Stockton In England

Monday (Oct 22): Last day in the MTC! This has been a really great experience and I have learned and grown so much. Also I have met so many wonderful people here. It's crazy how you can feel so close and have built great friendships with other Elders after only 2 weeks. We ended the day giving blessings to every Elder and sister in our district. The spirit was really strong and then we finished by singing "God Be With You Til We Meet Again". The whole night was really spiritual and I am grateful for my time here at the England MTC. Tuesday: Today was filled with a lot of traveling! 6 hour bus ride from the MTC to the mission office. Where I got my trainer who's name is Elder Stoddard. He is from St Anthony, Idaho. I guess Idaho companions are my thing! But after a while at the mission office we took a 2 and half hour train ride to my first are called Hastings. It is right on the South border of England next to the ocean. It was quite adventurous and fun to haul 3 ...

Dear Brother & Sister Orchard, We are pleased to let you know that your missionary, Elder Stockton Russell Orchard, has arrived in the England London Mission. He is happy to be here and is anxious to get to work.  We are excited to have him here with us and know that he will bless many lives as he serves. Soon after he arrived we introduced him to his new companion, Elder Bryson O. Stoddard, who is a wonderful young man. They have been assigned to work in the Hasting area of England located in the Maidstone-Canterbury Zone.  I am attaching a picture of your missionary with Sister Checketts and me, and a picture of your missionary with Elder Stoddard. As you know, missionaries greatly benefit from weekly emails from their families encouraging them in their work and expressing the family’s love and support for them.  They can respond to them once each week. Your emails will be very important to your missionary during his period of service. We con...

Hey guys happy Sunday. The reason why I am writing to you is because I am going into the mission field on Tuesday which is P day here so this is kinda like my "P-day" but not really all I get to do is email for a tiny bit. Tomorrow is my last day in the MTC and then on Tuesday I have a great 6 hour drive by bus to London. There I will get my trainer and start life in the mission field. I am not exactly sure when P day will be so I will just make sure to email everyone and let them know when I find out. Anyways there is the brief update of kinda what will happen this upcoming week, here is what happened this last week: Tuesday: First P-day in the field and it was better than I ever could have imagined. It was amazing and getting to talk to family and friends was phenomenal. We also went to the temple and it was beautiful. There were only 50 people total on the session though and that is the most the rooms could hold. After that we went to Chorely and got Subway and some fo...

Well guys I'm not exactly sure how this whole group email thing goes so I'm basically gonna write up the highlights of each day and hopefully you wont be offended by my super long email.  Tuesday (Oct 9) : Today as I went to the airport and said my goodbyes to my family, but when I got through security there were 2 Elder's waiting for me and they are both going to England as well. It was very helpful and I was able to feel a little more confident. The first flight to NY was not too bad up until we landed. We were supposed to board our next flight to Manchester in 15 minutes, when the pilot came over the intercom and told us there was somebody on the plain that was in our terminal before us who packed their passport into their checked luggage so we waited 20 mins for that, the we just had to run for what felt like forever through JFK, but we barely made it in time and our plan to England was gigantic! It had 70 rows and each row had 8 seats. Crazy! Wednesday: We arri...

Stockton wanted to obey the mission rules since he had been set apart as a missionary the night before.  He woke up at 6:30, showered and did some studying. Breakfast was a leftover cinnamon roll from our traditional Conference morning breakfast. He has always been the best brother to Mason so I was not surprised at all to see that mini hoops made his agenda! His flight was at 11:05 am so we left the house just before 9:00.  Stockton was talkative and in good spirits even though I imagine he must have been a little nervous. Checking in.  Nice photo bomb random yawning guy! It was hard to imagine he could get all of the stuff he needed for 2 years in two 50lb suitcases but they both weighed in at 44lbs! When we got to security there were quite a few families standing around spending their last precious minutes with their missionaries.  We decided to get a few pictures and then Stockton was ready to go.  He didn't want to linger an...