Priesthood Power

Email to Dad:

Hmmmm this week has been the same as all the other weeks really. Ive been having some trouble with my knee and ankle, I have bad joints if it keeps bugging me ill ask to get it checked out.  I haven't been able to sleep very well.  I am such a night owl I cant stay awake during the day but at night I just have so much energy! So I want to send some European sweets back to you guys in December I don't know how much it will cost but that will be my present to you guys:) who wants chocolate and who wants something else? I learned some things about the priesthood and how it works. its hard to explain but the talk is called the bread and milk of the gospel. the guys name is weird too but if you're interested its a very cool talk. Love you

Email to Mom:

Well this last week has been almost the exact same as last week. super boring and nothing happening. we did teach a lesson to one girl but i think shes more interested in the fact that we are American rather than the fact that we are trying to save her soul. I listened to a talk yesterday by a professor and he was talking about where God got his power and where our priesthood power comes from! its changed how I view the priesthood and makes me want to be more worthy to use it. It was so weird after i understood how it works so many different things in the gospel clicked and made so much more sense. it was called the bread and milk of the gospel if you wanna look it up. I don't know if you already know about it or not but it was amazing. Also we had zone meeting this week and I got to chill with all my other missionary friends! There's a kid from my group named Elder Severe, he's such a lad! me and him are so rowdy (in a good way) we just try to make people laugh and have a good time! hes companions with Elder Packer (the apostles grandson) hes cool as well. This week hopefully will be better. there are moments where my companion is cool for like 10 minutes then he goes back to his old self. its weird. anyways that's it for this week. LOVE YOU

999 (911)

Okay so this last week was crazy. You cant tell Elder Halls parents about this cause I don't know if he wants them to worry or not but... we finish a DA at a Edgar's house and we started cycling back home, its raining cause you know its England and there's no such thing as any other weather. We start cycling up a huge hill, no problem, we go down hill and start going up another hill, my trainer is in front of me and out of nowhere his bike explodes and he does a front flip in the middle of the road and skids like 10 feet, we were probably going 20 or 25 Mph so he hit pretty hard. I stop and go check on him and he cant move, I take his back pack off and we kind of shuffle him to the side of the road and a car stops. I call 999 to get an ambulance and in the background I hear him proselyting to this family that stopped to see if he was ok. so I got an ambulance to come and while we were waiting we got to teach this family about the POS. My first lesson, too bad it took my companion almost dying. Anyways we got some members to come wait with us so this family could get back to their plans, also its dark outside the sun sets at 4 here. we wait an hour and a half for the ambulance to come and finally we get that all situated, then we went to the hospital and were there till 2AM and long story short he just hurt some back muscles really bad and tweaked a nerve, way to go UK doctors we could have figured that out. he's alright now hes walking around pretty well and I got to sleep in the first day but I was stuck in my flat for 4 days....shoot me in the face. Anyways other than that this last week was so fun. we went to a trunk or treat with the ward and dressed as American's. Halloween isn't celebrated as much here as it is in America. Nothing else really happened this week cause we were stuck in the flat. I got the Ramen!!!!!!!!!!! how much did it cost cause I will buy that every week and live off of it forever. Love you guys!

Catching up!

OCTOBER 20th
 This last week has been about the same as usual I think? Im not really sure what the standard for a busy week is? We have done lots and lots fo finding this week and talking to less actives. Our focus has been reactivating the less active members and talking to people in between going to their houses. We have a list of maybe 100 names of inactives? We met with an inactive this last week named Luke and he told us he was atheist but he said he would like to see our views on everything so we talked for a while and he kept saying things that would mean he believes in god but he would say he was an atheist after saying stuff like that, so near the end of the conversation Elder Hall said something like you keep saying all these things like you believe in god and then go on to say you're an atheist, I think you're just saying that to remind yourself that you don't believe in god, or something along those lines and Luke just kinda looked at us like yeah you're right, and then we said we knew the spirit was there and that he knew it too and he went on to say he would be lying if he didn't say he did, so hopefully we can get him back to church soon, hes a pretty cool guy. We talked to a random Vietnamese girl on the bus the other day too and we got a return so hopefully we can actually teach a real lesson sometime this week.  That's it for this week! Love you

 OCTOBER 27th

Wow so this last week has been fun! We started out doing the normal routine of the mission going out finding and such. then on Wednesday we went on an adventure through some pastures and a nature reserve where elder hall kinda fell off his bike and into a thorn bush. I didn't even know what happened till he caught up to me. We were covered in mud and leaves and it was so gross, But we got where we needed to go and that was good. we looked like hobbos. Update about me, facial hair is annoying I cant wait to not have to shave it when I get home, full on beard, its gonna be great. Me and Elder Hall have been training to beat Edgar in a Push-up contest, when we first tried I stopped at like 33 and Edgar stopped at 57ish and wasn't even tired, flippen Ecuadorian, so yeah we've been working out hard as of Saturday haha. Transfers are next week.  I'm gonna have to break him. So many people think we have to be robots in this mission but that's so far from the truth in this mission. The more of a lad you are the more people trust you, you always gotta have some good banter. So I was studying in the end of Alma the other day in the beginning of the war chapters and I was reading about how the Nephites prepared themselves by fortifying their cities and making forts all throughout the land, It went on to talk about how when the Lamanites came to take their lands they looked upon the cities and began to fear exceedingly. And when they attacked they were defeated and driven back. So I began to think about how fortresses work and how I could apply it to myself. A fortress is useless unless there is an army or some kind of force occupying it. but it cant just be that there has to be walls, battlements, gates, and different ways to defend yourself, likewise we need to fortify ourselves against the things of the world, but not only that we need to man our fortifications or else they are of no use to us and we will be overcome by our enemies or sin. so yeah that's what I learned this week. I love you guys!!!