Brady's 21st Birthday

Today is Brady's birthday.  He was lucky and got to celebrate a few days early with his aunt and uncle Kelly and Pam who have just recently moved to England. They were kind enough to take Brady and his companion out to lunch and spoiled him with a yummy chocolate cake. 

HAPPY 21ST BIRTHDAY BRADY!!!

Back to Leeds

Transfers:

I found out that I am leaving Hull 2.  My next area will be Leeds 5.  I will be serving with a missionary named Elder Melo.  I don't know much about him, but I do know that he is from South America and he has been out for a little bit.  President Lindley told me that he is a good missionary, and that we will learn a lot from each other. I am excited though to go to Leeds, that is one things that I have wanted to have happen since I first came out.  So far I have really enjoyed this area and it is really good.  It use to be like an amazing area, but we don't really have very many people in our teaching pool, and it was kind of a slow week.  I was talking with the zone leader who use to serve in Leeds 5 and he told me how I need to get the branch/missionary relationship good again, and I need to get the members out with us and gain their trust.  He told me that is one of the main reasons I got sent to this area, and so I was like ok, I will do it.  This is the first time on my mission I have served in a Branch, and it is quite different, but I am looking forward to being here and I am excited about it. 

Tracting:

We have already had a couple of neat experiences since I have been here. One time it was freezing cold and we were just thinking about going and seeing a less active, but we decided to stick out the finding, and to just do it.  So we still had like 5 minutes before we had to head back to catch a bus, and so we knocked a bit more, and then this guy let us in.  I was like all right, and it made me so happy.  Then we taught him, and he really understood the Restoration, and we were talking about what it would mean to find out if these things are true, and he said there would be nothing stopping him from joining that one true church if he knew it was true. So that made me really happy.  Then there has been this investigator who has been meeting with missionaries for a while, named Fadzai.  So we saw her on Saturday, and she told us how she didn't want to read or pray anymore, and wasn't really even sure if she wanted to meet with us anymore.  So I was pretty sad.  So I was telling Elder Pass, and he was like I promise you that if you study for her, and look for stories, and scriptures about prayer, that she will progress and will want to meet with you again.  So that made me pretty excited, and I was so happy to hear that.  When we were there though it just seemed like something was right, and I think something happened that day, but I am not sure what it was.  We also have these two epic investigators.  They are so great.  On Sunday we went over there, and we had a Caribbean meal with them, and it was the most amazing Chicken and Rice that I have ever had, it was so amazingly wonderful.  They are really good, and they have been reading and praying, they just need to receive there answer.  I am enjoying this new area, and it should be lots of fun.  I am so excited to be here, and I will most definitely enjoy my time here.  

A post in photos

Happy Holidays from England

Standards:
"Sunday was pretty intense. Up to Sunday, we pretty much had standards achieved. The only thing we needed was for our investigators to show to church. Well, we were calling them and like none of them were answering or showing up. Then this lady in our ward shows up and her sister came, who has been taught quite a bit in the past, and so we now had one at church and we needed two more. Then, Andy said he got a little sick because of the baptismal font being so cold, so he wasn't going to come, but we told him he needed to come so he could get confirmed a member. So we went with a member to pick Andy up and he has a friend with him named John, who we have taught a bit too. So now we had two people there, and we only needed one more! It was so intense. So we are sitting in Sacrament meeting and this 15 year old kid named Connor walks by. We went out to the hall and talked to him and we brought him into church, so we had 3, and we achieved standards! We were so thankful that God blessed us to reach this goal."


Baptism:
"Back in November, we found this really good guy named Andy. He is huge! He used to be a boxer and I'm pretty sure he would be a heavy weight boxer. We have been working with him and scheduled him for the 10th of December for baptism. He was so excited for that day because it was his brothers birthday, who has passed away. Andy had his baptism and it was really good. We got this phone call from Bishop Skeleton at like 10 AM on Saturday and he said he couldn't get the font to fill up and didn't know what was going on with it. So we picked up Andy and headed down to the church, and by the time we got there, the Bishop gave us thumbs up saying he got it to work. But then there was another problem. There was no hot water. The baptismal font was freezing cold. Elder McCoy baptized Andy, which I think is funny Andy asked Elder McCoy to baptize him because Elder McCoy weighs like 150 pounds and Any weighs like 300 pounds! Elder McCoy was a little nervous about it but luckily he got him under the first time. It was really good and a really good service. I was able to do the confirmation for Andy. The kid holding the microphone kept on hitting my mouth with it, but everyone said I gave Andy a good blessing. I think it is so funny when people say that because it isn't like it was my words, and it wasn't what I was saying, but I just say thank you. Andy's friend was thanking us for teaching Andy and was telling us how it has changed him and how happy it has made Andy. It was so good to hear that and it put a huge smile on my face."


Elder McCoy:
"Elder McCoy is from Smithfield, Utah. I really enjoy serving with him. He is kinda shy, but I just have so much fun with him. We have been working so hard we just come back feeling exhausted, but we are doing really well and things are going pretty good. This past week Elder McCoy had his driving lessons. It was pretty funny because he has never driven a stick before. And don't worry, being the good companion that I am, I took some videos of him driving, and stopping, and starting. Whenever I would take one though, he would do just fine, and when I stopped is when he would stall the car and all that other stuff. It was really fun and we had a good laugh."

"Merry Christmas to all!"

Working hard in Hull

Exchanges:
"I got to go on an exchange with a missionary who has only been out like 3 weeks. It was funny because he still gets really nervous and I was trying to get him to be excited and talk louder, but I didn't have much success. We were laughing so hard though, and it was pretty legit. He solved the rubix cube in 10 seconds! I took a video to prove it and it was so ridiculous I couldn't believe it."

Work:
"So this past week has been pretty.........................................EPIC. We has such a good week and blew our area up. Sunday night last week, we didn't know what to do and we had nothing planned, and so we decided to say a prayer to know what to do. So Elder Hubbard was like I know exactly where we need to be, and so we went to this area called Stoneferry and knocked the street, and we got a bunch of return appointments, and so this last week was so epic, it was great!! We ended up finding 11 new investigators, and it was so good I think as week like 8 or 9 of them came from the area of Stoneferry on one street. Some of the lesson we were having as well were so amazing and the spirit was so strong. It is weird though because when I first came out like, I would have just gone in and taught the first lesson, and tried to make sure they understood our message, but the longer I have been out the more I have learned that that technique doesn't really work. So we have really worked on answering questions and finding out more what they need. It has made the lessons so powerful and we have been able to even help the people we are teaching recognize that they are feeling the spirit, and this is the way it will come. We have been able to make them see how the gospel can apply to their life and how it will help out the situations that they are in."

Cheerio Newton Aycliffe, Hello Hull

Shoes:
"My shoes did have holes in them, but I patched them up pretty good. This area used to have bikes so there was a bunch of rubber to repair holes and Etta bought me like 2 things of super glue to I super glued those bad boys down, and I think it will protect my feet from getting wet. And it does look pretty good. I don't want to waste my money on shoes, I can still wear them and they work just fine. I'm just trying to make this pair last as long as possible and then I have my winter boots that I can start wearing soon."


Testimony Meeting:
"On fast and testimony meeting I bore my testimony about how a testimony is so simple, but is something that brings happiness to millions of people around the world. I then went on to talk about how I hope that my testimony will prick the hearts of the people, Robert D. Hales talks about the in Special Witnesses Christ, so I talked about that. I hope my testimony will touch people and make them listen more. Then after I sat down, a member of the bishopric got up and he was like, I was going to start of my testimony by saying how much I love my wife, but I am actually going to start off by saying how much I love Elder Moore. It was so great!"


Leaving Newton Aycliffe:
"I am so sad to say, but I am on way. I won't be back for many a day, my heart is down, my head is spinning around, I have to leave the Newton Aycliffe Town. I was seriously so sad when I found out that I was leaving. It's going to be harder to leave this area than leaving home. I am going to miss this area and ward because it has been so much fun. I have gotten so close to so many of the members here, it is crazy. I can't express how grateful I am for the time that I have been able to serve in Newton Aycliffe."


Hull:
"I am going back to the same zone as Grimsby! So hopefully I will see some people there! Also, Elder Heidenberg will be in my same zone again so I'm super excited about that. My new companion is Elder Hubbard and he was actually trained by Elder Reeves, so it should be good. I don't know if any of you have ever read or heard of the book Becoming the Bold Missionary, but the guy who wrote that book actually served in Hull so I thought that was pretty legit and pretty exciting."
"I really do love Hull. The Bishop and the rest of the ward council are so great, they are all so funny."
"It's only been my first week here and I already have to cook. It went alright, I made some rice, and it was suppose to be with chicken but the chicken smelt so bad, so we used some beef instead. It was funny our ward mission leader was talking the mick out of me, and telling me how bad the rice looked and how it looked like potatoes. I seriously felt like I was on Hell's Kitchen and he was Gordon Ramsey, and I was like the new chef trying my hardest, and it wasn't going good. But in the end, both him and Elder Hubbard said it was alright, but I will definitely improve and it make it a lot better the next time I cook for him."

Newton Aycliffe, still there!

Baptism:

"We had Angela's baptism, and it went so well. She was so excited and we had a member do both the baptism and the confirmation. She looked so happy and we had a good turn out from the ward members as well. It was really good to see their support. It was the first baptism in Newton Aycliffe this year, and so we were really excited about that."

Investigators:

"We have this investigator who would never let us pray with her. So we left, and she was out smoking a fag, and she said she was praying asking God for a sign of what is true. So she finished her fag, and went inside and her tele was frozen on this picture of a sign with the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints on it, and it also said Visitors Welcome, and there were people all around it. Then she hurried and changed the channel and then flipped it back, and it was still frozen on it. She said it freaked her out! It was so great though, and we were laughing. Then when we left her after the next appointment, she was like, I am not turning on the tele now, and we just had a good laugh."

Weather:

"I think it is starting to turn into autumn in England. There has been a very cool chill in the wind lately. We have hot days every once in awhile , but lately it has been raining like crazy. We got caught out in it the other day, and the rain was so bad that it was going through my umbrella and we got soaking wet."