Oct. 29, 2012

Familia and Amigos

We have had a great week. One word to describe it...miracles. There
has been so much going on! We're almost to the point where we have
more going on than we can handle.

Last Monday while we were doing our shopping we got a phone call from
the mission office telling us that they had a mormon.orgrefferal for
us. Those are golden! It means someone goes online and enters in all
their information and requests the missionaries to come around.
They're basically asking to be baptized. haha. We taught that refferal
this week. It was an entire family! Her name is Naomi and her husbands
name is Steve and they have 4 kids! They were taught for awhile in
Lancaster about a year ago. Steve new it was true and wanted to be
baptized but Naomi was a but skeptical and not ready. Steve felt like
it was causing a family divide so they stopped meeting with the
missionaries. Then they moved to Blackburn. Naomi was the one who
reffered herself on mormon.org and when we called her she said that
they had been talking about it for awhile and now she thinks she is
ready! BOOM! We taught them and they are what every missionary dreams
of teaching on their mission. "Kingdom Builders".

We're also teaching another family! There names's are Dan and Naomi.
They have 3 kids. They're really interested as well! I've never taught
an entire non member family my entire mission and now we're teaching
2! its a miracle. Plus everyone else we're teaching. Haydon went back
home to Kent(in the south) for the week. He was planning on telling
his parents that he is going to be baptized on the 17th of November.
We got a text from him last night that said, "Gents, i've told my
parents. All is well. See you next week". Another miracle. Blackburn
is on fire right now.

We had an interesting meal appointment this week. We had dinner with a
Recent convert named Roselyn. She is from Nigeria(Yoruba tribe).
African food is pretty exotic. We had something called amala and what
she called "slimy soup". The soup had cow liver, cow skin, and a
gigantic turkey gizzard. haha. I ate all of it. The turkey gizzard was
actually alright. Just like chicken. I love the African culture so
much. Sometimes I wonder if I wasn't supposed to be called on a
mission to Nigeria. I feel that i'm pretty good at speaking to them
and i've taught loads of them on my mission so far. I can even speak a
bit of Yoruba and I know a lot of their greetign customs. It's pretty
funny when you meet them on the street and do the greeting. They go
crazy and they'll listen to whatever you say. works every time.

We had our zone conference this week as well. We had Elder Patrick
Kearon from the seventy come! He's a member of the Europe Area
Presidency as well. It was amazing. He spoke about the importance of
being REAL as missionaries and using our personality. He gave a lot of
really good insights because he was a convert to the church at age 26.
I learned a lot from him. We got our post as well...no birthday
package. Hopefully it didn't get lost in the mail.

It's hard to believe this transfer is half over already(half on
wedensday). It's gone by so quick. This week is going to be even
bussier than the last week. We might be getting another companionship
in Blackburn because of the success we've been having. We'll see
though. We're probably moving flats soon as well. We viewed a really
nice one last week. It'll be a serious upgrade.

Well thanks for all of the support. I love you all so much. Hope to
hear from you soon.

Love Elder Ford