" Good Morning! This is Elder Bates. 21st of September. It's Monday, P day. And you're getting your first taste of the noise of Belfast. (Lots of noise in the background....traffic, a garbage truck, etc.)
Yep, that's Belfast. Hope you guys can understand me all right. I'm standing out on our balcony right now talking to you peeps. Our week's been all right. I finally got my battery's so that's good. Let's see. F, we met with her earlier this week. I believe it was on Tuesday. No, Wednesday, sorry. We met with her on Wednesday and we watched Elder Holland's talk, "Like a Broken Vessel", because apparently she struggles with depression sometimes and when she does that's when she resorts to smoking and drinking coffee and such. So we wanted to help her get over that. It went well. Hopefully we'll be able to continue to help her with that. On Saturday we helped H move. We got SB, a Return missionary in our ward to come over and help us with that and it went good. We helped him reconstruct his bunk beds which he has for his kids but unfortunately Elder Schippers and I were working on that, while Elder, I mean Brother Scott helped him move everything else into his flat. We made the bed wrong. We made it backwards I guess. But his room was too small for us to turn it around and we couldn't take it apart again because we didn't have any more time. So it was a bit of a mess. Ew. A drunk guy just threw his bottle on the ground. There's a group of drunk people who convene just across the street from our flat. It's pretty fun So we later talked to S about it and he talked to H about church and stuff and he got a good vibe from it. He got a promise from him that he'll come back to church some day. I know him well enough that I'm pretty sure he will definitely come back some day. H told him he isn't going to any other church right now which is good, which is really good I think. And S also told him he's missed at church which is true. There's alot of people sad that he's not coming to church any more. So that went really well.
We also had a record breaking week. We had 3 dinner appointments this week. Which is alot. I don't think I've ever had a week that had more than 3 different dinner appointments. First we ate dinner at the G's. Bro. G, well he isn't a member, he remakes cars. Not remakes, I don't know what the technical term is, he takes old cars and refurbishes them. He's got a really nice Jag. He's really proud of it. They made us Swedish meatballs... reminded me of home, made me a little homesick in all honesty. It was good. That was Wednesday. On Thursday we had dinner with the L's. She made us this really nice casserole or pie. It was really good. Potatoes and mince. It wasn't Cheeseburger Pie, but it was still real good. I've come to really love potatoes on my mission. It's amazing what these people do with them. There's a saying that you can go to Ireland or Scotland and have 5 different ways you can prepare a potato on a plate for one meal. It's so true! Anyhow, then on Friday we had dinner with the S's. Sis. S is Brazilian and I LOVE her food. That's the family I skyped on Mother's Day with. So good. So good. Elder Schipper's got the recipe. I'll have to get it off of him.
All week long we've been doing our finding. If you remember from last week, we had 8 referrals to follow up on. Well only one of them had an address and we looked up the address and it doesn't exist. Not in Britain . Not anywhere. Of the remaining ones, we gave each and every one of them a call. One called us back and said we had a wrong number. We're certain we did. The referral was some kind of foreigner like middle eastern and the guy on the other end didn't sound like that so we're pretty sure that guy was legit. Another one called us back. It was two girls named Erin and, it is a strange spelling, Aiofe, pronounced E-fa. All these crazy names I'm seeing out here. It's actually really cool. They set up an appointment but then they had to cancel it and we feel they dropped us as well. I don't know. Elder Schippers has the phone. I haven't seen the text yet. Nobody else has given us a call back but we'll probably call again this week. We've been doing finding. Oh, yesterday, funny story. It was raining . It was the only day it was raining while we were outside which was a blessing. I'm not complaining about that at all. It was raining yesterday and we were out knocking doors. We came to this one door, this woman wasn't interested but she said, "I'm so sorry you guys have to be out there in the rain. Do you guys want a muffin on your way?" She gave us two of the greatest muffins I've ever tasted. Well maybe not. But still, they were really good. It was Snickers, peanut butter, caramel, chocolate, it was so good. It was a really nice woman and I'm certain she will be blessed for that. We also met a woman who is a Christian Science person. Do you know anything about them? She gave us a pamphlet from their church. I don't' know much about them. I just heard they were founded by a prophet who was a woman. And that's all I know. The pamphlet didn't help us because it basically said the same thing that any other Christian church believes. Just thought it was interesting.
Elder Schippers locked me out. Ok.
I can't believe Claire went on a blind date! I've never even been on a blind date!
Yes, it's getting colder and colder here.
I'm pretty sure I'm getting transfered. I've been here six months already! I think I might be going down to the Republic, which would be great. Most missionaries agree that the Republic, specifically Limerick Zone, is the "promised land Nope. Like I said, they're like those chewy sweet tarts, only not as strong.".
Bon Bons here, like I said, they're like those chewy sweet tarts, only not as strong. I'm going to come home and you are going to just flip out at all the food that I now eat!! ;) I like peas, for example. Well, to be fair, I really only like them when they're swimming in melted butter, but still!
I love you guys. Hope you have a great day. I can't wait to email you in a bit. I'll see ya later. I'll be getting some souvenirs today since my second to last P-day. Any suggestions? Well, too late! BYE!"
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