8/31/15 Interesting Week!

(Typed from a recording....)

Hello Everyone, 

This is Elder Bates. Today is August the 30th, Sunday.  The day is over.  Hope you guys have been having a good week.  Our week‘s been pretty difficult but we’re through with it so that’s good.  So to start off with, there’s F.  She is doing great.  She’s really excited for her baptism next week. She came to church today.  She doesn’t really enjoy church in all honesty.  But she still comes which is still good.  Pretty much the reason she doesn’t, from my perspective, is just there is no one there who really fellowships with her.  Mostly because pretty much everybody is at least double her age.  But she still came and she’s doing good.  We taught her about tithing this week and about family history as well which was really good.  So on Sunday, once a quarter all the YSA in the stake meet and have their own church services.  There used to be a YSA branch in the stake but it’s no longer; it got dissolved.  The building is still there called the Rosetta building and it’s still used by the YSA for activities & such.  So now every quarter they have church there just for themselves and so next Sunday it’s happening again and she’s going to be going to that and that’s where she’ll be confirmed.  It’s really exciting.  I hope she has a really good time and gets to know the other YSA’s in the stake. We’re also having a stake sports day on Saturday the day of her baptism so hopefully she’ll get to meet a bunch of people there.  And big news, she’s asked me to baptize her and I’m really honored to have that and looking forward to it.  I’ve been able to be around from the beginning with her, really from when we found her with Elder McPherson to now. That’s the first time that’s happened, except for Riley, so it’s been great.  I’m really looking forward to this.

 The next part I want to talk about is H. We got a text from him earlier this week telling us he’s moving to an area called  ??  which is in our area and we offered to help and he seemed very grateful for that.  He has to be completely  moved out of his flat by Sept 20 so hopefully if we can get some of the priesthood brethren to help with that we can mend the relation s there.  Beyond that we haven’t had any contact with H.  Keep praying for him. I know I am.

This week hasn’t had anything really spectacular happen.  We did hear about the shooting on live television. That’s pretty crazy.  F called and told us about it. She saw it in the newspapers.  Pretty crazy. 

I tried Bon Bons for the first time.  They were good.  I liked them!  I hope I can try them again.  I hope they have those in the US. They are like those chewy Sweet Tarts, you know those?  They are really good!

Pretty much all week long we had no appointments except for F. It was really tough.  No missionary likes to have an empty week.  Which means that the rest of the time was spent doing finding which we did.  I think on Saturday we counted that we did about 9 hours of knocking doors and talking to people in the streets.  And then all the finding we did, we haven’t found a single person who really wanted us back.  So it’s been hard.  It’s been pretty hard.  But you know, life goes on.  We’re not the ones that choose who’s ready and we’re not the one who chooses when they’re ready either.  So gotta keep moving forward.  It’s just really scary because at the end of this week we’re not going to have an investigator any more.  We really need someone to teach now.  In the lord’s time.  So that’s pretty much what we did all week long.  Interesting story about today though.  This morning we woke up to find that none of our power outlets were working .  For the past while now we’ve been getting these letters from the power company addressed to the previous occupant of the flat.  Elder M and I talked to the Mission home about it so we just assumed they were taking care of all that so we basically whenever we got those letters chucked them in the bin. Finally this week we got notice from the power company telling us that they are getting a court order so they can install a pay as you go meter which basically is just a meter where you get a special card. You fill up the card at like gas stations basically.  Then you take it back to your flat, swipe it through the meter and it fills up your gas meter for you.  I don’t see any issue with it but a lot of missionary’s hate it.  So that was a bit of a jump.  And we also got a note from our landlord saying, “Hi my name is Tim. I am your land lord. Please give me call;  it is quite urgent. Thanks.”  But every time we call him he doesn’t pick up! Then finally this morning, with the electricity,  so we’ve been kind of freaking out all day.  We weren’t able to eat anything because the oven doesn’t work, the microwave doesn’t work, nothing works, and not even the stove because in order to light the stove you press the button for the spark but that requires electricity and we don’t have any matches or lighters or anything.  It’s the end of the week so we don’t have any food and not only is it the end of the week, it’s also the end of the month so we definitely don’t have any food.  So today was pretty meager.  We didn’t eat anything except for a loaf of bread and we finally get back to the flat, we literally, just over an hour ago just before 9 o clock. Elder Schippers gets the idea,  “Hey, maybe I should check the circuit breakers.  He got the idea from F who we’d told the situation; we thought it was kind of funny, and she said, “Hey, have you checked the circuit breakers?”  He checked and flicked them on and everything works so it was just kind of funny but it was a wake up call so we’re definitely giving the mission home a call and trying to figure out this mess and hopefully we can finally get a hold of our landlord too.

This week is our all Ireland conference so we are going all the way down to Dublin to meet up.  Every missionary in all of Ireland meeting up in Dublin.   It should be pretty fun.  My only concern is that the very beginning of the month so we have to fill up our bus passes and we’ll also have to buy a train ticket down to Dublin and I’m crossing my fingers we’ll be able to get both done then all we have to do is send in reimbursements but we’re probably not going to be able to buy much food this week.  Ah, Missionary life, right?  We’ll be fine, we’ve got food storage!  As long as they don’t actually turn off our electricity we should be fine and stuff.  But yea, that’s what our week’s been like.  Love you guys a lot.  Hope you guys had a good week.  I’ve been praying for you and I can’t wait to hear from you.  Enjoy the rest of your Sabbath.  See ya, Bye!