Hello all!Firstly I would like to apologize for not writing these past 2 weeks. Quite honestly I haven't really been in the mood to write so you win some you lose some. Secondly, thank you for writing me! Emails and letters are some of the things that keep me happy and uplifted so thank you!
Weekly update:
Tuesday we met with our friend Olivia. Olivia is my favorite as she makes us think and makes us work for it. I have studied out so many questions of hers, which in turn sometimes have answered questions that I have. Olivia has been meeting with missionaries for quite some time, and has never really been one to keep commitments. However, over these last two weeks, she suddenly started keeping every commitment and was even praying about baptism. She got her answer, we talked about it, and we asked her when she wanted to get baptized. She said the 28th, but that she wanted to talk to her mom about it first (her mom is a little concerned which makes sense). She went home, and as expected, her mom wasn't super excited. Olivia emailed us, and told us that she was still interested, but she now needed more time to look into things again. We invited her to the fireside hoping that it would help her and it did! Olivia is getting baptized on the 28th of March! Isn't that absolutely wonderful? We're so excited and proud of her for making the choice even if it is hard with family.
Friday we met with our friend Tim that I found a couple weeks back while doing a street display. At the time, he had come up and told us he read the Book of Mormon and had prayed about and knew it was true, and that he wanted to get baptized. After a few cancelled appointments, we were finally able to meet him and he is very prepared. We went over quite a bit and it was pretty good! We reset his date for the 21st of March, and asked him to come to church which he happily agreed to. However, Saturday afternoon we got the weirdest text from someone named "Paul" on Tim's phone, saying that Tim had gotten beaten up the night before so he was now in an induced coma with a broken leg at the hospital. We immediately knew it was fake and were just confused. But whatever. The best part is that our member friend who was giving him a lift decided to still go over and pretend that she didn't know he wasn't coming and he was there at his house totally fine!! Hahaha. This week we'll meet with him, bring him a couple of get well balloons, and see what's going on.
Like I just mentioned, we had another fireside where new members of the church get up and tell their stories and how they came to gain their testimony. The fireside was wonderful as usual, and I really appreciated the reminders in it, like life could be a lot worse, and Heavenly Father loves me. I love the firesides and last night's was really incredible. What made it even better, was the fact that it was in Liverpool, which is where St. Helens is! For those who don't remember, St. Helens was my first area and I would absolutely kill to go back. Because it was in Liverpool, I got to see a bunch of my friends and family, one of which was Brother Brownbill. He is my absolute father/grandfather away from home and is probably the #2 person I miss (aside from Libby and Nikolett) and we got to talk for a while last night which was so good! I also got to see Sister Clark, my first companion and Sister Patea which was so good! Haha…firesides are my favorite!
My new companion's name is Sister Shahid and I am learning a lot from her. She's bold with her work which is nice to watch. I’m trying to be positive but this new companionship is a challenge. My companion has some things she’s dealing with that make it so she doesn’t want to go out of the flat. So now I’m trying to figure out what I can do while we are in the flat. It’s a struggle.
My goal for this last week was to go through and evaluate how I use my time, what can be continued, and what can be started while we’re somewhat housebound. For what can be continued, daily contact time is good. Maybe not as much as we're doing right now but it is definitely important. What can be started is to be better at using the time in our flat as time I can be doing things. While she's phone contacting, I can study more, make plans for our friends, plans for ward council and returning members, etc. We have done no member work, no friend work, no returning member work, and no finding work outside of phone contacting which is more than a little frustrating. Last transfer, all of our numbers were going up, and now our numbers are going down because nothing is getting done. This isn't super fun. I'm really trying to find joy in the work but there isn't a whole lot that's helping right now I won't lie.
I don't really know what I can do to fix this but it's not super great right now so I welcome any suggestions. Bishop gave me a blessing last Sunday which was good, and told me to focus on changing myself and not trying to change her because it won't ever happen. So this week, I studied charity and love in Preach my Gospel, and did some of the little things the attribute tests suggest.
Sorry I've complained but right now I just feel stressed.
Love you!
Sister Pursglove
Photographs below :)
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Weekly Letter #22: March 2, 2020
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Oleh
John Pursglove
