A Love for Studying
Before you read about my week I just want to let you all know that I'm thankful for each of you! Also as I write this email I am currently on a train to London and if you don't get a response from me just know I will respond on my way home around 5pm here which is like 10am for you guys in Utah. Thanks for the support and you guys are awesome. Hope everyone enjoyed 2 hour church yesterday!
Monday (December 31): Last day of 2018 how nuts is that?! After shopping and getting a fresh trim from Mohammed we had some McDonald's for lunch and they took 20 minutes to get my food... that's McDonald's for ya. After we went to the chapel and did a little bit of emailing and then we had a New Years eve "party" which was actually more of a get together because there was about 10 people including us haha.
Tuesday: It was an all out day of just finding. And boy there was almost nobody on the streets!
Especially in the morning I got a picture of the street that I will send, at 10:30 there was hardly anyone! So that made for a challenge. Thankfully a member invited us over for dinner this evening but there were no buses today because it's the new year and the family doesn't own a car so we walked 45 minutes there and 45 minutes back. At least we walked off all the food we ate!
Wednesday: Today was district meeting and it was great. One of the sisters had been having a little bit of struggles because things aren't really going our way missionary work wise so we had a testimony meeting as part of it. Boy I can promise you nothing quite brings the spirit like a testimony! Afterwards we were supposed to teach somebody that flogged us (flogged basically means didn't show up). So we just spent most the rest of our day out on the streets in the freezing cold with no one willing to stop and talk, how fun. We saved all our studies for tonight and while we ate dinner we listened to a few Elder Bednar talks, he has to be my top 3 favourite apostles along with Elder Christofferson and Elder Uchtdorf, no order on that though they just give great talks and I love it. The missionary work is struggling but I am sure learning a lot!
Thursday: We finally got to have another service day with brother Hobbs. We didn't get to last week because he was in Denmark with his family on holiday. We started at 9am then worked until about 2, ate some lunch, and went back out to work until 5 when it got dark. We did some stuff with electrical wires and also mixed cement with sand and water to place between the walls to add some extra support. After it got dark brother Hobbs took a shower and changed and then we all went to mutual and had a Nephite vs Lamanite nerf war and me, Elder Stoddard, and Ed won both times. So far we are undefeated in wars.
Friday: After the usual morning routine we travelled to Tunbridge Wells for a little bit of finding as a district and then afterwards we had some lunch at Subway. Boy it was tasty, haven't had that in a couple months! On the train ride back home I had a great nap to give me the boost of energy I needed for the rest of the day, because we were just doing finding back in Hastings as well. We visited the member who fell down last week because he was still in the hospital, he broke his hip apparently so we were just there to talk with him and I think he enjoyed it. Finished off the day with a little bit of studies, can't complain too much!
Saturday: Today we had a little bit of preparation in the morning from 10-12 to do grocery shopping and things since we won't have time on Monday and we found our new favourite drink this week so we bought 13 bottles of it today 😂
Apart from the morning today was so slow honestly, we spent the rest of the daylight talking to people on the street with just a short break for lunch in between and man it has been a real challenge to find people who want to listen. Tonight we felt like there were 3 specific less active members we should stop by and so we did that but all 3 of them weren't even home. It was a little deflating and not a great way to end a pretty boring day, but thankfully Sunday was on the morrow!
Sunday: Holy cow today was wild! Not only was it 2 hour church but it was testimony meeting and we had some wild experiences haha. There was one of the older ladies in our ward who got up and talked about Kung fu Panda for 5 minutes and how she enjoyed watching it, then the craziest thing happened that I have never seen in my 18 years of going to church. One of the guys in our ward got up and talked for about 5 minutes and sat down, then 2 people later he got back up again! So the same person got up twice in testimony meeting haha it was insane! Thankfully we spent the afternoon with Hobbs for lunch and played a little bit of games with them and it was a lot of fun. By the time we travelled back home it was already dark and we just did all our studies and we also wanted to get to bed as soon as possible because we have to wake up early to travel into London.
So that's the scoop. Missionary work has been very very tough these past weeks. But I can honestly say I have increased my understanding sooo much through listening to talks, reading the Book of Mormon and New Testament every day, and really just studying. I truly feel like part of the reason I was supposed to come to Hastings as my first area even though it is one of the most difficult areas in the mission is to be with Elder Stoddard and develop a love for studying. Honestly when I started my mission I was not excited to study every day but now that's what we look forward to most!
Hope you all have a great week and I would love to hear from you if you get the time!
Elder Orchard
Monday (December 31): Last day of 2018 how nuts is that?! After shopping and getting a fresh trim from Mohammed we had some McDonald's for lunch and they took 20 minutes to get my food... that's McDonald's for ya. After we went to the chapel and did a little bit of emailing and then we had a New Years eve "party" which was actually more of a get together because there was about 10 people including us haha.
Tuesday: It was an all out day of just finding. And boy there was almost nobody on the streets!
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| The dead streets of Hastings at 10:30 am on January 1st |
Wednesday: Today was district meeting and it was great. One of the sisters had been having a little bit of struggles because things aren't really going our way missionary work wise so we had a testimony meeting as part of it. Boy I can promise you nothing quite brings the spirit like a testimony! Afterwards we were supposed to teach somebody that flogged us (flogged basically means didn't show up). So we just spent most the rest of our day out on the streets in the freezing cold with no one willing to stop and talk, how fun. We saved all our studies for tonight and while we ate dinner we listened to a few Elder Bednar talks, he has to be my top 3 favourite apostles along with Elder Christofferson and Elder Uchtdorf, no order on that though they just give great talks and I love it. The missionary work is struggling but I am sure learning a lot!
Thursday: We finally got to have another service day with brother Hobbs. We didn't get to last week because he was in Denmark with his family on holiday. We started at 9am then worked until about 2, ate some lunch, and went back out to work until 5 when it got dark. We did some stuff with electrical wires and also mixed cement with sand and water to place between the walls to add some extra support. After it got dark brother Hobbs took a shower and changed and then we all went to mutual and had a Nephite vs Lamanite nerf war and me, Elder Stoddard, and Ed won both times. So far we are undefeated in wars.
Friday: After the usual morning routine we travelled to Tunbridge Wells for a little bit of finding as a district and then afterwards we had some lunch at Subway. Boy it was tasty, haven't had that in a couple months! On the train ride back home I had a great nap to give me the boost of energy I needed for the rest of the day, because we were just doing finding back in Hastings as well. We visited the member who fell down last week because he was still in the hospital, he broke his hip apparently so we were just there to talk with him and I think he enjoyed it. Finished off the day with a little bit of studies, can't complain too much!
Saturday: Today we had a little bit of preparation in the morning from 10-12 to do grocery shopping and things since we won't have time on Monday and we found our new favourite drink this week so we bought 13 bottles of it today 😂
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| All the good stuff |
Sunday: Holy cow today was wild! Not only was it 2 hour church but it was testimony meeting and we had some wild experiences haha. There was one of the older ladies in our ward who got up and talked about Kung fu Panda for 5 minutes and how she enjoyed watching it, then the craziest thing happened that I have never seen in my 18 years of going to church. One of the guys in our ward got up and talked for about 5 minutes and sat down, then 2 people later he got back up again! So the same person got up twice in testimony meeting haha it was insane! Thankfully we spent the afternoon with Hobbs for lunch and played a little bit of games with them and it was a lot of fun. By the time we travelled back home it was already dark and we just did all our studies and we also wanted to get to bed as soon as possible because we have to wake up early to travel into London.
So that's the scoop. Missionary work has been very very tough these past weeks. But I can honestly say I have increased my understanding sooo much through listening to talks, reading the Book of Mormon and New Testament every day, and really just studying. I truly feel like part of the reason I was supposed to come to Hastings as my first area even though it is one of the most difficult areas in the mission is to be with Elder Stoddard and develop a love for studying. Honestly when I started my mission I was not excited to study every day but now that's what we look forward to most!
Hope you all have a great week and I would love to hear from you if you get the time!
Elder Orchard
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| We recorded a lesson on video and sent it to one of our friends and it was sweet! |
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