Hull - August 6, 2012

I'm doing well. It rains quite a bit here, which is good. The rain makes everything green and beautiful. I found myself sitting and studying right next to the window this morning and just pondering on how lucky I am to be here. It's hard work, but it's worth it.

The new missionaries from Poland are in a different mission, I think. The work is moving along. We have plenty of Polish and English Book of Mormons that the church provides for us. Sadly, I fear that I am losing my Polish, and might not ever be fluent with it because I’m not able to use it as much as I’d like. There are so many different kinds of people here besides Polish; Latvian, Lithuanian, Russian, Portuguese, Caribbean, you name it. But it's alright, there are a ton a Polish people and we're trying to find them. I know that I can learn Polish if I keep working hard to use it and retain it.

I'm glad that Will Cameron is doing well and I'm excited that his mission papers are in. You can give him my email address, if you want. I can't really watch too much of the Olympics. But I'm sort of cheering for two teams now, the US and Great Britain.

We have a baptism service scheduled for this Saturday. The person who tried to get baptized last week is going to try again. I really hope it goes okay for him. And then the young man who I met my first week out is getting baptized. I'm excited for him because he really retains what we teach him. He knows it's true, and really wants to go to the temple some day. We're also teaching his friend who is getting baptized in two weeks. He's amazing. They both come to church. I love all the people we teach. This week we found a family, well they're not married, but they seem to want to be. We told them they need to be married to be baptized and they're pretty alright with that. We told the man that the church could marry them for free, they'd just need the rings and the marriage certificate, and his eyes went wide. He was excited and told us that he would be the first person in his family to be married. I'm excited for all of them.

The Hull Ward is a great ward. The people are really good there. There's a few that go teaching with us, and that helps a lot because the people that we teach need the friendship of the people in the church. That's something I could have been better at back home. It's hard to talk to people you don't know, but that's missionary work, and that's what helps a lot. The ward members are really nice. The families that feed us are amazing. I'm serving in the Hull 1st Ward which is pretty much west Hull. It's a big area and we mostly stay in the city area. We don't go outside the city too often. We do walk a lot. We buy weekly bus passes and ride whenever we can. We try to talk to people on buses. Some people want to talk and some people don't. I like it when I can have a good conversation with someone.

This past week I ate something called black pudding. It's alright, but I'm probably not too fond of eating it again, if I can help it. I've also had black currant flavored stuff, which is alright. I actually don't mind it. I don't really remember seeing black currant in the US. It was illegal to grow there at one point, so that's probably why. Football (soccer) is a really big thing here. I always see people in parks or in the streets kicking a football. I'm still getting used to everything here.

Love you tons, 

Starszy Ressler