January 27, 2014

Ok. . . so I got transferred. Wasn't expecting that one! On Wednesday I moved from Warwick to Harborne which is right in the middle of Birmingham! The ward here is huge in comparison to the areas I have served in previously, I think on Sunday there were like 170 people there at church! There are five sets of missionaries in the ward boundaries and the work is crazy here! We have several universities near by, and so we have loads of people from different nationalities walking up and down the streets all the time! We are talking to absolutely loads of people. . . it's just really cool. I will stop using exclamation marks now. 

 Everybody has been waiting for China to open up for missionary work, but it seems like at least half of the students at the universities are Chinese so we get the chance to talk to loads of Chinese people anyway! Three people were baptised on Sunday, two of which were actually Chinese students! It was pretty cool because within a few days of me arriving in Harborne I got to interview three people for baptism. 

Maybe it is because of the university and maybe it is because of the faith of the members and the missionaries in this area, but the work moves forward here way more quickly than I have ever seen before! Within a few minutes of arriving here my new companion  (from Grantsville) and I went to an appointment which flogged (wasn't there.) We went and started talking to people, and we set up an appointment to see the first person we talked to! The lesson went well, and we projected him to be baptised on Feb 16! We set up another lesson with him for a few days later which was a pretty strange one. He told us that all of us are equal, so we could teach him one lesson, and then the next time we meet he would teach us. (I guess he studied theology and he knows like 7 languages :) He says that we will just go back and forth like that. Hopefully he will be able to begin to move forward in the next couple of lessons. 

 That's all for now, talk to you all next week! 

 -Kyle

January 20, 2014

We are in Stratford Upon Avon (Shakespeare's birth place) right now as part of a district P-day. We weren't able to email before we came, so we saw a library and decided to pop in to let everyone know we are alive:)

 It was a wonderful week last week! We were able to find a wonderful humble Polish lady who invited us to share our message with her, and when we arrived at her house we found that she had invited two of her friends to hear what we had to say as well! There was a bit of a language barrier which made the lesson interesting, but we have an appointment to see her and possibly one of her friends again this week. 

In addition to that, we have a few wonderful members who we are working with to help them to return to activity in the church. The branch in Warwick really needs priesthood holders to strengthen it, and so we have been searching for ways to add to the number of priesthood holders at church. One of these members we have been working with is a 24 year old brother who grew up in the church and then sort of fell away in his teens. He has come to church for the last three weeks! 

Random thought of the week, don't leave your gloves on the bus when you get off. I have been gloveless for a few days, and it is getting colder so I am probably going to have to get some new ones soon. 

I will talk to you all next week! Thank you for your prayers! 

-Kyle

January 13, 2014

Quick one today, (aren't they always) we have a new investigator! Basically, we were planning to bus to Coventry last week for District Meeting and interviews, but we missed the bus we planned to take because we were talking to someone. We had less than 10 minutes before the next bus and I really wanted to just sit in the station and chill for a few minutes, but I felt like we should go and talk to some people for a few minutes. The first and only person we were able to talk to was what is now our investigator. He had a powerful experience a few years back which converted him to Christianity, and he invited us to share our message with him in his home. We did so on Friday, and he committed to read from the Book of Mormon and pray about it. It was awesome! 

It is chucking it down with rain right now, and we need to head back to grab dinner before our next appointment, but I love you all! 

-Kyle

January 6, 2014

This week was awesome! And all over the place! For starters, I was all ready to teach my second district meeting and a few hours before we got on the train to go for the meeting the zone leaders called to tell me that my district meeting was being moved to Friday because we were going to have interviews with President Rasmussen. That was all well and good, but after finishing that district meeting I realized that with the things that have been going on I now have only a couple of days to prepare for another district meeting this Wednesday! You would think that when I am used to teaching lessons all the time whipping out a district meeting would be easy, but it seems not to be the case.

By the way, sad news, we have all been expecting to get iPads some time in January, but apparently our mission president has heard nothing more about it so we may have to wait for those a while longer.

We went to Coventry to have district meeting so that the mission president could interview all of us at the same time, and right after finishing district meeting I started to feel ill. After bussing home we went straight to an appointment and by the time we finished that I was feeling really weak. I really didn't even want to stand up! We had a nice bike ride home in the rain, and then I just sacked out. I still can't figure out if I caught a bug or if I got food poisoning somehow, but by the morning I was feeling a lot better! It just goes to show that nothing will stop the work of the Lord!

We have been talking to lots of people and setting up loads of appointments but they have all been falling through! A few of them have rescheduled for this week, so we are hoping that we will be able to seriously begin teaching a few more people this week.

That's all for now! I'm running out of time!

PS: My companion just touched a wall in our flat a few days ago and his finger went through it! It looks as if there was a hole in the dry wall and the builders just wallpapered over it :)

Have an awesome 2014!

-Kyle