This week was my final fast and testimony meeting in England. Once a month, we fast (don't eat or drink for 24 hours) and the church service we have that day is called fast and testimony meeting. During that meeting, people have the opportunity to go to the stand and share their thoughts and feelings of how they have found or built their faith in Christ and to declare things that they know to be true. This is often a great chance to be strengthened in our own faith as we hear about how others feel the same way as us.
This week was that meeting and it was really touching to me. Our friend Fahad came again. He is only 12 and is the only one of his family who comes to church. The rest of his family is either not religious or is of a different faith and they sometimes give him a hard time about going to church and believing this. Yesterday he unexpectedly got up in front of a congregation of roughly 110 people and told us he wanted to share how he has felt learning about this message. He briefly recounted his story of meeting the missionaries and told us how grateful he was that he can know about this. As members of the church that have these meetings monthly, we often fall into a routine of saying very similar things out of habit. Fahad doesn't have any of these preconceptions of what to say and his comments were totally based off his feeling. He spoke in the clearest way he could about how this gospel has changed his life and outlook and how it has brought a "giant ball of happiness" into his life. He talked about how much it is meant that he can be here now even though he is on his own. He shared about how as he keeps learning, he has felt more and more faith and has gotten his own relationship with God. Hearing him speak about how this changed him touched me and really got to me. If I spent 2 years here and did nothing except for this, it was worth it. Realizing how much Fahad will be changed by having found truth was a precious moment. No matter how tough some weeks were, I would never ever stop that knowing that it will mean this much to even one person. It was one of the happiest times of my mission.
Love you all,
Elder Pace
I never answered your questions from this last week. We have a few people that we teach. We teach a lad called Fahad who is 12. He is so cool and is a really great friend. We also teach a man called Danny. He is English and has been doing great. We have known him for about a month. He likes snowboarding and Japanese. We also are teaching two lads who are about our age called Chris and Hadrian. We just met them this week. Another person We are teaching is an older lady called Maurine. She is probably the most open old person I have met. Most of them are too set in what they have been doing for their lives to change.
Elder Omoruyi is my companion. He is really funny and is a nice guy. He does really well at helping people see what they do good. He highlights their best skills and traits which is so good. We find by street contacting and knocking. Nothing too crazy. Members here have done great at being friends to the people we teach. They are welcoming and helpful in relating to them and strengthening them. They don't do too much finding. I think it is extremely hard to get a ward excited to find people to teach. Every so often It happens but in my experience it isn't that common
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