Hello from Plymouth

Hello from the city of which our forefathers sailed away from to our blessed land of America! That’s right, right in the city of Plymouth!" I just got to Plymouth today. What a place! I didn’t know England was so pretty! It is just like the pictures with the rolling hills and the sheep on them! I was amazed by that on the drive down. We are right on the coast so it smells like salt water... That salty air made me sooooo happy! We went to the port and walked around. It is an old town and there isn’t really a beach near us. In fact it is very rocky. It is like the scene on the Little Mermaid where she is on the rock and the wave’s crash behind her. It is soo pretty. I can’t
believe it. I will send you pictures for sure.

As for our area, all I know is there is a baptism on Saturday. Other than that I have no idea what is going on as far as the work.

When I left Slough things were going really well. Jo's daughter has a baptismal date for July tenth and then Louise' children have dates for the middle of July. I didn’t get to see Lucy but I am sure she will be baptized this transfer. At church yesterday they had kind of a goodbye party for me and it was really sweet. I guess because I have been there forever, I really will miss that place. I had some recent converts write their testimonies so that I can have them to read. There testimonies are so beautiful. One of the sweetest was from Chantell. She is Lisa's daughter and she wrote such a sweet one. I will truly miss Slough and the work there was going so great, and I am going to miss all the people that I have grown to love.

Here in the Zone of Plymouth the missionary work is slower. Our zone is the biggest in the mission geographically. It takes us four hours to travel to some of the areas. Here the people are mostly white, which is a big change from all the diversity in the city. The people are also known to be a bit more stubborn down here, but with God nothing is impossible. The area has struggled but I hear the Stake President is a saint, and I am excited to meet him. It is a good zone. I am very excited to serve here and do the best that I can. I know I will learn tons. I am thinking I will be here for a while because my companion Elder Muller is on his last transfer. Since we are both new to the area and both new Zone Leaders this is going to be interesting. We live with the Stake Patriarch. I can’t believe the differences in areas. In Slough I would walk out my front door and see a nuclear power plant. Here I walk out and see a forest!! Oh, how I miss Slough.

I also miss Elder Snow he is doing so well. An Italian Elder replaced me in Slough, and he is a good hard worker. In fact he knows one of my recent converts, Emiliano. When he found out that he was baptized he was in shock, and was really excited to see him again. Elder Snow is a stud. I pushed him to his limits I won’t lie. But, hey, what are trainers for. I loved that Elder and I hope that he felt it.

I have a story from when I was in Slough. We were at Jo's. We were teaching her family and her 22 year old daughter was there, who does not believe in God. She told us that many times. She happened to be in the room while we were teaching Nellie the Plan of Salvation. For some reason we felt like we needed to start addressing weaknesses and how God gave us weaknesses to humble us. But, we can turn to Him and make those weak points strong. As we were talking I looked over, and she was crying. She was trying to hide it behind a magazine she was reading, but she was crying. She was feeling something.

Well, I have to go. I love you all! My new address, tell everyone to write.

Elder M. White 3 Beechwood Rise Plymouth, Devon PL6 8AP England

Farewell to Slough

June 23, 2011

Well fam, my days in Slough are now numbered. I am getting moved down to Devon, to a wonderful, pretty town called Plymouth. I am guessing you have all heard of it. I would have moved yesterday (Wednesday), but President Shamo wants me to stay in Slough to finish off some baptisms and finish committing a few other people that are ready. The plan is by the end of the week we should have six other baptismal commitments. Slough is what we call... ON FIRE!!! We had two baptisms on Sunday which is so exciting. We need to confirm them this Sunday (we have Sunday baptisms only in Slough). Victoria, however, could not get baptized just yet. She will have to wait for a month or so but she still has that desire. Her daughter was, however, baptized and so was Jo. Jo is a star, she has already bought a quad and all of this church material. Her kids are excited about the whole baptism thing. At first her 15 year old daughter didn’t want to join the church because her friends were making fun of her. We told her to talk to her friends and tell them how she felt about the church and they would listen, so she did and she said, "They are all behind me on it now."
As far as the upcoming baptismal dates they are all very solid. Two are from our recent convert Louise. She has two older kids who want to be baptized, and Jo has two children who want to be baptized, then Victoria, and a lady I taught when I first came out named Lucy who couldn’t get baptized until she fixed a problem. That problem has been fixed. Now, she and her son want to be baptized.

I am getting moved to Plymouth and not training anymore. President has called me to be one of the new Zone Leader there. He wants me and another Elder ( Elder Muller he is from Switzerland) to whitewash as new zone leaders. The thing is Elder Muller has never been a zone leader before either so this will be interesting. Don’t get me wrong I am way stoked to go, but sad cuz I will miss all of these baptisms of people that I have taught and really love. I need to keep remembering to “lift where you stand” eh? Yeah, God knows what he is doing. The good things about going down there is that it is REALLY pretty! Like amazing!!! It is the pretty part of England, Cornwall is in my zone, Devon. The accents down there are kind of funny, as they speak like pirates. That is the area where all the pirates came from in England. It will be funny. We also get a car, so I am going to get fat! hahaha

Now that I am leaving Slough I can tell you all of the crazy things that have happened to me here that I didn’t want to worry mom about. Mom, Plymouth is a nice place. Slough is crazy. I have been mugged once, Elder Snow had 50£ stolen so now he has no money, twice people have tried to mug us, people have threatened to beat us up four times, another tried to stab us but we booked it out of there, I have had two of my neighbors murdered, twice at night we have had attempted break-in’s, we witnessed stabbings, fights, robberies and much more. This is only the stuff I can think of off the top of my head. It is a crazy; wild city! But God has been very sweet to us missionaries here. I will be leaving behind 12 converts who are all very dear to me and a potential six more who are close to baptism. Wow, I am going to miss them and this great area.

Let me tell you a good story I just found out about the other day. A while back, we were in Slough at the bus station and I noticed that this bloke was wearing a “Man United” hat and so I commented on it (that is my in……. when I can talk soccer), and the guy said "Are you a true fan?" I said "Did Ole Gunner Solksjaer win the champions league for Manchester United in 1999?" and he says, " Elder White you are a good man!" I laughed with him, and then thought... Elder White? No one calls me Elder White unless they know the church. So we started talking and I found out he is a member of the church. He hadn’t been to church for 30 years and had gone through some very hard time with his wife and kids in the past three years. He and I talk more about the church (along with “Man United”). Then I told him, "Wayne, you need to go back to church." That was literally all I said and he agreed to it. The ward he went to was in a neighboring town. He knew where the chapel was and I told him what time it started. A while later and I found out from the missionaries in that area that he has been at church for 5 weeks in a row. Now his best friend is preparing for baptism, and Wayne is preparing to receive the Aaronic priesthood so he can baptize his friend. Crazy eh? I guess you never know how far little comments like, "Wayne you need to go back to church.” really does go. Also it was funny that he just happened to wear a “Man United” hat that day. I won’t lie, I probably wouldn’t have gone right up to him if he hadn’t had it on. Point for Soccer fans!!!

I don’t leave Slough until Sunday so I can finish off a few things here before I go. I have loved my time here and will miss it. Love you all!

We Baptized a Whole Family

June 13, 2011

I won’t lie I don’t have any time to email today so I am going to make this quick. Our baptisms went really well! We baptized a whole family. Next week we have hopefully two more families! The family this week was the mother and her two twins. (Louise and Annabell and Lucinda). They are sure a great family, very faithful, they knew about the missionaries and the Mormons because of Donny Osmond.

This week we have more baptisms a family from Ghana and a family on the military base. I won’t lie these are a bit shaky so please keep them in your prayers. The family from Ghana is a lady named Victoria and her daughter Rachael, and the family on the military farm are Jo…….., Vic, and their 2 children. So keep them in your prayers. They are both great families but they all have some sick opposition. Right now the only one in the military family who is getting baptized is Jo (the mom). The kids are debating it and the father will just take some time. He is a good bloke. They are such a great family! Dang I do love them.

Some other people we are working with are Sh….. and Si….. (cant remember who they are). We taught them last night and she was saying how she has dreams all the time of her mom and her brother (who are both dead) and they aren’t happy. She said she knows that they need something more and she didn’t know what. Then she looked at me and said "Elder White, what is it they need?" and I was like BAM!!! So we talked about the spirit world and baptisms for the dead, and she got so happy about it all and said that she needs to get baptized quick.

Also something crazy …….WE SAW THE QUEEN!!!!!! Yes, I am dead serious. I talked to this member in our ward who is a guard at the castle and I ask him if we could go into the castle for free, so he got us tickets for our p-day. That happened to be the day they were doing some huge knighting ceremony and so the whole royal family was there and I kid you not, I was ten feet away from all of them! Including William and Kate and Charles. It was crazy!!! They are so ceremonial here when it comes to the royals, it’s funny. Hahaha gotta love em. It was actually pretty neat to see all of the of that stuff.... yeah it was crazy. I will send you pics and videos. I got some sweet videos, especially when they were singing “God Save the Queen”.
I am sorry I do have to go! I love you all and know we are doing well! Love ya guys!

Golden Families

June 6, 2011

This week we have truly been blessed. We have 6 baptismal dates. Three of them are getting baptized this Sunday!!!!!!!!!!!! Please keep them in your prayers. This is the mother and her two daughters who know Donny Osmond. Donny has done wonders in the land of England. (Donny himself) sent an area in our mission a referral and they just baptized that person last week. So he is a missionary. This family of three, Louise (the mom) and her twin daughters. They are a really great family. The mom is really stressed about work and family. But all will be OK. Their only concerns right now is her daughters have a birthday party on Sunday (when the baptism is scheduled) and for the party they are supposed to watch Kung Foo panda and I asked them what would Jesus do? Ya bad idea never asking a ten year old that question again. Kung Foo panda... ha but the mom in the end over ruled them and said no we need this and we are all getting baptized this Sunday! The girls do want to be baptized they just want to go to this party as well. They really are an awesome family and the ward has done such an amazing job of fellowshipping them. But we are very excited about them. They are such a golden family and the mom is really excited about the temple.

Our next golden family is the Ste………They are the family that the daughters who were whistling at us and so I said lets go to their door. The mom is getting baptized and now the whole family is taking the lessons and thinking about baptism!!! You guys have no idea how big of a miracle that is! We were talking with Jo (the mom) and she was saying how the only reason she invited us back to dinner was because she felt bad that we were so far from home, then she thought that she actually should try out what we were saying and... BOOM!!! Holy Ghost does his magic! She is excited, but nervous. Her husband when we first met him wouldn’t even be in on the lessons, now he is coming to church and reading the Book of Mormon. Their kids are deciding too, they just don’t know if they want to give up partying. Please keep them in your prayers their names are Jo (mom,) Vic (dad) and kids are Mac and Nellie. They are a way funny family. When I say this I am not kidding either, they are EXACTLY like Frank and Marie on “Everybody loves Raymond”! I didn’t think a marriage could work that way. They have proved otherwise. They have been married years, but it is a crazy funny marriage. They are both so dang funny. We were teaching them and Vic said "dang I am thirsty, Jo go get me some squash." And she said “you pig no”! “You think all I am good for is cooking and cleaning and that" And he said "cuz that is true!" and the funny thing is they think that is normal. But they are really kind and they have hearts of gold.

The next family is a Ghana family. I think I have told you about her. Her name is Victoria and she is very spiritual. The only way I can describe her is she is African. She is very nice but very flakey. Yesterday she came to church and she got up and bore her testimony! Very powerful. She talked about how she knew the church was true when she prayed about the Book of Mormon and that night she had another dream, and in that dream she say many members in the ward and then she saw us missionaries, then she saw a woman pastor. She said “And I was told to go to the missionaries, they are the ones who are giving the truth." She is set to be baptized on the 19th. I just hope we don’t lose contact with her. Her situation is really sketchy.

Young: Crazy you are starting the papers! AHHHHHHh it is hard but worth it. You and Megs are mom’s last hope for New Zealand! ;)