Hey all! I finally got a good picture with some of the best people here. Starting on the back left is Elder Bastien, Duncan, Fiona, me, and then Sue in the front.
As many know, this past weekend was the weekend for the Semi-annual General Conference, broadcast from Salt Lake City, UT. This is done twice a year: in April and in October. Thinking about this today, it really put into perspective how fast time is going now. It feels like yesterday that I was watching conference from the Conference Center in SLC, and now six months later I am watching it all the way over in England as a missionary.
We had a miracle this week! About six weeks ago we got a text to our phone for a referral in a village called Tollesbury, right at the bottom edge of our area. Whenever someone puts in a request to meet the missionaries on Mormon.org, this is what happens. The text we get forwards the persons information on to us. After gaining and losing contact with this person over the last few weeks, they told us they had moved to a place called Hatfield Peverall, which is only about 10 minutes down the road from our chapel. This time we decided to follow up in person to the new address. I love this kind of missionary work because it's like detective work. Turns out it was a bad address... We just stood in the alley trying to figure out what to do next, and from behind we hear, "Hey! What are you doing?" I thought we were going to get rebuked for being there and knocking on doors, but just the opposite happened. We started talking with this guy, Rich, who is super nice. He invited us in after a few minutes to continue our chat. After talking some more, he opened up and told us of his addiction to alcohol and how he has tried to quit, but has never been able to get enough strength to do so. I thought "We can help!" We talked a little bit about the Word of Wisdom, but more importantly, about how we can get strength through finding faith in God and His son, Jesus Christ. We didn't have much time to talk because Rich was needed by one of his neighbours, so we set up a time to meet this week, and with emotion in his eyes he thanked us, and we left.
This really taught me a lesson that missionary work is not about me at all. It is not about what I want, where I want to go, what I want to do, etc... It is about the Lords timing and plan in everything.
We were finally able to see Phillip again last week (one of our friends that has been investigating for a long time). When we showed up he was super busy and didn't really have time to meet with us. Like always, we asked if there was anything we could do to help. Well we ended up washing their dishes for an hour. I, surprisingly, enjoyed this a lot more than I thought. Phillip had me rinsing and Elder Bastien was washing with soap. I thought Phillip would give me a sponge or something to scrub the plates with, but instead he had me use an orange peel. It works surprisingly well!
Because it is already at the end of the transfer again, my p-day next week is switched to Tuesday.
Cheers!
-Elder Ammermon