A random thing about England...there are a TON of spiders here!

Wazzzz up guys! This is Elder Wright. 

And things are going pretty decent over here:) 

Tis autumn time and sure as heck feels like it! It's starting to get cold! 

Especially while biking! It makes it feel like 20 degrees cooler.  

I'm beginning to be more and more thankful for heaters in the flat!! :)

Speaking of Flat....this is a picture of the inside.

And this is a picture of my view out the window.

We were finally able to meet with Decio and have a good lesson with him!! 

Yes! Haha! He's way cool. He just got sick which stinks but he's doing good. 

We taught him how to strengthen his faith through 

church, prayer, and reading. (CPR baby)! 

That was when I was on exchange with Elder Andrus from Utah. 

It was a good exchange. We talked to a lot of Chinese people 

that day because Elder Andrus has kind of an alarming 

obsession with the Chinese. Haha! But it was way cool! 

We also talked with a Jamaican who became a potential. 

Anyways, all of our other investigators are still the same...

  busy-ness and lack of desire:/ Pfft. 

If they only knew what they were missing! 

We did some good tracting action during the week.

Us making cookies on P-day!

 

Just to fill up some space on the email, 

I will tell you about some random things I have learned about Britain!! 

Woooo hoooo. Let's do this. 

Let's talk about the air. The air is very much humid and heavy. 

When the wind blows, it is a chill-to-the-bone wind. Very cold! 

There are also certain smells in the air that are 

unique to England....or at least Peterborough. 

These are the different smells in the air that I have smelled: 

Coal (when the fireplaces are cookin), streets smell like rubbish sometimes, 

countryside smells like cow manure and sheep, 

and the infamous smell of curry! (I love the smell of curry. Yes!) 

A little bit about the culture and how they eat... 

Very proper manners while eating. if you're not eating with manners, 

they're not afraid to point it out! 

They eat with a fork and knife for pretty much everything! 

Pizza, salad, chips, everything! Haha! 

We went to eat at a pizza place the other day and 

I just grabbed the slice and started stuffing. 

I then looked around and these people were all looking at me funny. 

Haha! Whoops! 

Meals are named a little different here. 

Lunch is called dinner (depending on who you talk to), 

dinner is called tea (depending on who you talk to also), 

and dessert is called pudding. 

Another random thing about England is there are a 

TON of spiders here. It is ridiculous! They are everywhere! 

No joke. There are all different varieties of them. 

Big ones, and tiny ones (like smaller than ants). It's crazy!

No wonder Ron from Harry Potter was so afraid of spiders!! Haha!

Anyways, that's about it for now. Life as a missionary is truly great!:) 

Sooo cool. Hard...don't get me wrong. But very cool. :) 

Well, have a great week! Enjoy life. 

Thank you so much for all the support. 

Cheers! :)

The guy that plays R2D2 in Star Wars lives in Yaxley, which is in our area!!

Hello!

This week was just alright! 

Temperature in the air has dropped significantly. 

It's starting to get pretty chilly! 

Apparently, it's supposed to get a ton colder so I'm

going to enjoy the last bit of warmth while it lasts! 

The leaves are changing and it's super pretty. 

So, I apologize now for the shorter letter.

Nothing too interesting happened this week!

The work is about the same. We did a bit more tracting this week!

We found that we have a lot more success when we pray 

for specific streets and really try to follow promptings from the Spirit. 

T'was way cool! While tracting, this freakin huge guy answered 

the door. A physical specimen really. Haha! Turns out he used 

to play professional rugby for Northampton Premiere! 

And.... he's a potential investigator now!

We've been trying to meet with him but he's been 

busy with family (which is good in a way!) 

Random fact(?), I heard that the guy that plays R2D2 in 

Star Wars lives in Yaxley, which is in our area!!

Whether that's true or not, I have no idea.

 But maybe we'll have the opportunity to teach R2D2!!;) 

haha! Anyways, 

we met with some less actives in the week. 

Our investigators are very busy. We did find a

couple of new ones though. We dropped Sergeis 

again cause we could never get ahold of him. 

But every time we see him, it's randomly in

the street! We saw him yesterday on accident. 

He's actually been reading parts of the Book of Mormon 

which is way cool! He said he's been enjoying it:) 

Just goes to show that not everything is how it

looks on the surface. Also, we had a lesson with our 

Czech investigator Peter. Language barriers man.... Haha!

 We retaught him the restoration because he didn't understand. 

He thought the BoM was our version of the Bible. 

We taught him using the pamphlets in his language and he

understood better so that's good! Other than that though, nothing

noteworthy really happened. It was just kind of an average week.

We have another American that moved into the ward! 

He was catching us up on election stuff, sports, misc. stuff. Good stuff:) 

One night as we were heading home, our homeless friend Tony 

asked us to guard his stuff so he could go use the toilet.

 So we just stood there making sure his stuff was ok! 

I guess he trusts us so that's good!:)

But sadly, that's about the extent of my week. 

Nothing super funny happened. 

Sorry! Anyways, I hope all is well:) 

I will talk to ya next week! 

Cheers!

Elder Wright

It's like, "Dudes! Your salvation is on the line!"

Hey guys! 

So, this week wasn't very eventful, but it was alright. :) 

I officially hit my 2 month mark on Tuesday! 

The weather this week has been weird, man. 

Monday was very rainy. We biked a lot too and got soaked! 

Tuesday we biked about 20 miles. The less awesome part 

about it was it was barely raining all day yet the air temperature 

was still pretty warm. So, you wear a coat to stay dry 

from the rain, but you get super sweaty because 

of the coat combined with the humidity. Fun stuff!

 Then the weather kind of tamed down a bit. 

It started being sunny for a couple days. 

It's been quite warm for October apparently so that's kinda cool! 

 Just in the past couple days the temperature 

has been starting to drop. Time to whip out the winter gear! 

Tuesday we biked to a town called Whittlesey. 

The bike route goes through some pretty countryside! 

We saw a double rainbow while biking there. 

I felt like I was in the movie The Best Two Years when 

riding on the bike path! Haha! Wednesday we had zone meeting

 in Leicester. It was way cool! We had some training on using 

family history while finding people. There was a statistic 

that said that if a recent convert makes it to the temple 

1-3 years after baptism, they're 80% more likely not to 

fall away from the church. That's a huge percentage! 

We applied that into our finding this week a little bit. 

They gave us family history cards to hand out.

 We had a Philipeno dinner one night. She made SOOO 

much food, it was funny. She first brought out this 

big ol' dish filled with Pahdt Thai. Then, she brought 

out a big slab of beef. Then, a giant plate of sausage. 

Haha! It was awesome! She also made a dessert for us. 

Afterwards, she packed up the rest of the food

 (which was still like 3 days of food), 

and gave it to us. Hahaha! It was great! :) 

There definitely is no shortage of food here in 

Peterborough that is for sure!

The work here is still kinda slow. For the training on finding, 

they told us to use a lot of different types of 

finding...not just GQing ("Golden Question"-Basically street contacting) 

So we've been going by less actives in the ward, going 

through former investigators, tracting. It's fun to mix it up! 

It's just slow to see results really. Our investigators 

right now are very "busy". It can definitely be aggravating sometimes. 

It's like, "Dudes! Your salvation is on the line!"

 We have a new investigator named David! He's from Czech Republic. 

He has never been religious and just recently went through a rough time. 

He seems pretty solid! He'll be tough because 

he literally has no idea about anything related to God. 

But I'm way excited for him! :) Decio (our Portuguese investigater) 

will be returning from holiday this weekend so I'm hoping 

we'll be able to start working with him! That's how it's going though! :) 

Remember Pat the Chat? 

The guy that won't ever stop talking? 

 Usually we have a dinner appointment with him every Tuesday. 

He takes us to this Chinese buffet. Anyways, 

his thought processes are wacked. He used to be a pro boxer 

and I think he took a few too many blows to the head! 

He's single now, and is probably about 40yrs old. 

He told us about this time he fell in love with a sister from the ward. 

She eventually was going to move back to Ireland 

and invited him to the airport to wave her off. 

So, he started to Coventry, and all the sudden his car broke down. 

He decided he needed to see her very bad and starting 

running the 60 miles to Coventry. Hahaha 

What the heck was going through his mind??? 

"Hmmm....car broken. Train? No. Bus? No. Running? Yes!!" 

Yeah...that's just a taste of Pat. 

That's about it for my week! :) Things are great with the new missionaries! 

They're all way cool:) We have the biggest district in the mission so that's cool! 

Anyways, I hope all is well. Say hi to America for me. I miss her. Stay sweet! 

Cheers!

Elder Wright

Conference was the bomb!! Can I get an amen??

Hey guys! 

So, this week was alright! 

I am officially done with my first transfer of my mission! 

Pretty crazy eh? It flew by! At some times, 

too fast and at other times, too slow. 

But for the most part, it was great:) 

I've learned more in the past 2 months 

than basically ever before. 

 I'm still being trained in Pete'. 

There are a couple changes though. 

Sister Banchini was replaced with 

Sister Thompson, and her trainee, Sister Romo 

(trio of Tenney, Romo, Thompson) 

Sister Banchini left to Nottingham! 

And then we got another set of elders here in Peterborough! 

Elders Jones (Mesa, Arizona) and Du Plessis (South Africa). 

They're way cool! It'll be fun to work with them as well. 

As a result of them coming in, 

Elder Ashcraft and I lost a lot of referrals 

because they were in their area. But yeah! Good stuff:)

We had some training on member visits this week. 

We were encouraged to visit as many members homes 

in the week as possible, but to keep the 

visits no longer than ten minutes.

 We were just to share a spiritual thought. 

So, we've been stopping by members homes! 

We are trying to get referrals from them. 

We did some street contacting this week,

 and did a lot of less active work. 

Charles and Danny (Old guy brothers from last week) 

didn't end up making it to conference though:/ 

That was a huge bummer! 

Not a super eventful week but it was alright. 

We have an investigator named Decio. 

He has finished his night shift work routine so he can 

start seeing us a lot more! He seems way solid! I'm excited:)  

My week started off not so good...but ended up being great! 

I'll tell you why. 

On Wednesday, we biked down to a town called Orton. 

We were going to contact some referrals we had received. 

One of which was a man named Jonathan. 

He was a referral given to us by a man we had met. 

We didn't know beforehand really, but we showed up to their 

house and found out very quickly that they were 

Born Again Christians. Not only was he a Born Again Christian 

but he was a preacher/missionary. 

For those that don't know, Born Agains believe that it is solely 

by the grace of God that we are saved. 

Basically just believe and you're saved...not through your works. 

Anyways, that visit quickly turned into a bash on the Mormon church! 

He was finding all sorts of scriptures and references 

trying to disprove the Book of Mormon and Joseph Smith. 

We left his house with just a bad feeling. 

And honestly, I thought a lot about it during the week. 

It was definitely a trial of my faith. 

Afterwards, I was talking with Elder Ashcraft about it. 

He gave me some reassuring words of encouragement that helped a ton. 

He told me about his first few times people just bashed him down. 

Satan seriously has a strong grip on some people. 

But the thing that helped me the most through all of it was 

thinking about times in my life where I knew I had felt the Spirit. 

The good feelings that come from listening to prophets and apostles, 

while reading the Book of Mormon, and the peace at the 

temple are all undeniable feelings that tell me this is true. 

It has been the biggest help! 

Conference was the bomb!! Can I get an amen?? 

Here are some of the themes/impressions I got from conference: 

Hold fast to the simple truths of the gospel of Jesus Christ, 

have close relationship with the Spirit, 

be bold and courageous in defending accusations toward the church, 

stand up and testify, don't jump on the band wagon of 

worldly opinions and views, maintain great faith through trials. 

Some of my favorite talks:

 (Uchtdorf Sat a.m., Cook, Holland, Stanfill, Bennett, Uchtdorf priesthood)

It seems like a few were talking about how the worlds views on things are changing. 

These are some thoughts I had on the subject: 

Don't jump on the band wagon of worldly opinions and views. 

Their ways may bring a pin prick of happiness and pleasure 

in comparison to eternity, but living the gospel of Jesus Christ brings 

the purest happiness anyone can feel, which eventually leads 

to a never ending state of that happiness in the presence of our 

families and Father in Heaven. 

We met kind of a sketchy guy on the street. 

We asked him what made him happy in his life and he said "Money".

 He said, "Money buys me pleasure. 

When I run out of pleasure, I buy more pleasure" 

(referring to some not so good things) 

It's so sad! 

Some people have no idea what they're missing out on! 

But hey, that is why the church sends missionaries! :) 

Our job is to find those people and share what we know to be true, 

in hopes of them being able to feel that same happiness. 

Haha sorry! Conference just pumped me up. 

It was a much needed spiritual rejuvenation. 

Sad to say...this was probably the first time that I have ever payed full 

attention to conference. Haha! And man....it was great! 

That's my story about the week! :) 

It was all a learning experience, that's for sure. 

Here's a funny thing that happened this week. 

We stopped this Polish mom that was walking on the street with her kids. 

We got talking to her about her beliefs and stuff. 

She was pretty happy to be talking with us! 

We then asked her if she has ever heard of Mormons before. 

Her eyes widened and asked "Wait...you're Mormons??" 

Without even waiting for a reply, she started shaking her 

head "no" and walked away fast with her kids. It was just such a 

huge change in her when she found out we were Mormon! 

Sometimes....rejection can be funny. Haha :)

Anyways, it's about that time. That was my week! 

Hopefully you enjoyed the stories and whatnot! 

Maybe you even learned something new. 

Haha Who knows! 

Thank you all for the support:) 

Stand strong in the gospel folks! It is the best. :) Cheers! 

Wazzz Up Guys! This!.....Is Elder Wright.

Wazzz up guys! This!....is Elder Wright.

 

We had a pretty good week!

Elder Ashcraft had a "self reliance" meeting 

he had to go to on Tuesday this week in Birmingham. 

While he went there, I went on splits in Loughborough. 

We had some good times over there.:) 

We had a lesson with one of their investigators named Pete. 

He's a pretty good guy! Big ol body builder guy. 

He's going through a rough time right now. 

He's feeling kinda worthless. 

His birthday is this week so they're going to all

make him a cake! That'll be good. He's a good guy.

This is a cathedral and cemetery. 

The work in our area is going alright! 

We FINALLY met with our solid investigator. 

He kind of hid from us for like a month. Haha! 

He was a solid one from the past elders that were here. 

He dropped off the face of the earth, 

until we met with him on Friday. 

We had a good lesson with him! 

We also saw him on Sunday at sacrament meeting!:) 

We are hopefully going to get him to a baptism this 

weekend and show him what it's all about. 

Hopefully, it will clear up any "unknowns" of anything

he may have. So that's good!:) 

Hopefully he can start progressing back onto the path. 

We've been doing a lot of member work again this week!

We stopped by referrals that were given to us by members. 

It was awesome...so we told Sandra Swepson that 

we stopped by all of the referrals she gave us 

and she was just so happy! Haha! It was sweet.

The members paid us a nice compliment. 

They said that the past few missionary teams 

have kind of been "rubbish" because they would never

really talk with the members or anything. They said that we're

doing great and a lot of the members are 

quite impressed with how we are happy and try to 

talk with all the members! 

That was super nice of them:) 

We also tried to stop by a less active guy named Charles. 

We caught him just in time as he and his brother 

were going into his house. They're a couple of old guys. 

Super cool! His brother is named Danny (good name;D ) 

and he's from London. Danny is a non member 

and Charles is less active. We happened to get into their home! 

Nice fellas! 

Danny was very impressed with missionaries and what we do. 

It turns out that the only reason that Charles is less active 

is because he moved and lost contact with the church!! 

He's just been waiting for like 30 years for someone to say something! 

Haha! We invited him to General Conference and they both 

genuinely said that they would love to come! 

We're hoping that will be a good opportunity to both

introduce the church to Danny and also to reactivate Charles. 

So yeah!:) Good stuff!

The weather here has been pretty dang good the past few days! 

We went and picked apples at Sandra's house again 

and it was just blue skies all day long! So great:) 

As I mentioned before, the Swepsons usually 

have us for dinner every Sunday. 

Well, they invited us to do what they call a "party piece". 

You basically just do something that you're good at.

Show off a talent. Anyways, we decided to do a weird little circus

thing. I played some creepy clown/circus music on the piano while

Elder Ashcraft juggled! They got a kick out of it:) 

They said it was the best party piece they have ever seen! Haha:P 

Then I played the Maple Leaf Rag for them:) It was so nice to play the piano! 

Anyways, it was a good week:) England is the best. 

I'm still trying to get used to British humour. Haha! 

WAY sarcastic, in kind of a rude way sometimes. 

But it's pretty funny!:) Well, that's about it for this week! 

Oh! We found out that Elder Ballard 

will be coming to visit our mission in November!! 

That'll be so cool! 

Have a fantastic week!:)

Elder Wright

"Forget Yourself and Go To Work"

Sup guys! 

Things are going good! T'was a good week in Peterborough:) Long week..but good! 

Let's see here...earlier in the week we went to Birmingham for a follow up training meeting. 

It was for all the greenies and their trainers. 

We were basically following up on what we've learned so far. 

It was good! I got to see some friends from the MTC and catch up with them. 

It's crazy how much of a friendship you can build with the elders in your MTC group! It's great! 

This week was full of trying different types of "finding". 

We tried hard to build good relationships with the ward members.

The members here are fantastic. 

We helped a lady pick pears from her pear tree.

We also helped a member (who's a teacher) with grading papers.

 Haha! I never thought I would be grading papers while on the mission, but hey! 

We tried to receive referrals from ward members. 

With those, it's super important to try to contact them right away and get back to the members. 

We did that a couple times in the week. But yeah! Lots of member work this week:) 

The work is still a little slow in our area! Grrr. 

But it helps to always look on the bright side of things.

Our investigators are still "busy" all the time. 

One of them might be in trouble with the law because of some minor offences. Haha Poor guy!

 My comp was super stressed out because our numbers were low again. But we're trying!!

The zone leaders were rebuking him for thinking about the numbers.

  

So here's a little lesson that I have learned. 

I'm embarrassed to say that I was thinking of myself in this situation.

 I was thinking about how I want to see success in our area and we just aren't. 

The Stamford Elders (in our district) aren't doing very well in their area either. 

Anyways, we started a fast one day this week. 

At first, I wanted to fast to help OUR area, unfortunately partially for pride reasons. 

My trainer said we should fast for the Stamford Elders so they can see some good things in their area. 

IMPORTANT LESSON. 

While on the mission, you CANNOT think of yourself. 

It gets you absolutely nowhere and will be a long two years if you're always thinking about you. 

Pres. Hinckley, (who was in my mission!:D) was also experiencing this same kind of thing. 

So he writes home, kind of complaining about this, and his dad sends him a simple letter saying, 

"Forget yourself and go to work." 

This quote is great!! 

Thanks to my trainer for teaching me this important lesson:)

So, now for some funnies. 

One day, we biked a ways out of town to contact some less actives. 

Well, my plastic bike pedal was kind of tight and didn't spin very well.

So I thought I would just bust through it anyways. 

It worked fine!....until the friction of it all MELTED the pedal off!! 

So I had to pedal back without one. Haha!

 We also saw some Pagan witches in town! It was kind of freaky. 

But yeah. Here is a picture of them. 

Ohhhh! We had kind of a crazy morning on the morning that we headed to Birmingham. 

It starts when I am half asleep, and my comp gets up to go restart the water heater. 

In my stupor, I hear a small explosion and see a flash of light! 

Apparently my comp put the cap to the water heater on a tad sideways and blew up the fuse! Haha!

 So we had cold showers. 

Then we head to the cash machines to take some money out for train tickets. 

When I put in the temporary debit card I was using, it said it was no longer valid and ate my card!

 I was like "What the flip!!" So I had to borrow some personal money from Elder Ashcraft. 

Now we're late for the train.

 While biking, I'm flying down the way and go round a corner and almost nailed another guy on a bike. 

We both slammed on the brakes and were sliding all over!  

Anyways, we finally arrive to the station. 

After waiting in queues for a while, we're SPRINTING to catch our train. 

Luckily, we just barely made the train!! Within seconds. 

It was an interesting and exciting morning! 

Well, that's about all I have for this past week! Things are good! 

I hope you all have a bright week over in the states:) 

Cheers!

"The days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days." How true that is.

Hey hey!! 'Twas a good week! Man, time is flying. 

I don't know if I said this before or not but this is a quote from my trainer. 

"The days feel like weeks and the weeks feel like days." 

How true that is. 

Days can seem so long but you look back and can't believe it's been a week. Crazy stuff!! 

Weather has been weird. It was starting to get pretty cool around here, 

then out of nowhere, it was warm and clear for a few days in a row. Eventually the rain came back. 

Surprise, surprise!;) haha 

This is my church building.

Members here are doing well! I love them all! Such cool people. 

There's an American in the ward that's here for the army. 

He told us he can get us American groceries if we want. (Freak yes!!!) 

My comp and I were pretty excited about that:) The people are so generous! 

We had a dinner appointment everyday for the last week. Such great people!:) All of which has been good. 

Well...except one. 

So, here's the story. He's an older guy, into science and is pretty weird. 

Anyways, we had a DA with him this week. With his house, you have to walk 

up some stairs to get to the main part of the house. We started up the stairs and we first kinda smell something weird. 

It's a little dirty. Not too bad. As we walk up the stairs, it just gets terrible. It was such a bad smell! 

My comp and I described it as a dirty, diseased, hamster that drowned in his own urine 

and then was buried in the depths of an old fully used kitty litter box. It was unbearable! 

He was in preparing dinner and we were just trying sooo hard not to bust out laughing!! :) 

Hahaha It was sooo funny! 

We had microwaved steak with some cold chips and a side of nasty bacon. 

The bacon here is just not even close to the same as back in the states. 

The rest of that night, my comp and I were just burping up that bacon stuff. It was hilarious!:) 

We had a zone meeting in Leicester (lester) this week. We went by train.(I'm reading my tiny bible)

Zone meeting was awesome!:) Then I went on exchanges to Stamford. Man...Stamford is posh. 

A bunch of rich old people live there. 

You see a lot of Maseratis and Jaguars in the cobblestone streets. Old churches everywhere. Cool town! 

The missionary work there is VERY slow. I feel bad for them. 

But while there, I had my first fish n chips! Sooo good:) Battered cod, chips, then salt and vinegar over the top of it. 

Mm mm mmmm. Haha:) I don't think I'm getting too too fat though. Haha;P 

The work is still going! STILL trying to build our teaching pool. There are good days and there are bad days. 

Some days, it just seems like NOONE wants to listen. Other days are much better!:) 

Sometimes it's a little frustrating. Our numbers haven't been super great but it's important 

not to get caught up in the numbers. Obviously it's good to have success in that area, 

but if you really feel like you're trying your best, that is success in itself. 

As missionaries, our purpose is to 

"Invite others to come unto Christ by helping them receive the restored gospel." 

If we're doing that, were being successful. 

Funny thing. So, one of our investigators is a black guy from Portugal. 

His English isn't very good, so we sometimes have to teach him with a translator or by 

switching our iPads to Portuguese so he can read. Anyways, he came to church this last Sunday. 

In elders quorum, there's a man with down syndrome and he was called on to say the prayer. 

In the prayer, he said "Thank you, God, for this black face." (Referring to our investigator) hahaha 

This is when you are happy that your investigator doesn't understand English very well! Haha:) 

Well, that's the main stuff that went on this week!

 I'm happy to be serving the Lord! It's the greatest:) Thank you for the support. 

I love you all! Until next week.. :)

Elder Wright