I am missing Mexican food

They really don't have good Mexican food here. They think that they do but they just don't know. I bought a thing of salsa when I made myself a breakfast burritos and it wasn't very good. I didn't do that good with the burritos either but whatever it was still better than their "Mexican food". There aren't even taco bells here. I think there is one in London but that doesn't do me a lot of good in the midlands.

We have a lot of investigators and great less actives that we are working with. The other night we taught a lesson to one of our new investigators. We taught the plan of salvation. She said that it all made sense to her. She smiles every time baptism is mention but we have never been in a situation that it seems appropriate to invite her. I know the Spirit will direct us and let us know when the time is right to ask her. I know that she will be baptized. I hope that if I leave next transfer (the 30th) that I will be able to come back for her baptism. Hopefully President will let me.
Another one of our investigators is slowly changing and feeling the Spirit more and more. He has been more willing to make commitments and has a great desire to be at church and he even wants to stay for all three hours. I love seeing the change in him! He is really shy so we will have to be bold with him to get him to start coming. I don't think he'll make the steps on his own but that is what we are here for.

We met another Less Active member the other day. It was cool. We were walking in town when we met her. She said that she had wanted to meet with us for a while because she has a lot of questions. We answered some while we were there and met up later to answer more. It’s really cool that she wants to come back and I am grateful that we can be there to give her support and answer questions.


It’s amazing how Heavenly Father teaches us in simple ways. If you ask then you will receive. One day we were talking about how we hadn't given a blessing in a while. The next day we stopped by a member’s house and she asked us to give a blessing to her son. Then that night I got really sick in the middle of the night so I woke up Elder Bray for a blessing. Then, we went to teach another investigator and his mom asked us for a blessing. Then we were at church, I was talking to the High Counselor for our ward (a fellow American) and he asked us for a blessing for his infected eye. Someone else asked us for a blessing as well but we are going to figure out who her home teacher are before we do it for her. We also blessed our house again. It’s crazy how many times that we have used our Priesthood since we were commenting on it.

One day when we were planning we were trying to think of people that we could go by to get referrals from. Someone popped into Elder Brays mind but then we kind of forgot about it. But we were out talking to people the other day and she popped into my mind and we were in the area so we went by. Before we could even start to ask her about it she started to tell us about someone that we could go by and see. It was really cool. We went by and the lady was not interested at all but the whole experience was cool.
I feel blessed to me a missionary and LOVE the people in England!

Here is a view of Boston from the stomp.

Pink Football

Yalright? (A common English greeting),
Traveling and working is exhausting! We went to Coventry for mission Football. It was good fun! My Zone, Nottingham, came in second out of five teams. Our team wore pink because at the last football game it were the losing team. I had to play goalie most of the time.

We went to Peterborough an Exchange/Work over thing. Then from Peterborough we went to Leicester(my old area) for Specialized training. It was a lot of fun. In the morning, All the Peterborough Elders/Sisters and the Zone Leaders met in City Center and we did finding for a couple of hours. We got a lot of finding in and found a lot of new Investigators. Too bad none of them were in our area. Then that night we worked with Elder Seale and Mansfield. All the appointments fell through and it was pouring rain so we thought that it would be logical to just take all of our water proofs off and go riding in the rain. In our travels we found a place in a park that was like a trail through wooded area. It was pitch black so we had to ride through it slowly. We got quite wet and muddy but it was a lot of fun so it was worth it. We then went and visited some people in the ward.

For General Conference we went to our chapel to watch it. We got to see all the sessions but the very last one. I guess I'll just have to read about it. I really liked conference this time. Normally it seems like it kind of drags on but it went by so quickly this time. I guess it’s because I was enjoying it a lot this time.
I really like President Uchtdorfs talk on pride. I thought that it was really good. And I liked his talk on the "Fundamentals". Overall I just like how strong the spirit was. It was great.

Boston is where the Pilgrims left England from. There are a lot of references to the Pilgrim Fathers as they call them and the Mayflower and such. For some reason they love America here. Like one of the main roads is called John Adams way (he was a U.S. President) and there are trees planted in honor of America. It’s different from Leicester because there they didn't seem to like Americans all that much.

Like I said, we're in the Nottingham portion of the Nottingham-Leicester Zone. It was two zones that they combined last transfer. Nottingham is, as I'm sure you know, where Robin Hood takes place. We went to Notts to Stake Conference. It looks very different than the Disney Film. I didn't see the Sherwood Forest anywhere. There are a lot of references to Robin Hood in this area as well. I like it.

I think that I'm starting to gain some of the weight that I lost back. I thought that I was getting so fit but this area is so flat and there is a place down the street that sells deep fried battered Mars bars for only 50p. They are so good! I'm starting to crave one now. Plus if we go in at the end of the day he gives us free chips (French fries). Anyways I think I need to start to watch my diet more. Overall I have lost weight but its creeping back.

Did I tell you that I'm obsessed with classic Mini Coopers? I love those things. I take pictures of the ones that I see that are parked. I think I'll get one when I get home. Not as my main car though. It will be after the purchase of my truck.
Love ya all!
Elder Wright

P.S. some letters would be nice

Transfers

I beat Beth to Boston! Boston, Lincolnshire though, not Massachusetts. Funnily, I'm with Elder Dahl. He is from AZ and his brother Aaron was in the Preston Ward. Crazy! It’s a lot of fun being with him. The town of Boston is way smaller than Leicester and it takes ages to get here from Birmingham. Our area is massive though. It’s in the very corner of the mission. It should really be a car mission but we have bicycles. Well Elder Dahl does. Elsa died on me (pedals came off whilst riding). Elder Bedke insists that he is going to rescue her from the Evington Flat but I am pretty sure she's completely dead.
Boston is like 2 miles from the ocean or less! The boats come up the river and use the docks in the city. The river doesn't seem big enough for boats but I guess that it is. We want to ride out to the ocean sometime. Not that we get to go in but it would be cool to see. Boston is a way small town. Our area is massive though. We won't be able to work in most of it since we don't have a car. I was looking on the map of our area and we only cover a tiny portion of it. So far we have only been in Boston and the villages around it but we want to go out more. I think that we'll be going to Skegness at some point to do some finding. We live in a Terrace house aka row house in the states. It’s a complete mess inside but it’s bigger than my last flat so that’s good.

I'm definitely going to miss the people in my old area and especially the people we taught but I had to move on at some point. It was really sad when I had to say goodbye to Chipo and her daughter. Chipo bought me a framed "footprints" poem as a thank you. I kinda want to send it home because I don’t want it to get ruined but I'm poor so that probably won’t happen.

Today we are in Lincoln with the Elders here. We are going to go see the MASSIVE cathedral. I saw it as we walked in but we are going to walk up to it and then of course make a visit to the Chinese Buffet. 

Elder Wright

Here are a few pics. More to come......


This is me at the Boston Stump. The pic doesn't show you how huge it is. It is literally massive.


My "family". Elder Gama, Elder Smith, Me and Elder Davis who Elder Smith follow up trained so that makes him my "step brother". Ask a RM they will explain.

Bentleys and Porsches

Not a whole lot to talk about in missionary work but I will tell you about the city. All the houses are pretty much touching. That is called a Terrace house. It’s basically like they have in New York except they call it Row Houses there. For the most part the people are nice. Sometimes we meet some pretty rude people but they just look like idiots so they get their own. It’s not all that common for people to drive here. Most of the time it’s just the husband that drives the cars. And I haven't really noticed a time where, if both people drive, they both have separate cars. They just share. It’s weird. I couldn't live like that for very long I don’t think. The cars aren't as nice either. But they are a lot cheaper here from what I can tell. There are some nice cars. Like I see Bentleys, Porsches and nice cars like that all the time. But most of the cars aren't very nice! I guess the gospel is true no matter what you drive!!!

Elder Wright

This is the district photo the second one is in our flat with Elder Bedke and Richter. Elder Richter is going home today.

I am still here

Well neither of us got moved. I'm glad about that. I really like this ward and I want to see Chipo get baptized. We were expecting to stay here. There were only a few changes made to our district. But the mission as a whole had a lot of changes. They took it from 8 zones down to 6, so our zone now covers another zone. The zone leaders are way stressed about that and now they are going to be training a greenie. Everyone thinks that President has gone crazy.
Another change that is now in effect is P-day is being switched to Mondays, we are only going to have interviews and zone conferences quarterly now. I don't know when we are supposed to get our post. That part kind of annoys me because we already have to wait forever if someone sends anything to us. Maybe they will start forwarding our post like the other missions. I don't know though.

My teaching skills are getting better. Not the greatest still but it’s ok. As long as I am getting better I'll be happy with that. Last week was my "senior week". I was the senior companion for the week. It was fun and annoying at the same time but a great experience.
It has been raining all week. Well it’s off and on but the weather here is so weird, one second it will be raining then it will be sunny then it will be rainy again. We always have to take a coat with or at least put one in our bags. All the stuff in my bag got wet the other day. Nothing that was beyond use anymore but my scriptures and my preach my gospel are now a little water damaged. Nothing too bad though so I think that I will be alright. Now I have to keep everything in plastic grocery bags. It’s annoying when you are looking for stuff but I don't want anything to get ruined so it worth it.
Love you all!
Elder Wright

It's raining!

Nothing too exciting has happened. It has been raining a lot though. The weather here is crazy. It is hot and humid one second and literally within a few minutes it is raining hard. I got a new raincoat last P-Day. Last Saturday we had a full day of teaching. Or rather we were supposed to. People didn't show up for their appointments or gave us the wrong house number. But we were able to teach a few lessons. We only had two investigators at church. We had one Less Active there. That is one thing that we are really concentrating on. The Area President and Elder Perry have set a goal for the Europe area to double the Sacrament attendance in 10 years. This is going to be done through new members but also through reactivating Less Actives. Unfortunately this ward that we are serving in is not very good at giving us names to go see.

President Ogden is different from the Previous Mission President. The previous one was all about baptize, baptize, baptize but President Ogden is very much centered on baptizing and keeping members and also bringing back the Less Actives. So far this year there have only been about 20 baptisms in this stake (last year had 100) but the Sacrament attendance has already increased by 8%. The goal is 10% for this year.

Yesterday Elsa, the bicycle, had some issues. (Elder Bedke named her when he used her). It’s going to cost like £30 to fix. Kinda sucks but I guess I really don't have an option. I don't want to buy a new bike.

Our investigator Chipo is perfect. This week when we were going to commit her to baptism, she asked us if she could be baptized before we could ask her. It was great. She is so excited too. We went and saw her yesterday and she can't wait to get baptized. She has a really strong testimony in prayer. She loves us to come over and pray with her. The other day she had a Dr's appointment and wanted us to pray with her. We were in City center with a bunch of people walking around. She insisted that we say a prayer over the phone. It was so awkward but she loved it. She is 42 and a nursing student. She has a daughter that we want to teach the lessons too also but she is off at school or something. She said the prayer the other day. It was so intense. It was like one of those crazy prayers that you see on TV. It almost sounded like a rap but it was good.

Rex, the guy that was baptized a few weeks ago, was supposed to get the Priesthood the last 2 weeks but he didn't show up either day. We have seen him and he sounds like he is excited to come to church but from some reason he doesn't show up. We are a little worried that he has gone back to drinking but doesn't want to admit it. We'll see though. Stanford, the little boy that got baptized the same day as Rex has moved away to Cheltenham. Hopefully I'll get transferred there sometime.
That’s all for this Week!
Elder Wright