Football (soccer)

Hi All,

This country worships football. Soccer. I am here typing and on all of the TVs in the cafe is a football (soccer) game. The other week we got together as a zone and played football here in London at one of the outdoor street pitches and it was so dang fun. It was a good pitch too. The city had made it like 7 peaks old indoor place with the turf and walls and it’s free to the public and it was really nice.

We have transfers this week. I won’t lie I don’t know if will move or not. I don’t think I will be. I love London but everyone is in such a hurry. No one wants to listen to us.

Great news from Plymouth. Chao Li brought a friend to church this week who wants to be baptized. E. Simmons and his comp down in Plymouth are stoked. I’m sure excited for that. I am worried what will happen to these great young men when they move back to China. What will they do because the church is not really their? Chao Li lives two hours north of Beijing... so I doubt he will go to the branch their... so I don’t know how that will work out. Please shed light on me once again on how they do church over the internet etc.

We do have one great investigator who came to church yesterday who is from Nigeria. His name is Tony. He is a great guy. He is in his 40s. He has been taught almost all of the lessons and his date is for March 17. We are excited for him. Really he is our only investigator. So pray for Tony. He is such a nice man. Please pray for us that we will find someone that wants to listen to our message.

This week we had a bunch of good African food. The best is fu fu. It is like a ball of bread dough and you dip in some hot soup and swallow. You do not chew. You eat it with your hands and the fu fu (fried dough part) is a community bowl that you eat out of in the center of the table. So that was fun. I have some good videos of that and some great pics of that to.

Well, love you all.

Elder M. White

We had a baptism......

We got permission to go to Slough today, it is only like a thirty min train ride out of London so we are going to go there and see some of the people my companion and I both taught and baptized. If you remember I replaced him in Slough. Jo and Nellie are having us over for dinner tonight and then Emiliano is going to come up to London during the week so we will get to see him. We will stop by and see Chantell also. They are all doing so well. We are excited. I love Slough.

We did have a baptism!!! Lorraine was baptized and it was a very good baptism. I will send you a picture. She is from Nigeria and really cool. She has been well fellow shipped with the YSA. She is a really great young lady and I am so excited that she chose to be baptized.

As for Faith she was not baptized, she said she just didn’t feel ready. We taught her on a Tuesday and she told us that, so now we are going to take the lessons much slower and give her more time to really see how important the gospel is and hopefully she will be baptized. She has been to church a lot. As I said before her dad is an active member of the church but her mom isn’t a member. Her mom is not too happy for her to be baptized. Hopefully things will work out and she will be able to be baptized later on.

This week we had a zone conference. It was at the temple. They had the girl who plays Mary in the New Testament videos come and speak to us. She is from London and goes to the Britannia ward I don’t know how famous she is in London. She is Christine in Phantom of the Opera and played Mary Poppins in the Broadway musical here in London. She is on a bunch of adds here also. Now I can say I met her.

Well sorry this is short.

Have to go. Love ya all tons!

Love,

Elder M. White

London is so beautiful

First of all I want to tell you about the baptisms we are going to have. There is Lorraine. She is doing well. We met her the day I came here and she is going to be baptized this weekend. Then we have Faith who is the daughter of a member of the ward. She is doing well and set to be baptized this week as well but she is getting cold feet so we are going over every day. PLEASE pray for her. The work is going well but we are having trouble finding really committed people.

This week we will be concentrating our efforts on getting our two commitments baptized.

As far as the man who was trying to decide if he should change churches, he is doing well. This last week we talked to our mission pres and he referred us to some material that really helped him to see that his other church had some holes and our church had the whole truth. So hopefully he will be baptized soon.

Please pray though that we will find some people to teach that are who are dedicated and faithful in coming to church and will keep their commitments. As far as our investigators from last week... the ones I was all excited about yeah they dropped off the face of the earth. I don’t know how. But they did. So please pray we can find some dedicated children of God who want to hear our message.

This week also I found out that I am serving in one of the most BEAUTIFUL cities in the entire world. An elder in our zone lost his wallet on the bus and someone turned it in and the bus Lost and Found was north of the river out of our mission. His companion is from Scotland and has been to London tons of times, my comp has been up there before, and since I had never been there I went on exchange with the Elder in our Zone who had lost his wallet. Holy Freaking Cow I never knew that London is such a gorgeous city!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I just don’t serve in the really pretty part it isn’t part of my mission. We went up to the Lost and Found and on the way we stopped and took pics at Big Ben, Parliament, Buckingham, Hyde Park, the Marble Arch, and 221 b Baker Street, (the lost and found was on Baker Street) don’t worry all of this was on the way and we had permission but man it was so pretty!!!!!!!!!! They have built the touristy part of London in an old roman way with all this stone and marble on the buildings and it’s just amazing. It was beautiful. But too I thought it would be hard to be a missionary here because of all the tourists. It was like any other city as far as the shops and people but the buildings were so pretty!!!!!!! I still cannot get over what a different place that London is compared to my London.... There is so much to see in London, this city is so amazing.

Once again I feel so grateful that God has blessed me so very much. I thank him every day for his amazing blessings. This missionary work truly is the work of the Lord and his hand is in every part of it.

Love you all

E. White

Good things in London

Hi Family, Feb. 6, 2012

Going from the country side where no one believes in God to here where everyone believes in God is really weird. It isn’t like Slough cuz in Slough most of the people were Muslim... for the most part. Oh which reminds me I am going to buy me a turban here. Dad, to answer your question about baptisms here. No they have not had one in a long time. For about 8 months I think. So hopefully that will change soon as we put our trust in God to give the increase. This area has been pretty dry for the past little bit. Right now we have two dates. One is still Lorraine. Her date has been moved back though cuz she has not been able to meet with us as much as we would have liked to. But she is still doing well. Then we have a 15 year old girl named Faith, her dad is a member and missionaries have tried to teach her in the past but she was never interested; but now she is. Her date is for the 18 as well. Also we have the boy who belongs to an unnamed church who is trying to decide which church he should be a part of. At the church he belongs to now, the people told him no one would talk to him if he joined our church and they also have given him lots of anti Mormon stuff. He said he wants to not have any contact with ether of us for a week while he decided.

We are also right now teaching a family from Nigeria who are keeping their commitments!!! They are really cool. We want to give them a date when they go to church this next week. They would have come this week but it snowed and so when it snows here (it snowed literally an inch), the whole country shuts down. So not too many at church. But they are doing well and loved the plan of salvation. They said they would be baptized if it was true. Now they just need an experience. In fact the mom told us about a dream she had had a few nights before she met us. She said that in her dream she saw a prophet, just one prophet, and this prophet spoke for Jesus and he spoke to people who were not just black but from all over, from china, America, England Africa etc. It was cool so we talked to her about prophets and restoration and she was like wow this is what I been looking for. They are stars so hopefully they will accept a date for baptism. We can only teach them at late night, like 8:30 in the evening. So it is sometimes tough to get members out at that time.

I wanted to tell you that I’m in the same ward that Alex Boye (the black man in tabernacle choir) was baptized into! He was found here on the streets in Peckham. He was baptized here and then years later moved to Utah. Now he is a big time singer. The whole ward here loves him cuz they all know him.

The three baptisms that were set down in Plymouth are all set to take place next week. That is exciting.

The work is going ok. This next week we have a zone training and then zone leader council. That will be weird going to now that I don’t have to drive 6 hours to get to it. Now it is just a train ride and I am there and not a three day experience. Love you all

Elder White

Life in London

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