33rd Letter from England (Sheldon)

Hey y'all!

I'll answer the questions first.  I have about a quarter of the bottle of Tonys left!  But you should send some extra, maybe a small bottle that I can give to Elder Harris.  He loved it and that'd be nice to give him!  That's awesome that Whitney got that job!  She emailed me and told me she had the interview and that's the one she really wanted!  I'm happy for her!

Alex Preston.  I'll have to listen to him when I get home.  Would I actually like him or just maybe?  I heard a pretty good band the other day in Solihull.  They were called the Secrets. I think.  They were just playing on the street and I was really impressed.  Going on a vacation to Las Vegas.  That sounds like fun!  I can't believe little Molly will be around in a month!  That's so great!

This week has really picked up and has been really great.
On Monday we had zone p day where we went and I ended up playing Volleyball the whole time.  I was buzzing for it!  It was good to play again, I wasn't too good in high school but I'm glad I played for the team because I am one of the better ones now!  Elder Chardon actually played in the Netherlands national league at home, so he's basically a professional, he won't admit it though.  It was funny to watch how restrained he was!  We went to the Maloneys house after, I love going there.  They have 3 sons, C who is 18, J 16, and N who I'm not sure about his age 11 maybe?  We taugh English after, it's cool to teach English to these Albanians.  Ladi, Adi, and Bledi.  Now it's just getting the gospel in.

Tuesday we actually had a return appointment planned but we got flogged... I couldn't say I was too shocked but it still sucks.  We went finding all day but didn't really find anyone.  We taught English again that night and had a good time.

Wednesday we had district meeting.  The last district meeting of the transfer!  Transfers are Wednesday which means tonight is Dodge night!  We'll find out where everyone is going.  I can't believe the transfer is already up!  District meeting was good, we all had pizza after.  We had gotten a weird call from missionaries in another area, outside of the zone even with a request to go give a member a blessing that lived down the road from us.  Turns out she was baptised when she lived in their area and moved.  She still takes a bus an hour and a half every sunday.  We went and gave her a blessing and invited her to Sheldon ward.  Hopefully members will pick up on that.  We then had another lesson scheduled but got flogged again.  Not the best start to a week.  But it gets better!

On Thursday morning I got the Arabic PMG in the mail!  I'm really excited for that.  Memorizing some of the lesson statements and trying to understand more.  Then we had a lesson with Salin, it went well and he committed to come to church on Sunday.  On the way to Salin I had seen a guy smoking down a main road and felt good about him but felt like we didn't need to talk to him right then.  Turns out after our lesson with Salin we walked far down the road and saw him again!  His name is Yves and he's from the Congo and we have an appointment to teach him tomorrow.  He seems like a cool guy.  We then went to stop by the house of a Romanian guy we met last week named Nelu.  He is living with his cousin, David and his wife Maria.  Maria was the only one in and doesn't really speak English.  She invited us in because she wanted to talk about the bible!  That was a great sign already!  We said we'd have to come back but didn't say when.  We went to Ward Council that night and that went well.  It's cool to be a part of all of these meetings.

Friday was pretty typical, weekly planning, some finding, not much success. We did end up running into Nelu though!  We set an appointment for Sunday at 5! We were supposed to teach English again but they couldnt come that night so that didn't work out either.

On Saturday we went and had a full day of finding then we went to the Watsons for dinner again and had lasagne, he's a really good cook!

Sunday was such a great day!  We woke up and got a call from Salin saying that he no longer had a ride and didn't know if he could come.  I talked to him for a while and we ended up deciding that Elder Tupou and I would get a bus over to him then we could get a taxi to church.  By the time we got to Salin, and in a taxi we would be an hour late to church.  That's okay though because Sacrament meeting isn't until the 3rd hour.  Both Salin and Tony came to church and enjoyed it!  They said they want to come to Stake Conference next week!  They left after church and Elder Tupou and I went to our flat for 'lunch' even though we were fasting.  I ended up taking a nap.  We left the flat after our lunch hour and headed to Nelu, Maria, and David.  A little nervous and a little excited.  I felt good about this meeting.  It'd finally be new investigators and a first lesson taugh.  We got there and they immediately said come in!  They brought us food and water (temporarily forcing us to break our fast) and told us to make ourselves comfortable.  We gave them a Book of Mormon and David was very curious about what it was.  He had met with JW's and CofE representatives before and you could kind of tell he didn't like what they told him.  We started giving the first lesson, and when we got to the part where Joseph Smith sees God the Father and Jesus Christ he was buzzing for it!  He was so excited and impressed!  He said after all he's ever learned, it was not hard to believe!  It makes sense!  He was saying he's never heard of this and asking how are people missing this!?  It was a really powerful lesson and we answered a question he had about the plan of Salvation.  It was kind of a testing question to see if we were actually different than the other people he'd met with.  He seemed to like what we said.  We committed them  to baptism but not on a specific date.  It went really great and we finally have not 1 but 3 new investigators!

I've had a good week, and we've had a lot of fun!  Hopefully all of these miracles will stand and the Romanian family will progress to baptism.  I hope all of y'all are doing great!

Love you!
Elder Pogue