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

Oh! We learned that Jesus likes pancakes on Tuesday.

Hey all!! It has been a crazy week! 

Loads of change, getting used to new faces, people, streets, etc. 

But hey, it's a ton of fun:D 

As always, let's talk weather. It has been crazy!! We've

actually had 4 days-ish of straight sun! It's been awesome!! :D

As you know I am now in Leicester! 

I had to say goodbye to all the members in Chelmsley which did kinda suck. 

They're like a part of me! I'll miss them for sure. 

But hey, new adventures ahead:)

Leicester has been pretty sweet so far! We live right in city centre

in this pretty cool studio flat (On the first floor. Fist pump!) It is

so different being in a city! I've forgotten what it's like. 

It's way cool! We have a Uni in our area as well so there are

loads of young people (and tons of Chinese. Yay Ni Hao's! :)) 

It's been pretty great so far. 

Plus in Leicester, there are a total of 14 missionaries! 

It's quite opposite from previous areas! Super cool. :)

Oh! We learned that Jesus likes pancakes on Tuesday. 

Watch the video and you see what I mean. 

Elder Campbell is indeed from Scotland. From a little town

outside Edinburgh called Dalkeith. The accent...reminds me a bit of

Mike Myers. ;D Legendary. He's pretty chill! We get along well!

Actually, it's kind of funny because on my 2nd day here, we received

a "mini missionary". He's a youth from Coventry that legit got set

apart as a mini missionary and came over to us to work with us for a

week! It's been fun dragging him around, introducing him to

everything :) The district is pretty sweet! We have us, Elder Lewis

(Virginia--way sick) who is receiving a greenie this week!, and

Sisters Horwath (Switzerland) and Dignos (Philippenes). Hopefully

things go alright together!

 Campbell and a family in the ward played a little trick on me.

 It was hilarious. So, he told me that there was this

polygamist family here in Westcotes. They don't have a congregation

around here, so they come to Westcotes ward and just don't take the

sacrament. Anyways, he took me to go meet them! I was thinking "Man,

this is gonna be way awkward." In reality they have triplets, two

identical and the other looks different. They used that to tell me

that the twins were Hannah's and his (his actual wife) and the other

was Charlottes and his (Hannah's sister). It was SO believable and

they just got talking about it and stuff. Finally, they just busted out

in laughs and couldn't handle it anymore!! Haha! It was hilarious. :) 

The ward here seems pretty cool! Haven't met the bishop yet

because he's on holiday. But everyone else so far is pretty great. :) 

Big-ish ward with about 100-115 that come out on a Sunday.

We had a sweet experience teaching this guy from Africa named Kole. He

was a referral from some sister missionaries. We met up all

together in a park and taught this him. It was a way cool experience!!

He's open and loves Christ! I'm excited to go further with him. :D

Teaching here has proven to be a bit different. Like I said

earlier, it's different teaching Chinese. They aren't brought up with

any beliefs, so they have no concept of what God even is.

Usually we dedicate the first lesson to teaching about the

Godhead/prayer. But it's cool, because we have to learn to teach very,

VERY, simply. I think it'll be a good time here in Leicester though. 

I'm excited to see what will come:)

I do believe that is about it for now. "That'll do donkey, that'll

do." (Yes, Campbell did that for me! Haha) 

So yeah, we shall speak to y'all next week! 

Hope all is fair for ya. Cheers!

Elder Wright

I'll be packing the bags and heading east to Leicester!! (Pronounced "Lester"...yes like creepy dude Lester)

WAZ up my peeps! :) 

So hey, I apologize in advance for the shortness of this email! 

I will explain after I mention some of the things in the week. ;) 

The weather the past two days has been delectable! :D 

Sunshine, heat....Mmm. So that's new!..;)

Let's see here...Tuesday was pretty sweet stuff. As you know, every

Tuesday we go out on splits with our WML and someone else from the

ward. Well, I had a nice time with that returned missionary, James

Heath! It was a ton of fun! While doing finding with him, we just

talked about missions and how cool they are. :) That was pretty

fun. After that, we had an ordeal with some chavs...flipping Chavsley

Hood (Chelmsley Wood).

After district meeting Thursday, I decided I'd work with Elder

Opheikens to help him out with finding and whatnot. He came

here and we tried talking to loads of people and we had a fun time! :)

We stopped a group of three guys in the park that were chilling

out. We got talking to them...one was kinda half believer half not,

one was agnostic, and one was atheist. It was a pretty fun time

talking to those guys! Loads of different points of view.

Also, I'll tell ya about a funny/awkward moment we had. :P We

received a challenge to start playing a video on the iPad right as the

door opens when tracting. We decided to try it to see how it went and

boy was that awkward...hahaha. Right as the door opened it was an

older lady and we began to play the "Because of Him" video. Like 5

(very long) seconds into it, she was like "Uhhh....can I help you??"

Haha! Then we told her what we were doing. It was just funny:) 

The simple joys in missionary work.

Sweetness...so let me tell you about the transfer dodge!! We got the

calls and I am leaving Chelmsley Wood after 7 months! I will

definitely miss it here...I do love it. :) But, I'm also ready for this

change. In our district, the other Elders are staying the same.

Elder Matus will be here and he's getting Elder Hoffman (South

Africa). As for me...I'll be packing the bags and heading east to

Leicester!! (Pronounced "Lester"...yes like creepy dude Lester) I'll

be serving in the Westcotes Ward (My area is Westcotes A). I'll be DL

over there for a big district (Ahh! Kinda nervous. And I'm replacing

the former AP DL over there...no pressure). So yeah, I'm excited for

sure! Oh yeah, my companion. I'll be serving with a Mr. Elder Campbell

from Edinburgh, Scotland!:) I've heard he's a cool lad...been out for

about 4 months. Should be fun! :D

Well anyways, wish me luck! :o 

Ether 12:27 is always a nice comforting scripture when feeling inadequate!;) 

Love ya guys loads! 

We shall speak in a weeks time! Ta!

Elder Wright

I love music, and few things are better than having a successful improv jam sesh!

Hey, hey!! What is up my peeps! :) 

This week was pretty good!! Not bad at all. 

The weather has been pretty much the same really. 

Nothing new there..just craziness. 

So, yeah, no need to really waste time with that

this week. ;)

We had a lot of cool things happen!!

 We've REALLY been trying to find new people to

teach but it can be a struggle sometimes. Well we thought about it and

figured it would be a good idea to look for a miracle through former

investigators! One day, we were going by formers, probably a list of like

20 peeps. Anyways, long story short, the very last person we went by,

the lady answered. She said that right now she's in a rough time in

her life. We were like "Hmmm...Plan of Salvation!" Taught her and set

up a time to see her Tuesday night this week! Woo hoo! 

Miracles:D

Thursday we had some zone meeting action! It was super good and

spiritual as always but I want to talk about something we did during

lunch after it. There was an elder from Idaho (Elder Fullmer) who was

over at the piano playing some stuff (he's way good by the way!) I

went over and we were talking for a while and I was listening to him

jam. Part of the way through we decided to jam together. So we decided

on a key and went for it!! It was a TON of fun! :D 

I love music and few things are better than having a 

successful improv jam sesh! :) 

Haha! Anyways, that was just a bit of fun!

After zone meeting, Elder Matus and I stayed in Coventry because we

were on exchanges with the ZLs. I was with Elder Smith (it brought us

back to the good ol times in Nottingham!:D) It was awesome! We had

some good times on exchange! :) I'll mention one experience...we were

knocking doors and came to this one. The lady answered and right away

was like "I'm Catholic and am very busy!" I don't know what we did or

said but somehow we got talking to her...eventually it led into the

gospel and we taught her the entire Restoration and she was totally

interested!:D It was awesome stuff for sure.

Saturday night was way fun! Our investigator, Teresa, asked if she

could take us out to eat! So, we were like "Flip yeah!!" Haha!

 She took us to this restaurant called Nando's. 

Oh. My. Such good food!!:D

It's this Portuguese chain restaurant. They sell some of the best

chicken in chips! Ah man:) They have all these different sauces that

you pour over the chicken and chips that just makes it to die for.

Mmmmmm.. Anyways, she's still doing well! She's coming to church

regularly and enjoys it a ton. Unfortunately, because of the setting at

Nandos, we weren't able to testify strongly about baptism and put her

on a date. :/ But! We're seeing her again very soon so we shall keep you

posted:)

Church was super good! I have exciting news as well. I'm sure I've

told ya but there are three missionaries serving from the ward right

now. Well...not anymore because one of them just finished!! :) He was

serving in Switzerland. It's been way cool to talk with him since he's

been back (which is less than a week). He's still trying to get used

to it all. He says he was ready to come home but he really misses

the mission! He bore a moving testimony in church. Since being a

missionary, I feel I can relate to the testimony of a

missionary/missionary work. It's such a great work!! 

Sometimes I can't put it all into words. :)

I think that's about it for the week! T'was good. :) This is the last

full week of the transfer. Next Sunday night I find out if I'm staying

or if I'm going! But yeah, keep up the goodness over in da States:)

Thanks everyone! 

Peace. Love. Cheerz.

Elder Wright

After a nice bike ride through the country, we went back and ate at a chippie....living the dream!

What's up!! How it goin?? :)

 This was an alright week I guess! 

It started off pretty slow, but eventually it picked up a bit! 

We experienced some crazy, crazy weather earlier this week. 

A random hail storm in the middle of the week!

It was very crazy because literally 30 

min after it happened it was sunny and hot. 

But ya know...

that's how it is over here! Haha!

 I took a video so hopefully it gets to ya! :)

Sorry if this email isn't too long.

I'm struggling to think of anything spectacular to talk about. 

We had zone conference this week with President!:) 

We received good training on "pulling the yoke together"

...whether it's with companion, the ward members, 

literally in any phase of the work you should all be working

together to help pull it along! It was good stuff.

We had a real fun Pday today! We biked with one of the members out

past a town called Maxstoke to see the nice English countryside.

Mmmm....never gets old! I'll send some pics I took;) After a nice bike

ride through the country, we went back and ate at a chippie....living

the dream! Haha I love England.

Not too many stories to share this week unfortunately. The work is

still going. We've taught Paul and we're happy to hear that

he's living the Word of Wisdom as of now, so that's way cool! 

STILL struggling to commit to church but other than that...he's way good!:)

And Teresa is well also...still progressing! :) We're hoping to have a

good conversation about baptism with her so wish us luck!

Yup...so sorry this is about it really!:/ 

Better luck next week though.

 I hope you all are having a grand old summer!

 Enjoy the week and best wishes:) 

Ta ta.

Elder Wright

We had a fun miracle this week which reconfirmed to me that God is very much involved in His work.

Wazz up my friends!:) 

This week was pretty dang good to be honest!!

There was loads of awesomeness going on! 

But as always, let's talk about the rubbish we call weather. 

This week has been sooo wet!! 

It literally didn't stop raining for 3-4 days. 

During one of those days, it was flooding pretty bad. 

I was with a member on splits and came across

a car stuck in a river of water on the road. 

We got out of the car and helped push the guy out! 

 My shoes are slowly drying over the radiator in our flat;)

 It's been alright though! Fun adventures.

One day we decided to switch things up a bit, so we biked to a town

called Coleshill which we don't normally go to.

 It's a posh little English village. 

Not a ton happened there though! 

They were very rich people (who can be somewhat prideful sometimes). 

One of the old guys was wearing a toupee...I didn't know people 

still wore those for reals!! Haha! But yeah, it was nice to have something new!:)

We had two great lessons with our investigators. 

First lesson was with Paul. He's still doing alright! 

He's continuing to read and think about the gospel a lot, 

but he's struggling at the moment to commit to coming to church.

We set a goal with him to shoot for next week, so let's hope!! 

We also taught Teresa one night (who came to church again!) 

with our bishop and helped her with some of her concerns. 

If we can see her regularly and have her come to church regularly, it'll be great!:) 

We taught Thomas Witts again but unfortunately he's on a low point right

now. Loads of concerns about certain things. 

We eventually just testified of the Saviour and advised him 

to make sure Christ is the foundation of his testimony! 

We showed him the Mormon Message "Mountains to Climb"

(which is great...I would highly recommend watching it;)) The Spirit

was very strong in that lesson! Let's just hope on his own time he can

keep on pushing through it! :)

We had a fun miracle this week as well, which reconfirmed to me that

God is very much involved in His work. 

We were on a bus to go to the Coleshill train station to exchange 

with the Nuneaton Elders. On the bus, we got a call from 

the other guys saying they missed their train.

We decided to get off and knock on some doors. We followed our

feelings after praying for guidance and came to a little stretch of

three houses. The first one.....nada. The second one.....yyyeeee-no.

Then the third one....we got talking to this really cool guy. We

talked about his religious life and answered some of his questions. We

told him a bit about the Plan of Salvation and set up a time to see

him the next week! He's a cool guy!:) It was super cool and it all

started with those other guys missing their train. Because of that, we

met our new investigator. The Lord truly either leads us to those that are ready

 or puts them into our path:)

We had a few things to try to help the district out this week! First,

we had district meeting. I focused the training on fear vs. faith,

then we set the goals for the coming transfer. We had good input from

all the Elders in the district and it motivated us to work real hard

this next transfer!:) Then we had some district finding in Nuneaton to

try to help them out (the ZLs showed up too. It was way fun to have 6

missionaries walking around in their town centre talking to people!).

And, finally I had exchange with Elder Davis (from my group) which was

pretty good stuff!

I think that's about it really! If I remember anything else that was

noteworthy, well...I won't be able to let you know if it comes to me. ;)

 Sorry mates. Until next week! 

I love ya guys and hope you're enjoying the summer over there! 

(By the way...it's June 20th??! Where does the time go..) 

Cheers guys! :)

Elder Wright

June 13, 2016

Sup peeps!! I'm back! 

This week went by way fast..it seems like I was
just here writing my email last week! Crazy crazy:) 

This week was pretty good!! It's been pretty dang warm that's for sure! 

Some of the members are like "You guys are from Arizona and Mexico, 

you should be used to this!" There's a couple things about this. Firstly, I never
used to bike around for miles in suit trousers and a full backpack.
And lastly, it's a different kind of heat here. Arizona is a dry
oven heat and over here it's humid, which makes it seem much hotter
than the temperature actually is. So yeah! The nice thing is the rain
and clouds will cool ya off a bit:D

It was nice, last Monday we didn't have a dinner appointment set.
Right as we got to our flat, a member called us and invited us over
for dinner. Yay blessings!! They're into the Lord of the Rings
as well, so I got the chance to go on their keyboard and play some of
the Lord of the Rings songs! Even better about it, you could set it to choirs and strings, which added to the effect! We were cracking
up:D haha It was a good ol time...

On Tuesday, we biked over to Water Orton to go by an older family we
tracted into a while back. They are way cool people! They love going
over to America and seeing the different places. We talked a while
about San Francisco (one of my favourite places) and about the BUSH
MAN! Hahaha They were like "Yeah we'd just sit and watch him scare
people forever." I was like "Me too!!" Haha They gave us a big bag of
Jack Links beef jerky, which was delicious. :D That is something
that I have missed...they don't believe in beef jerky here.

There was a certain morning that I was struggling a bit...the day
was going slow, not much happening, so we decided to lift our spirits
by going to visit Godfrey, that newly returned member. And boy was
that a pick me up! It was nice to be able to just explore the gospel
with this member. His motivation and energy about the gospel was
pretty motivating and inspiring! That legend of a man. :) Lately we've
been sharing points from a certain Ensign talk that I would highly
recommend to you guys if you want to think more about happiness! It's
from February 2016 and its entitled "What Can the Book of Mormon Teach
Us About Happiness?" It's got some cool principles! :)

One day, Elder Matus was leading me to a street that he had picked to
tract. Along the way, I kinda got thinking about something. I had no
idea where he was taking me, and in my mind it made the journey seem
longer, because I had no idea where the finishing point would be. I
don't know if you've ever noticed that before! It's similar with
hiking. If you've never done the trail and aren't too familiar with
the distance and whatnot, it can make the journey a bit harder on the
mind! Well it's the same with the mortal journey! If you have a good
view of where you want to end up, that finishing line, it can help us
along that journey. I am a firm believer of needing a DAILY reminder
of who we really are and our divine potential. It creates that proper
perspective we all need!:) Anyways, just some thoughts;)

We had exchanges this week, which was great! I was with Elder
Opheikens and went to Nuneaton for the day.

 Man, that was nice:) Were hoping to help those guys build 

something up in their area because it's lacking a bit. 

But! The ward members in Nuneaton are way cool! We
went to their ward council and had a good time talking over things.
They talked a lot on how their ward is doing when it comes to Sabbath
Day observance. In the conference with Oaks, he talked about how the
first presidency and quorum of the twelve are thinking that if we
improve our Sabbath Day observance, than the plateau that the church
is on will hopefully start moving up! There were some good ideas there
though. But yeah, the exchange was mighty fine. :)

We had a cool miracle this week! We've been trying to find
new investigators here. Well on Sunday, one of the older ladies in the
ward was walking to church and started talking to this girl. Turns out
the girl was interested in the church so they both walked together to
the church! When they got to the church, we met her and talked for a
bit and set up a time to teach later in the week! It was awesome:) And
Teresa was finally able to make it to church again!! So it ended out
to be a pretty good week with loads of little miracles.

I think that is about it for now folks:) 

Enjoy the rest of your week!
Love ya tons!! 

Ta ta.

Elder Wright