I'm well, not bad in fact. This week went by so fast. I think that time is continually speeding up, well it must be. This was my full year that I spent as a missionary and it went by really fast. It seems as if I'm still walking the streets of Hull with Elder DeShazer in my mind. But nope! I'm in Leeds.
Yea, it was good to Skype you all. That's the last one of those, for a while.
I'm so glad you had a relaxing time this holiday season. I'm really excited to play all these games with you (when I win, of course). And well I guess more importantly spend time with you and catch up. But that'll all have to wait till the spring, because I've got some work to do here still.
Ah, so I spent a day and a half with Elder Mast in the flat. I was so bored!! All we pretty much did was sleep/read/eat. Yikes, I can't imagine how he feels doing that for two weeks already. I really don't want anything like that to happen to me.
We are teaching a new family and another man who is really promising; he came to church in a different ward in our zone because he is dating a member. He said he is impressed with the church.
I've realized on my mission, well and before I guess, that family is super important, well actually I was thinking about it today. In our ward there is a family. Well half of the ward is pretty much this family and their brother died, so we went to his funeral today to support them all. I saw how big their family was and just thought a bit about how important family really is.
I find when you are teaching, you don't want to teach, you want the audience to teach themselves. If you ask the right questions, and have open discussions you can just get it to work out that way. But you must realize that as much as we would want otherwise, this is an imperfect church, run by imperfect people (who are not paid, making them not professional), we're all human. But with a bit of practice, and training, and experience, we can improve a bit.
I thought you'd be proud of me; I played the prelude music for sacrament meeting on Sunday until the pianist turned up. That was a big step for me.
This week we've sort of had a miracle. A member’s son came to church. Sadly, he and his partner split up and he went looking for help. An old friend, (his old Bishop) came and gave him a blessing; after the blessing he said he felt like coming to church. Mind you, that he was completely against the whole thing about a week and a half ago. I think that Heavenly Father knows how to push the right buttons sometimes and things work out better in the long run. He really is an amazing guy. All of us missionaries have taken a liking to him. He's praying and reading the scriptures again as well and trying to quit smoking. To be honest, it's nothing that we missionaries did at all. It was 100% Heavenly Father and I suppose his mother as well.
Tuesday we have off after 4pm (I think everyone will be partying, so they won't want to listen to missionaries) and we don't do missionary work on New Year’s Day. People will be spending time with their families on the holiday as well I think.
Well I love you lots, have a terrific Week!
Love
Starszy Ressler
