I thought I would tell you a little bit about my area. This area once again has tons of Africans mainly from Nigeria and Ghana, there are also people from all over the world. Our church building houses two wards. An English speaking ward of about 150 active and a Spanish speaking ward of about 90 active. The Spanish ward is mainly all South American. We have four missionaries in our zone who are all from South American (Chile, Honduras, Brazil, and Argentine) and they cover all of London and teach every single Spanish person in London. They cross the river on a daily basis to teach. In the London Mission there is a Portuguese ward of mainly Bazillions. They have four Portuguese missionaries that do like our Spanish missionaries and they too cover all of London for Portuguese speakers. I use my Spanish literally every day. There are tons and tons of South Americans here. They accept the gospel so well. I got a Spanish dictionary from one of the elders and I study it for ten min during lunch. So when I contact them I can pass on the referral. The Spanish elders baptize like crazy. The members in the Spanish ward know what it is like to do member missionary work. They really know how to share the gospel with their friends. It is wonderful and a great example for us all.
Last week we went all around south London. Megs when we come back here after my mission I will not know my way around the part of London you will want to go to cuz the area I serve in now, will be too scary for us to go to. Gaurtented. The nice places in London are around the river Thames and about four blocks south of the river, then you hit the ghetto. All of the touristy things are north of the river for the most part. We have a few things that are fun to see in our area but they are all right next to the river and because there is no missionary work in that part of our area we never go there. The nice London that most people think about is North of the river. There are a few things touristy things for us to see here though. There is the London eye, and you can see Big Ben and Parliament, the view of them is better on our side of the river but we can’t go up to them cuz that is on the other side of the river which is out of our mission. We have some great art museums. The Holocaust Museum/War Museum (we are going to go to that) Greenwich University (really Victorian England and very old.) that is where the prime meridian line is. We went there last week and that was fun. It was like something from old old England. My favorite thing is Tower Bridge. That is such a pretty bridge! When I saw it I thought wow!!! that is on Sherlock Holmes! Today we are going to go up in and on top of it. I am excited to do that.
We get around using the bus. All of the buses here are double Decker. We use the tube (underground) to get around too. Our zone is the smallest in the mission. It is most of south London with a few exceptions. Probably about 1 to 1.5 million people live in our area (we have a lot of work to do) I would say about 7 million people live in the zone. It is the more popular side of London because of so many immigrants and council housing. We have all elders in our zone they do not allow sisters to be in central London and for good reasons.
Just know we are always safe, we are smart and follow the spirit, God protects us.
Love you all hope all is well!
Love Elder M. White
