Thursday, December 26, 2013
Christmas Pictures!
I got moved!
So, my fate for the next 6 weeks (or something):
I'm moving one area over. I'll be in the same zone. But I'll be in Whitechapel, which basically covers half of central London. I'm going to be with Sister Hymas in a super posh flat that is meant for 4 sisters but currently just houses us. AND IM SISTER TRAINING LEADER AND IM SCARED OUT OF MY MIND. I have no idea what I'm doing, but I love Sister Hymas and she has been doing this for a transfer already, so I'm just gonna go with whatever she tells me to do. So my new ward is full of Africans, which I'm sure you can guess I'm extremely excited about.
OH and I'm STL over the Northampton zone, so I get to go back to Bedford for an exchange. WOOHOO! I'm really excited.
My Christmas has been so fun! I LOVED all the stuff you sent me for Christmas, now the question is how I'm gonna get it to my new flat.
For Christmas, we just watched a million movies as a district. Namely: Despicable Me 2 (I LOVED IT), Monsters University, The Muppets, Wreck it Ralph, The Sound of Music, and like half of Brave. I don't know how I did this all the time at home, because I feel like such a waster. We watched half the movies at the chapel, and a few at the Gants. I was talking to Sister Gant, and apparently her cousin is the girl that married Shawn Hilton, so .....small world.
We just got done with Sound of Music, and I'm glad to have introduced my district to a classic. I'm sad to be leaving, because I like London North, but I know I'm going to adore Whitechapel, and I'm so happy I get to stay in London, and I'm over the moon happy that I get to be with Sister Hymas. Apparently she's known for like a week and couldnt tell me, so that's funny. I don't know if you guys remember, but she is my roommate from the MTC. Thats my 4th companion from my MTC group.
So tomorrow morning, I'm going to my first MLC. I'm gonna make cookies for everyone there. I know, such a suck up.
Monday, December 16, 2013
It's Christmas time in the city...
Well shoot, I don't really have a lot to say about this week either. On Tuesday, Elder Dyches of the Seventy came and we had a zone conference with him. We had some excellent trainings, and I got to see Sister Jones, who I have been missing terribly! Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday were a whirlwind because we worked our butts off. It was wonderful, we got a whole lot done, and most of our teaching pool is progressing and on date. We are excited about it! The elders referred us to this lady named Christabel who is golden. She has a collection of Bibles. All different translations and editions and stuff. She wanted the Book of Mormon to add to it. She accepted a baptismal date of the 11th of January. She has 5 kids and a bunch of grandkids, so we are hoping to get her whole family on board as we continue teaching her.
So everything in the week was going great, and then Saturday happened. We had told the bishop's wife that we would help decorate for a bit for the ward Christmas party, and on Saturday morning we were at the chapel doing progress record when she called and said she had a family emergency and needed us to just do the whole thing. We were fine with that, it wasn't going to take too long. Then the lady in charge of all the food showed up with a car full of food that needed to be cooked in the dinky kitchen we have, and said her daughter just went into labor and left us with all the food. Great. So us 6 missionaries were in charge of the entire ward Christmas party. We were at the chapel from 10:30am to 9pm. Because we got left with clean up duty as well somehow. It was nuts. We were happy to serve the ward, though! The party turned out super fun, and we felt good about helping so much. Merry Christmas to us!
Today I am attending a funeral. The funeral of Sister King and Sister Belnap. For this funeral, we are playing a life sized game of Clue around London. Cool, huh? I think it is. Tomorrow we have our Christmas party, where we get our Christmas packages that we still can't open until next week. I'm excited to see them though!
Hope everyone has a great week, and a very merry Christmas. Don't forget the reason for the season! I love the Saviour, and especially getting to serve Him and represent Him at this special time of year.
(General side note: next week is moves, and we dont have pday until Thursday, so pardon the lack of a post or emails until then.)
Monday, December 9, 2013
The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud for all to hear!
And I've been singing all. flippin. week. Seriously, we barely got any work done because we were gone half the week.
Sorry in advance that this is going to be short, I have like 0 time.
So last week we had the performance on Monday that I talked about last time, then another on Friday in Watford, and another on Saturday in Ipswich. And then we recorded them all today (soundcloud.com/england-london-mission , check it out!) and I was put in charge of converting them and putting them up, and now I have like 5 seconds to email. So I apologize for no personalized responses this week.
Wednesday was our 8 month mark! Sister Diaz made tres leches for zone meeting the next day to celebrate, because Sister Hymas was also in our group. It was delicious.
We found a family this week, which makes me so happy because so far in my mission I have been pretty rubbish at finding families. They are so sweet! 4 kids- Julian is 11, Reese is 9, Aliyah is 7 and Mikell is 4. We found them by just stopping and inviting them to Primary on Sunday. They weren't able to come, but when we went over to teach them, their mom Nadena was so receptive and so prepared! I'm so excited to work with this family, and we are really trying to find more.
Ok so on Saturday we were getting a ride from the zone leaders in Ipswich and Elder Gonzalez from Spain was talking to me and I asked if he knows Mario. And he knows Mario from the reality show he was on, and I was like I KNOW HIM! He's my brother! So exciting haha. The world is a small place for Mormons.
So I'm just gonna let the pictures speak for themselves, sorry this week is so lame!
Monday, December 2, 2013
2 December 2013
So last week after we emailed and had choir practice, us and the Whitechapel sisters went to Camden Town markets to look around and shop. It was really fun! Some lady was trying to sell us this hair removal thing and testing it on us and stuff, and while she was doing her sales pitch we started a gospel conversation and she requested a Book of Mormon. Love it when I make contacts while doing PDay fun stuff! And I ended up buying her product because it is like magic and it was only £10.
On Tuesday we had an exchange with the STLs. This time around I was in Hyde Park with Sister Portillo! She is from Bolivia, she served in Bedford w/ Sister Webster two transfers before me, and she is awesome! I love her to death. And I got to be in the visitors centre half of Tuesday, that was a new experience! She even left me to teach one visitor alone while she helped another one. Scary. There is definitely a reason I am not in the VC. While there, I saw one of my Christmas packages, so that was cool! Didn't get to open it though. But yeah, Sister Portillo and I had a lot of fun. We played basketball for exercise in the morning, and I was extremely happy about that.
One great thing I accomplished on my exchange is adding a whole lot of phrases to my collection of how to say Merry Christmas in a bunch of different languages. Whenever I meet someone that speaks a different language, I ask how to say it and have quite a list in the back of my planner. So far my favorite is "Afi shoppa" from Ghana. Probably not spelled like that.
Thursday we solicited the wards best cook, Sister Leavitt, to make us a Thanksgiving lunch for after district meeting. We usually eat lunch as a district after district meeting anyway, but this time we had a proper feast. It was so stinkin delicious. Probably not the best to stuff ourselves with right before going out for a full afternoon of proselyting haha. But good, nonetheless.
Friday we had a fireside in Ilford again. The entire chapel and overflow was full, definitely our best turn out ever. It went pretty smooth. Great fun! And we gave President the light up Christmas tie we bought him hahaha. It is quite frightening. We got it at Poundland, and its got a snowman that has eyes that light up red when you push the button as it plays a Christmas song in a really creepy off key way. So funny.
Sunday we went carrolling as a district to find new investigators. We sounded great! 4 part harmonies and everything. We didn't do it for too long, though because everyone kept trying to give us money and we had to tell them all "we aren't collecting!" England is weird sometimes.
Today we had another performance where we served food and sang for a bunch of senior citizens in Stratford. It was good fun! They seemed to really like it. Because of it, I didnt get much of a PDay, but I don't mind because I'm here to help not to have PDays. We did get to go to Shaftsbury Ave and look around a shop called Forbidden Planet, that was a nerds paradise right there. Look it up, it is nuts. I got a Harry Potter Oyester card holder, so I was happy.
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