March 11, 2013

hey everyone!

Another week come and gone. It was the British mothers day yesterday so happy mothers day all you mums(super English)! It's been another really good week. We've seen a lot of progression in the work and a lot more miracles. The weather turned a bit nasty though. After a few days of solid sunshine it started snowing yesterday and today. Rubbish. We're pushing through it, even though we can't feel our faces! We got some news as well that the missionary email policy has changed at that we can email pretty much anyone we want now. That was pretty surprising but no complaints from me. haha

We saw the work really progress at church on Sunday. We set up a dinner appointment with a part member family for this Friday. The husband is a returning member and his wife and three kids aren't members. His wife and two of his kids have been coming to church for the past 5 weeks but we haven't begun teaching them for whatever reason. We'll be starting on Friday though! The mother has already had spiritual experiences at church and one of the daughters already wants to be baptized! Another miracle we had a church, a 19 yr. old young man in the ward brought a girl he is dating to church. She has been going to mutual for awhile now. She met with the bishop after church and then came out and told us the she wanted to take the missionary lessons! It's pretty crazy because the exact same thing happened last week with another young woman. We're just waiting now to see where we will be teaching the lessons. The members are really providing some great people to teach here.

We had another miracle on Sunday night as well. We were knocking by some formers and less-actives in a specific area. We knocked by a less-active named Norman. He said that he was excommunicated from the church when he was 17 because he couldn't stop smoking and he hadn't been back since. He's in his 60's now! He was on our ward list so I'm not sure that he's actually ex-communicated. He told us that his wife was a pretty staunch Christian and that she probably wouldn't want to meet with us, they both weren't feeling well either so he said that it wasn't the best time. We started to walk down the road and we were about 20 yards from his house when we heard, "Hey Elders!". Norman was calling us back to his house. He let us right in and introduced us to his wife. He must have changed his mind. We ended up teaching parts of the Restoration to them. After the lesson we gave them both Priesthood blessings as well. His wife was a bit emotional after. We're going back next Sunday to teach them again! So many good things are happening.

We're actually picking up quite a few people right now. Some of them are pretty...interesting. This one man we met invited us into his house and the first thing he asked us is if it was o.k to contact the dead with a Wigi board. He said that he was a Catholic and that he had a lot of questions that he wanted answered so that's why he wanted to contact the dead. Pretty dodgy. We asked him if he had ever thought of praying about it and of course he hadn't. hah. One of the next lessons we were teaching him the Plan of Salvation. We were talking about the spirit world and I used an analogy about it being kind of like a waiting room in a dentist office. If you've taken good care of your teeth you won't be worried, if you haven't then you'll be a bit uncomfortable...big mistake. He launched into this huge story about an experience he had at the dentist when he was ten where they gave him laughing gas and he thought he was dying. then he asked us, "Is that what dying is like?"... He's a character.

We spent pretty much all day Saturday on the trains. I had a meeting in Liverpool that I had to be at pretty early. Liverpool is so good! It's a big city just a bit smaller than Manchester. It's right on the coast and the people there are great. There's a lot of church history there too. The Docks in Liverpool are where the first missionaries to England landed and where pretty much all of the converts who were heading to America went. I definitely want to serve there. After the morning in Liverpool I got to go back to Blackburn! I got to go see the baptism of Greg! he was the son of Rosalyn, the African lady who fed us all the crazy food. We were teaching him for awhile before I left the area and I got a call earlier in the week inviting me to his baptism. Elder Reali got to baptize him. I was standing there watching like a proud father. haha. Greg is going to be great. It was so good to see all of the Blackburn members as well. I miss them a lot. The first few weeks here in St. Helens I was going through withdrawals of not being there. I'll probably get attached to every area I go to. I still miss Stockport and that was a year ago!

Elder Peterson and I are working hard to find new people to teach. We're going to try all different ways. We're thinking of starting up like a weekly basketball game or something. We're both pretty good at basketball so we figure we should use it to our advantage. The trouble is everyone here loves football(soccer) too much. Hardly anyone here plays basketball. I still haven't properly converted to football. I have quite a few jerseys but I still don't ever play it. I'm not coordinated enough with my feet. I'm trying to convert them to basketball and baseball but it's not working. 

Thank you for all the support. I love you all so much. Hope you have a great week! 

Photos:

1. Greg and I on his baptism day.

2. Our house. Proper English. squashed in between to other houses.

Love Elder Ford