London Calling

March 21, 2011

hello! how are you today? things are great in High Wycombe. spring is here and it is amazing! to celebrate spring alyssa wore pink bunny ears when we walked to church with her yesterday. all the way there haha I tried to take them from her but she refused to take them off. she is so funny haha. bless her heart. 

 this week has been amazing! first off thank you for sending those contacts. I got them this week and my eyes are so much better. they aren't bothering me at all! thanks for the sheet music as well, that will definitely come in handy :) 

 things are good, we've seen Robert a couple times this week. He is so tough to teach and we are still trying to help him feel the spirit. we are always telling him to pay attention to how he feels but he always looks past it. it can be so frustrating. we took him to ysa fhe on monday and I think he really liked it. it was good for him to meet more people his age that are members and they were so good at talking with him and making him feel welcome. we were also able to take him to the temple on saturday. it was so amazing! I love the temple! I want to do a session soo bad. when we got there, there is a senior couple who stays there so I went and talked to them and told them a little about robert and how we just wanted to make sure he feels the spirit. it was hard at first because there were so many people there so there were a lot of distractions. but then this man shows up, manuel pereira, from portugal. sis morgenson got so excited and told him he needed to talk to robert so he takes robert aside and talked to him for about 45 minutes! sis morgenson was so excited and said that it was a miracle that manuel was there because he wasn't supposed to be in england for another week and he has the most powerful testimony and conversion story. she just cried and cried because she was so surprised at what a miracle it was. after they talked we went back to High Wycombe and we talked to robert about it and asked him how he had felt and he didn't have much to say. he said he didn't know if he had felt the holy ghost of not. he loved talking to manuel though. he is still very interested in everything. we extended baptism to him and it was so funny. there is a little lds store by the temple and we had bought root beer there so when we asked him to be baptized he started choking on his root beer hahaha it was so funny. I've never gotten that reaction before! then he just started saying 'baby steps baby steps' so then the next day at church there was a member speaking in sacrament who is such a powerful speaker and sis allred and I were so excited because it was exactly what robert needed to hear. he is more keen on praying now but it's still going to be a slow process. 

  Jannie is doing great as well. right now he still wants to be baptized on his birthday in august so we are still trying to get him to do it sooner and he said he is praying about it. we had him say the prayer in our last teach with him and it was amazing. he is so sincere and the spirit was so strong. we are taking him to dinner at a members house this week and we're going to show him the Joseph Smith movie. he is still trying to get an answer but I'm pretty sure he already has:) he is a personal trainer and so he told in return for what we've done for him he wants to give us a free 7 day pass to a gym haha what a great guy. he's so cool
  

  sadly, the gomes family dropped this week :( that was a bit depressing. I was so sad about that. we have been working soo hard with them. sis allred has been teaching them since before I got here. they've been improving a lot too! we taught them about the atonement and then started talking about baptism and Luis(the dad) said absolutely not. Jamie really wanted to be baptized until he realized that meant he wouldn't be catholic anymore. they told us we could keep coming back and teaching them but it's pointless because they aren't changing their minds. It was tough to see that because they need the gospel so bad. the way they are living right now is so sad and the abuse they've seen is awful. 

 anyway, things are great. I love being here and england is gorgeous!! oh emanuel smith is doing awesome as well! he's already telling everyone about the church and bringing friends. its so cool. I love seeing the way the church changes peoples lives. 

 thank you so much for all you do for me! I have the best family in the world. I love you so much! have a great week

 love, chels