10/28/13

Dear Family,

There's a lot to write about this week, but not much time.  First of all, you guys would be blown away at the cream they have here.  It's insane.  The light cream here is like the double thick cream in Utah.  The double thick cream here is crazy thick.  I don't even know how to describe it.  They have some called "clotted cream" that you can stick a spoon in straight up and down and it won't fall over!  Maybe I'm just too easily entertained, but I found it very interesting.

Investigators are doing well.  We taught the Word of Wisdom like 3 times this week.  Two of our investigators were really funny with it.  Angela thought it was going to be really hard, but I told her about a substitute that worked really well for her.  Ginger and Lemon tea is like the best stuff in the world, but if you dunk ginger bread men in it its level of tastiness flies through the roof.  It's incredible.  She really liked it.  When we followed up with her on how she was doing she said, "I've got a box of gingerbread and Ginger and Lemon tea in my room next to my bed.  It's changed my life!"  Haha, by small and simple things are great things brought to pass, right?  We taught Johnny the Word of Wisdom as well, and we thought it wasn't going to go over very well.  He's a cocktail artist, which is basically just a nice way of saying "bar tender."  He lives around alcohol.  He actually accepted the no alcohol part really well, though.  He just likes the art of mixing cocktails, not necessarily the drinking of them.  What really hit him was the tea.  He ran into his kitchen and brought us all of his Persian tea that he loves and said, "is this stuff ok?!  Does this have the tea plant in it?!"  He was so concerned!  It was really funny.  Unfortunately it did have green tea in it, so we had to break his heart.  He took it pretty well though.  He's so willing to do whatever is required of him.  I really love Johnny.  He's a great guy.  He wears these big huge headphones around every day listening to classical music.  We let him use the church while we're there sometimes to practice on the nice piano.  He's just a solid guy.  He told me that he's definitely going to be baptized this year.  At the very latest around Christmas time.  He thinks it would be really cool to be baptized when everyone is talking about Christ more than any other part of the year.  I agree.  That would be cool.  I just want him to be baptized earlier because I want to be here for it. I guess it's a little selfish, haha.  Who knows, maybe I'll be here for one more transfer.  That would be so cool.  I would love to spend Christmas with all of these people I've grown to love over the last 6 months. 

Unfortunately, Charmaine has been avoiding us.  We don't know what's happened.  I hope we didn't do something that offended her.  My last conversation with her was really positive.  We stopped by her house on Friday and she wouldn't even open the door for us.  She just talked to me through the call box and said she was really busy.  I hope we can figure out what's going on soon.  She was supposed to be baptized yesterday.  We had two other investigators baptized after church.  Two of the Sister's investigators.  It went really well.

We had a really spiritual lesson with one of the other Elder's investigators this week.  They accidentally double booked themselves, so we went and taught one and they went to the other.  We got to go see Florence, an older lady from Nigeria who is preparing for baptism next week, but when we showed up to her home she told us that she was definitely not being baptized next week.  We addressed some concerns and talked about what baptism meant, but she was just being really stubborn and coming up with weird excuses.  It came to a point where I just started asking her the baptism interview questions to show her that she was prepared, and when we got the end I asked her if she was ready to be baptized, but she said no.  I said "what is the spirit telling you?"  She broke down and started crying and saying "I know.  I know."  The spirit worked on her super hard.  It was really cool to see.  At the end of our lesson we asked her to pray and she prayed that she would still be able to be baptized next week.  Within like 40 minutes she went from an "absolutely not" to a "definitely, yes."  The spirit changes people.  It's amazing.

We met a really cool family this week from Angola.  The mother is named Anna and her two daughters and a niece live with her.  One of the daughters and the niece are 18 and they both accepted baptismal invitations!  It was way cool.  They live really close to the church, so it's really easy for them to get there on Sundays.  Hopefully we'll be able to bring them this week.  The way we found them was really cool.  We were just walking down the road and I noticed them getting a box out of the back of their car.  It was really big so I offered some help.  We helped them carry it into their flat and then offered to come back later and build the wardrobe that was inside it in exchange for sharing a message about Jesus Christ with them.  They are formerly Catholic, so they didn't see any problem with that.  Sometimes we find people in ways that we never would have imagined.  It's really cool.  Last night we decided to stop by the home of an older member who didn't come to church and just make sure they were ok.  They weren't home, so we were going to just do some street contacting.  For some reason I just didn't feel good about it though.  I felt like we couldn't go street contacting right then.  I just stood in front of the member’s house for a minute or two trying to clear my head or figure out what we should be doing instead.  I ended up feeling better about going street contacting and we took off.  We were walking down a street and a woman came walking around a corner and I startled her really bad.  I said I was sorry and didn't mean to scare her and then we started talking.  She was on her way to work and was going to be late, but I noticed she was wearing a cross and asked her "how has a faith in Jesus Christ been a blessing to you in your life?"  It caught her attention.  She is a very strong Christian.  She just moved to the area and has been looking for a church to go to.  She lives like 4 minutes from our church!  We read some scriptures with her and set up an appointment for later this week.  If I hadn't waited there in front of the member's home I wouldn't have been in the right place to accidentally scare her when she walked by.  She has 4 sons who are all on break from school next week, so we're going to go teach the whole family.  It will be awesome.  I think I might start scaring people as they walk around corners more often.  It seemed to work pretty well.  I was placed in the right place at the right time to find her.  It was completely out of my hands.

All in all, it's been a really good week.  I'm way looking forward to the packages that are on their way.  As far as the Tesco thing goes, just anything is great.  Gingerbread men, eggs, cake, doughnuts, I'm happy with whatever.  And I don't expect anything.  I just thought it was a fun idea.  I finally bought a coat!  It's really nice, and it only cost £70.  I hope you have a fantastic week!

Love,

Elder Hein

P.S. Enjoy the photos!

band/choir practice

Elder Hein at the lookout from Alexandra Pallace after dark

Elder Nolan at the lookout from Alexandra Pallace after dark

Elder Hein with a velvet Ferrari (who buys something like that?!)

Additional details from Elder Nolan’s blog today:

Last Monday we (Nolan, Hein, Micthell, David) went to Harrods. We needed to do our weekly shop and found very quickly that our budget does not accommodate the purchasing of Harry Potter wands, exotic dogs and silk pajamas. The place is amazing and obscene at the same time. As we left the great and spacious building we came across a black...Velvet...Ferrari. Yes, Velvet. You know you've made it when you have to take your car to the dry cleaners.