wright