My drivers test!!!

Elder White at the sight where the Mayflower left from.

July 25^th 2011

Hola familia, this week was a really good week. Probably the best we have had down here. Ryan and Rebekah are doing great. Both are set for baptism on Saturday. Ryan came to church yesterday after his mom had back surgery. He is so excited for his baptism. He has his interview on Tuesday. and is set for baptism. Rebekah is doing well also, she has her interview on Tuesday also. These two baptisms are doubling the number of baptisms they have had in our area in the past year. This place needs a little work. But, I sure love it here!

We are trying to inspire our missionaries and hopefully they will be inspired. We can work with them and encourage them but ultimately it all comes down to them. President told us that. We really only have problems with two areas. We have four sisters in our zone. All of them are stars. They work hard and do well. Our zone occupies a quarter of the mission. It is huge. Does that answer some of your questions Dad?

This past week I failed my driver theory test... by one stinkin question!!!!!!! I was lit!!!!! By one question.... yeah I was off the rocker for a day on that one. I had to go to Pizza Hut to have some comfort food. I will take it again and if I fail then... I can take the test as many times as I need to, but if I do fail it like 8 times though, they will send in a psychologist to test me and see if something is wrong with me! hahahahahaha which is a possibility for me ;) I don’t know if the family has enough money for that.

The APs came down last night. One of them served as a ZL in this area and he is going home in a week. He is a great missionary he and I went around to a part member family he once taught and they are golden!!! I have no idea why in the heck no one every baptized them. The mom was once sealed in the temple then the husband cheated on her a few years ago causing her to go less active. She has four kids. Two baptized, two not. She knows the church is true and loves it but is embarrassed to go back to church. Her sons want to be baptized but want to pick and choose the commandments they want to follow. They really have amazing potential. I will let ya know how they go, but I am stoked to teach them. While I was there I felt the spirit tell me that this family was ready to receive the gospel once again. So now I’m really am excited to teach them, but of course it will come down to their agency if they accept it.

Oh yeah, next week is transfer week, Elder Muller will be leaving to go home on Sunday... and I will probably be with one of the sets of elders in our zone for a few days.

I love you family tons, please pray for our two baptisms this Saturday! Love ya!

Questions

Mom you asked a ton of questions!!!! Before I forget I will answer them all right now.

We have 18 missionaries in our zone and one Sr. couple who runs the family history office. Family history here is huge! It is the 2nd biggest hobby next to football. We have 6 zones in our mission and 12 zls. Our zone is the biggest geographically. Because it is so big we can’t play soccer on P day as a zone. We only see our whole zone at district meetings when we drive a few hours to them or on trainings and zone conferences. We have about 140 missionaries in our mission. Three of the six zones are about 26-28 people. My comp and I were the only new zls called this transfer. It is hard not knowing what we are doing but we are learning as we go and we make lots of mistakes. Our mission normally baptizes about 20-25 people a month.

Here is an update on our investigators.

The secretary to the arch bishop was moving along fine. He was set to be baptized but then his son came in and said "if you become a Mormon I will never speak to you again!" and they had this big argument over it and so he dropped us. Sad but true, Anti Mormon stuff is huge down here.

Rebekah is awesome. She is till set to be baptized. She has come to church for a month now! Her sister wants to be baptized as well but her parents want her to wait....She loves tea (typical). Most people here do. Asking them to give up tea is like asking them to give their life to you. There was a study done on it and they found out that England drinks enough tea a day to float a battle ship. They don’t drink water, they drink tea. We taught her the Word of Wisdom and man she was so sad when she had to give it up. We confiscated all of her tea bags. She is very nice and excited but NERVOUS about her baptism.

Ryan is great, have you heard the saying that we need to baptize our replacement, well I think that Ryan could be my replacement. He knows the bible better than most missionaries. He loves having us over and is really funny. He went to church yesterday for the first time and loved it!!! He needs to go one more time before he is baptized and his mom is having her back surgery so that might present a problem.

We also found have 7 new investigators this week. It was a good Solid week.

I have my driving theory test this week so PLEASE PRAY FOR ME!!!! Most missionaries fail this test the first time many still fail it again the second time. The money comes out of mom and dad’s money and it isn’t cheap. The church will pay half the first time then if I fail they have us pay the whole thing next time. so... pray. Anyway I have been studying for that test for an hour every morning. It isn’t like any normal test either. They have this part where they sit you in a room and you have to do what is called "the hazard perception test" and you do a fake course and find every hazard. I hear it is that one that normally gets most missionaries.

In my area there is a church that Brigham Young taught at and he was thrown out while teaching. So he cursed the church and said it would burn in 100 years and never be built up. 97 years later the Germans bombed Plymouth and as a result the church burned and today it still hasn’t been rebuilt. In fact it is in the middle of a roundabout all destroyed so I don’t think they ever will build it up. That is a true story I heard in the MTC, the president talked about it!

In our zone though we have a goal of 7 baptisms this month. We are thinking we will get 6 for sure, two of which are from our area. We have been blessed here early on.

Finding people to teach

July 12, 2011

What a crazy place this is! And I love it! We picked up three baptismal dates. So we went from zero investigators to three in a week. It was a pretty good week. We are working adding more investigators to our pool. Our three dates are named Cl….., Rebekah, and Ryan.

Clyde was a very devoted to his church, until he found the truth! bam!!! But his date is pretty shaky. We didn’t force it we just used the spirit. He is so nice. First time I met him he was holding a huge machete!!! Funny ya.

Rebekah. is the 20 year old daughter of a naval family here. Plymouth has a huge naval base here. We knocked on their door, she has been to church twice since. She is very strong. We just have to teach her the commandments. She is set for the baptism on the 30^th of July. Her sister wants to be baptized too but the parents won’t let her.

Ryan. is the son of a less active member. His mother looks EXACTLY like Loretta Clark. EXACTLY!!!! So that really freaked me out to see this lady looking so much like Loretta and hear her speak with an English accent. Ryan. is a stud and he loves church. His mom (Loretta look alike) is way cool but really spacey and often forgets about our appointments, so there is a problem there. She has a bad back and is getting surgery in a few weeks. She has been waiting for almost a year (Typical health program here). ya get what ya pay for.

Those are our investigators that we are working with and we are really trying to find more.

This past week we did exchanges in our Zone we were able to get to most of the areas in our Zone. For 3 days we packed sleeping bags with us and went from area to area. No, dad I did not tell the missionaries that I worked with what to do or act like I knew more than they did. I feel very inadequate. I am the 2nd youngest missionary in the zone and so I do feel weird sometimes. On our exchanges we talked to the Elders we were working with, a lot about how we can improve and what we can do better. We really worked on finding people skills with them. I know (that I am like the most humble guy in the world ;) but my finding skills are pretty good, we worked on that. Then we talked lots on obedience. That is something that has been plaguing this zone for a while I guess so we really focused on that.

We also had a zone training on Monday (hence why I didn’t write earlier) and so Elder Muller and I did some training at it. It turned out pretty good. Lots of the missionaries here in our Zone have felt that they can’t find anyone to teach. So we talked again about finding people, and about how God will help us find them. We also talked about how we as missionaries need to put ALL of our trust in God. We asked them how we could put your trust in God. We came up with these three ways 1-Obedience, 2-Hard Work, 3- Love for the Lord and the people. We emphasized that if we work on those things God would place or lead us to good people who were ready for the Gospel. Since our meeting, missionaries in four of our areas have received calls from formers or random people saying they want to be baptized!!!! Holy crazy sauce eh? I know that doesn’t happen all the time but hey, it was neat and true that God will place those prepared souls before your path if we trust in him.

Priesthood Power

This week was good. Elder Muller my new companion is from Switzerland and he loves Cheese. I have no idea why but he does. Once a transfer his family will send him a box of cheese from Switzerland and he loves it and this last box reeked!!! Our flat smelled for days. He said that they don’t have real cheese here. However, the chocolate he has makes up for the stinky cheese. :) He is very nice and we get along well.

We use ferries to get to the different locations in our area. About once a day we drive our car on to a ferry and we cross over to a place called "Torpoint" it is a nice little area. It is kind of fun.

I have a funny food story. We have this Indian family in our ward and they are way cool. They invite us over for dinner I am used to Indian food because in Slough there were lots of Indian people. But at this home they didn’t give us forks or anything to eat with. The dad just started eating with his hands. So that is what we did too. It was pretty crazy at first because we were eating things like soup, and then curry and rice all with our hands. As we ate I decided I liked eating this way. I finished my food and the dad said "here have some more" and he piles more food on. So I ate it. Then once again he said "have some more" so I did, then again and again.

We did have a baptism on Sunday. The man’s name was Russel. He was an eternal investigator and has gone through a million missionaries, he is a great guy. Also I heard that Nellie who is in Slough is still getting baptized on Saturday. So that is exciting also.

Yesterday we were at a dinner appointment with some members. We ask them if there was anyone they knew who needed help. They told us about a member down the road who had just had surgery. So, we went by this members home. The father had, had knee surgery and was just out of the hospital a few days anyway we talked for a minute and I ask him if he needed a blessing and he said "Oh yes I would love that." I gave the blessing. I was expecting the spirit to tell me to talk about this man’s knee and how it needs to be healed but as I put my hands on his head I started talking about his wife, and about being patient, it was so weird cuz this had nothing to do with his knee. NOTHING! But, the spirit was saying to talk about his wife, talk about how he should listen to her and love her and be patient. I said lots of thing I can’t even remember. It was so weird and I thought what if this has nothing to do with anything! (my little faith). I did in the end bless his knee, and then I closed. I opened my eyes and this man was in tears. Literally he had broken down and was crying so hard. I have never seen a grown man cry that much. He probably used 7 tissues. Then he said " would you give my wife a blessing as well." Elder Muller gave the blessing and it was very similar to her husbands blessing, Elder Muller talked about keeping covenants stuff like that. It was crazy cuz she too broke down into tears. Then we got ready to leave this brother said “we have been having marital problems for quite some time now and those blessing are just what we needed to hear. Now we know God is aware of our situation." It blew me away!!! This man had such great faith, he and his wife are good people they are both temple endowed. It is interesting to see how God let us be an instrument of his to help his children. It was just a really neat experience and it taught me a lot about blessings.

I love you all.