This week was a great one if I will be honest, but we did have some bumps in the road.
Monday- Today we had some serious email time at a chapel and tried playing some basketball with a terribly deflated football (soccer ball). It was reasonably successful as long as we played horse. I got
beat a few times. We taught a few people that were recent converts in the evening. They are super good people and still have a testimony of the truth, but they are struggling to stay away from temptations. It is really sad to see. Peter and Rastio are really starting to make some progress though and I hope they will be able to get over their issues soon.
Tuesday- Today we had tons of lessons planned and we were going to see lots of people and it was going to be great. We then remembered that we had to prepare for our baptism on Friday for Jenny and wanted to be done with things ahead of time so we don't have to stress out like we did last week. So that really killed our time. Also, people were not available to meet with us when we were there. So we talked to lots of people and walked all over Eastwood. We then went to teach our self-reliance class. It was interesting. The Branch President just talked about how they need to be proactive in doing the self-reliance activity he has created. He gave them all a schedule. I got some practice translating, though, so that was good.
Wednesday- We met with our district today and with our branch mission leader, Brother Whitehouse. The meetings were great and we have again emphasized raising our standards so we aren't simply living by the rules, we are exemplifying them. It is good. We then got to meet with some new young members of our branch. They are Martina and Martin and they are super nice. Their dad is not the best and it is sad to see. We also met with Peter again and he is making some great progress. He is really humbling himself and I think he is starting to have desire to come back to church.
Thursday- Today was a regular day. We met with some people who are struggling in their faith, and also with Jenny to prepare her for her baptism. We also finished translating some mission papers into Slovak since we have to give them to our investigators. By "we" I mean Elder Buckhoff. My vocab is not that advanced yet. Neither is my understanding of grammar. We have tried personalizing our messages to people more that way they are able to really apply the principles of the gospel. This way, the joy will enter their lives and they will gain a testimony it is true.
Friday- This morning, I listened to Elder Uchtdorf's address in the general women's session of conference entitled "Fourth Floor, Last Door". It was amazing and talked lots about faith and perseverance. I was on exchange with Elder Armstrong as well as Elder Barber who is an English Elder. He was with us because all of our companions were in Leeds for the day at the same meeting. We had only a small amount of time and lots of people we wanted to see, so we gave up most of our lunchtime. We only ended up meeting with two people in the space of four hours. No one would answer. The few people who did answer were unable to meet with us. It was disappointing. We did lots of walking and lots of talking to people on the way, but not much success at meeting with people. We had our baptism which ended up being a no go. An hour before, we finally get ahold of the person getting baptised to let her know some things she needs to bring and she tells us she doesn't want to do it anymore. We talked to her about it, but she got real mad and we just said we would stop by sometime later to talk more. We then rushed to call all of the people who were helping with rides or the program or refreshments and let them all know. So that happened...
Saturday- We had to do some iPad training and weekly planning and studies and then watched general conference, but only the Saturday AM session. The strangest feeling was watching at 5pm knowing that my family was probably just waking up and making breakfast for the conference time. It was probably really warm and sunny and in England it was dark and rainy and it tripped me out to think of that happening across the pond. Afterwards, we went back and studied the language and then went on an excursion to find some fish-n-chips for dinner. Man that was nice. We put the address in the sat-nav (gps) and started the adventure. The GPS was really confusing and took us all over the place and it was dark and Elder Peck is still a new driver. The English roads are really skinny and that makes it interesting. We ended up on some backroad of dirt with cornfields on either side and no light whatsoever. We were about to go back and then we found a really classy fish-n-chip shop which was surprising. Most of the time, it is a sketchy shack-like building and you just hope. This was really good though. We felt so English.
Sunday- We had church, and then I watched six straight hours of general conference which was so spiritually uplifting, but also I burned out a little the last 30 minutes. I missed the first part of
the Sat PM session and we didn't get to watch the Sun PM session since that would go from 9-11 pm in England and that is against the rules. We will have to watch it some other time. It was so good to hear from our prophet and hear the words that he chose to share with us. He is supported by the Lord I know it and hearing from the apostles helped me feel the Spirit. They are all men of God and share his words with us. I am so grateful for what they do.
I love you all and I would encourage anyone that has questions or struggles or concerns in life about anything to watch general conference. The words are inspired. They are from God and carry his
message to us. They will lift us, answer our questions, and heal us.
Elder Pace
P.S. We are having a mission conference on the 22nd of October and there will be many church leaders present. Elder Nelson, Elder Kearon, Bishop Causse, Elder Hallstrom, and Elder Sabin will all be coming. I am stoked!
No comments:
Post a Comment