Big events in London

This week was Wimbledon and man that was huge here. Murray made it to the finals and that is the first time in 73 years a Brit has made it to the finals so the whole country was shutting down. Traffic was really bad. I had to drive up north of the river and it should have only taken me an hour but it took me four and then another four to come back. It was my first time driving in central London and man that is scary!!!

Remember, how I said that we weren’t doing anything for the Olympics... well I lied. The Olympics are now getting big and the country is getting stoked. This week or next week I can’t remember which we are going to see the torch come through woo that will be fun. Also there are loads of Olympic events in our mission. I never knew there were going to be so many. At least 15-20. Rowing is in Windsor (Slough my first area)  We are meeting with the London mission Pres and his assistants here at the temple on Thursday to discuss some things to do during the Olympics. The London mission has Hyde Park Chapel all set up to use for missionary work. We will not cross the river but I think in central London we will be setting up a few booths and placing more missionaries in those areas during the games. The events will take place all over our mission as well as the rest of England. We are excited about that. England is expecting about 50 million people to come into London over the next few weeks. Already we are seeing lots more Eastern Europeans and Chinese. I am stoked for that. I told Elder Simmons for a p-day we are going into London during the gamesJ if we can.

We are teaching a couple of Muslim. They invited us to a mosque and I have always wanted to go so we are going this afternoon. They are pretty nice guys. I will let you know how that goes.

I don’t have too many stories for the week. We are working our area about 50/50 now which is nice. We are teaching a French lady right now and some Pakistani guys. The work is going well.

I love you all so much!

Love,

Elder Michael White

Goodby Shamo's Hello Millar's

These last two weeks have been so great. Sorry, I didn’t email last week, this is what I have been doing for the last two weeks.

First of all a tender mercy, I lost my journal at Heathrow airport. Heathrow is not some small airport, Heathrow and Paris are the main connecting airports in and out of Europe and so it is HUGE!  I had been keeping this one for the past six months! I did everything to find it. I called the lost and found every day and I even filed three missing reports...nothing and then they found it 6 days later! That was intense for me. I thought it was gone forever and then they found my journal. It was a mirical!!!**

Last week was all about Pres. Shamo and his family leaving. Before the Shamo’s left I went north of the river with them, and the departing missionaries for their tour. They took us cuz they wanted to make sure that we would have a trip up there. That was fun touring around with the departing missionaries. We had moves later that same week. We had 18 new missionaries come in, it was crazy.  We did training for the new missionaries and kept them at the temple for the night. They went to the temple the next day and then we shipped them off to their areas. Then we went over to president Shamo’s to help them pack up. By this point it was Thursday afternoon at 3. We helped pack and clean from 3 pm to 2 am.  The next day we went to the airport and picked up the Millar’s and brought them back to the house. President Shamo and President Millar had about 3-4 hours together and then we said our goodbyes to Shamo’s and dropped them off at the airport.  It was really sad to see them go.

A little bit about Pres. Millar. He was a practicing cardiac surgeon up until two weeks ago. In 1993 he invented a new way which the medical world uses to do some procedure on how to insert a stint into a valve or something like that. He worked with Russell M Nelson. He is a very straight forward man and down to business. Work first then play. He is a very kind and loving man. It is like seeing new missionary in a grown man. He will do such a great job. I am so excited to learn from him. His organization and professionalism is something this mission will learn from him. Love the guy already.

Well family I have to go love you all so much! Thanks for all you do :)

Love,

Elder M. White