My first area

Hi Everyone,

I thought I would answer a few of your questions. Yes, it is cold here it’s the coldest in something like fifty years. They are calling it the big freeze. The temp is about 32 f but the humidity is just bone chilling..

This area is so interesting. We live in a very poor area, there is lots of trash and sadness. There are tons of immigrants from all over. I have met so many races of people it is really cool. I love this area. One thing of the things I love about it is the old churches. There are tons of GIANT churches with grave yards around them? Yeah, I literally live right next to one! It is bigger than the SLC Temple and the grave yard has graves over 300 yrs old! It is pretty cool. I will get a picture of it and send it to you guys.

The churches and castle are huge but everything else here is so little! The cars, the flats, the food, the people! Everything! Windsor is also in my area. That is where the queen's castle is and it’s HUGE!! It is the first castle I have ever seen and wow, it is neat looking. Windsor is one of those really pretty English towns that are posh. They really do have those guards with the giant hats that guard the castle and they don’t talk or smile! I thought that was way funny. A member of our ward is one of the guards so he is going to let me try on his uniform and also he said he will give us a tour of the castle next Monday, won’t that be fun. My area has some really nice rich areas and then really poor areas.

We are hoping that our baptism for Saturday is still on. The man we are teaching left town on Friday so we haven’t been able to teach him the law of tithing yet, we are going over tonight to teach him that and if all goes well he will be baptized on Saturday. His wife will follow shortly after she has her baby.

Our most recent investigator (Calley): Holy Cow, what a story she has. We met her at the bus station. Everything that day pretty much led up to us meeting her, it was cool how it all worked; it’s amazing how the spirit works. As for her back ground, she used to be homeless and just recently was accepted into “counsel housing”. She has had some really sad things happen to her. She wants to start over as she put it. We taught her about the Atonement and the tears welled up in her face. What we taught just clicked! She knew that she could start over. We also left her a copy of the BOM and she read what we assigned to her. The next day when we visited her she read us some verses that had touched her. It was amazing to see how the spirit had let her known that the BOM was true. She has some really big issues that need to be worked out but we scheduled her baptism for Jan 1. Please keep her in your prayers.

Love you all and remember that God loves you too. LoveElder White

PS I accidentally deleted all of my pictures I was so sad!!! So I will send pictures another time.

London here I come

Sorry, I don’t have much time today. I didn’t get to read your emails just glance at them and the only thing I saw was that BYU lost, I won’t lie that does depress me. But, oh well they did better than I thought they would do.

I only have 15 minutes to email today because we are leaving for my mission tomorrow at 9:00 a.m. We will be traveling by train. I have never been on a train for that long before so I am actually excited! London here we come!!!

Quick story before I get kicked off the computer. This week we went tracking, and Elder Simon and I placed 10 Books of Mormon and committed a woman to baptism on accident—kind of. I was just talking to this lady and she was like, “yeah what you have to say makes sense” and before I knew it I was asking her if she would follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized with someone holding the proper authority. I don’t know where the words came from it was as big a shock to me as I’m sure it was to her, she said “yes!” I was pretty amazed actually. We had some great experiences that day.

We had the best talk ever the other night. A Stake President from Chorely came and spoke to the MTC about his conversion. It was by far the best story I have ever heard! He brought in such a strong spirit. Words can’t describe what I felt that night and it just re-affirmed to me that I am out here for a reason and that God has special plans for each and every one of us. I was sooooo happy! After the Stake President spoke we got together for District meeting, I taught the lesson and when it was over I just wanted to shout for joy! But since I couldn’t, I decided that we would sing hymns and so my District sang hymns for about twenty minutes just to express how happy and excited we all were! It was very special!

Chances are my p-day is Monday so I should be able to read my emails and write more then.

Love ya tons, and long live Manchester United!!!

Elder White

(Hi, I am Elder Whites mom and I am in charge of putting parts of his emails on this blog. I am still learning about blogs and how they work. It has been a good education for me, hopefully I will get some pictures on it soon--so stay posted)

Nov. 24th 2010 Street Contacting

Nov. 24, 2010

Well, this week was really interesting. First of all I can die now and be happy. While we were driving on the freeway here we were passing Manchester City and the man who was driving pointed out to me some steel white beams and he said "over there is Old Trafford." Mom and dad Old Trafford is the stadium where Manchester United plays. I GOT TO SEE IT! Every day we play soccer here at the MTC and I won’t lie.... I am good. All of the elders and teachers marvel that an American is schooling them in their own game. Life is good here at the MTC.

Well, Elder Simon and I have been teaching a lot of our practice lessons. He is a good kid. I found out that he brought from Georgia this huge slab of meat and he just stowed it in his bag and it was starting to smell and I asked him what it was and he pulls out this thing of meat and I was like what the heck?! Why do you have beef with you and it’s not in a fridge?! It was funny.

Today was the church history tour. We went to places like where the first converts in England were baptized, and other church history sights, they were in some way, way, old crazy towns, and then we went to the flat where President Hinckley stayed at in Preston when he got that letter from his dad saying "Forget yourself and go to work." It was fun and neat to see all of these places I have heard about all my life. I will send pictures of them later. I think we probably saw some of the places our relatives are from too.

The Highlight of the week however, was last Friday when we went street contacting in Manchester City. We took the train. Elder Simon and I went up to the first person we saw and she thought we were crazy and ran away. This happened quite a bit to us and we couldn’t give away a Book of Mormon. Then I look up I saw a hobo and I was like hey, if it worked for Ammon then maybe this hobo would listen to our message, right? So we go over there and he was way humble! I think he was part crazy too, but way cool guy. We gave him a Book of Mormon and he looked at me and asked me if we could leave him with a blessing. I was a little stunned but I said "uh... sure" so kneeling down in the middle of the street with hundreds of people we all said a quick prayer. It is crazy to me how those who accept the gospel are the ones who have nothing. Every hobo we ran into, we talked to and every single one we gave a Book of Mormon. Who knows if they will even read it or use it as toilet paper but at least they listened. Elder Simon and I had great success that day. We gave out 11 B of M's which was the record that day for the MTC and we got 6 contacts another record (but hey, it’s not about numbers right) it is for those who were interested and wanted to learn more. It was really neat to see how people would get excited however, it was very hard to see the stubbornness of those who wouldn’t believe and said that God didn’t exist. As a missionary you feel the pain and sorrow, because you want so much for them to know that God does exist and that he loves us all!! But all we can do is proclaim his word, they have to accept it.

I love you all.

Elder White

PS only one more week in the MTC

Elder White's first email

I thought that this day would never come! WOW!!! I won’t lie that it was good to hear Utah lost the game! Well, the plane ride was the longest ride of my life. However not nearly as bad as spending 24 hours in a trophy case. I flew over with 7 other missionaries; four from Utah, one from Oklahoma, one from Nevada, one from Oregon. I didn’t sleep much so when we got to the MTC I was dead! But I stayed up so I could adjust to the time here. The driving freaked me out for a bit, yes Megs it was very cool :) We have a smaller group here in the MTC. There are only 19 of us from 12 different countries. 7 from the USA, 1 from Denmark, 1 from Sweden, 4 from England, 1 from Finland, 1 from Georgia, 1 from Zimbabwe, and I forgot where the last one is from. But it is really different. Of those 19, five of them are sisters. The classes here are great I couldn’t have asked for any better!!! Wow... yeah. I am really working hard, I think.

My companions name is Elder Sidamonidze. But since no one can pronounce his name we just call him Elder Simon. He is the missionary from Georgia. He is a way nice kid but he knows very little English. It is kind of like on that show with Tom Hanks when he is trapped in the Air Port and Tom Hanks has that Russian accent. That is exactly how my companion talks!! It’s really funny, but I love the kid. In fact he just received his temple endowment today! It was a very neat experience for me because I was his escort! He was so excited and the spirit was so strong! It felt so good to go back to the temple! Elder Simon is going to my mission. He and his brother are the only members of the church in his family and he is the first native Georgian to serve a mission or one of the first, couldn’t tell because of his English. I think how patient he has to be with me! But he really is a stud.

So President Thompson (one of the councilors in our MTC presidency) pulled me into his office and told me a good tender mercy. When I first arrived and had an interview with them they were going to call me to be one of the district leaders. However during another meeting President Clegg (MTC Pres) had an impression and that was that he should put me with Elder Simon. (That would make it so I wasn’t a DL.) He went into his office and prayed about it for awhile and he came out saying that God has called Elder White to be Elder Simons companion. The Presidency was kind of shocked at first. President Thompson told me that this has been the strongest spiritual experience President Clegg has had with this kind of thing while he has been here. Then he told me that I have been called of God to serve with Elder Simon. Good lesson for me. Good to know that God knows more in the long run. That this is for the greater good. (it means I am not in the spotlight--Ha ha). I know you guys are probably thinking... dang Michael is changed so much, and I am thinking yeah I know.

I look forward to your emails so much. When I saw everyone had written I was so happy! Now I know what they mean by how much you look forward to this! This is just like Christmas! ha Well, keep me updated on everything that is going on back home k? Love you guys so much and know that I am doing well :)

Love, Elder White

Farewell

Thank you all so much for everything that all of you have done for me. I love you all and I will see you in two years!
-Elder White