Mar 11, 2012

Hey, That is really cool the temple is almost finished. I've looked at pictures and it looks like it should be a good one. I miss our Sunday dinners with the Pitchers... soon Riley and Landon will be missing from those as well. Yes I am very excited for our Euro trip next summer as well, you guys will love meeting all of these people. I think you might need to contact the mission president though and get his permission to do so. Oh, and I think that the first sunday in May is mothers day, which is coming up soon! So I will be able to call then (I don't know if I'll be able to Skype this time). I actually could call you guys this weekend, because it is European mothers day this sunday, but I have decided to wait until May as you can only pick one or the other and not both. That is great to hear about Riley's blessing, patriachal blessings are pretty cool. Did the ancient Smith dude do his again and it took like 2 and a half hours?This has been a pretty sweet week. There are a lot of highlights. First off, we just got a senior couple here in Slough! My whole mission I have not like having senior couples in the mission, because all I know about them is that they steal our cars and make us have to use buses. But now that we have some in our ward, I am really excited! They are from Idaho, and Elder Wood served his mission in London 43 years ago! They were at church yesterday, they are both really cool and both really excited about missionary work and also really wanting to come meet our investigators and do everything they can here. They are going to be setting up a YSA center, which is perfect as we have like 10 YSA age Nepalese investigators! I think it will be great to have them. Our ward here is seriously dysfunctional, and so far for the last 6 weeks we have brought someone to church, but not any of them have ever come back for a second time. So this week we decided that from now on we have to assign friends to our investiagtors. So we took people aside and told them to fellowship our investigators at church--to sit by them, introduce them to people, talk to them, and to show them when are where the classes are. It went really well yesterday! And the senior couple was awesome with talking to our investigators as well. We had the whole Baral family at church! They loved it, and the ward was really excited to have a family at church. The ward employment specialist has a foster daughter from Nepal, and so him and Dr. Baral clicked and they had a meeting for like an hour after church where they went over his resume and Visa and everything. And the connection they have with the baptist church we might be able to overcome, as the Woods daughter-in-law is acutally a baptist and so they know all about them. The other amazing thing is that last saturday when we saw dr. Baral and he was sober he told us he would never drink again. And so far, he hasn't! He has been 9 days clean now! The first like 4 days he was shaking really badly, and couldn't focus and was really weak and just struggling. But he is getting better each day. His wife is a little concerned that he may have lost his mind a little bit, but I think it will start to come back more and more. We have tried to commit them to be baptized a lot now, but they won't do it. They are very upper class Nepalese, and that means they pretty much have to be Hindus in that country. I have learned a lot about the society/culture of Nepal these last 2 weeks. The Barals don't have a permanent Visa yet, they are just here on a working Visa. And they said that Christianity is growing in Nepal, but only among the lower class. So if they aren't able to extend their Visa into citizenship, and they have to move back to Nepal, if they have converted to Christianity they said that they will be completely rejected by their families there. And in that culture, that means they would just be total outcasts. So we have a bit of a tricky situation here. The good news is that the Staines ward, which is a neighboring ward, there are like 8 active Nepalese members. One of them, who is endowed even, volunteered to help us out. So last teach with the Barals, we called him and he explained more about the Book of Mormon and overcoming family concerns in Nepali with them. It was really cool, and they talked for like 30 minutes. But the Barals and us have become such good friends. Mrs. Baral told us that she wants us to come over every single day to eat dinner with them. We know they are struggling financially, so we had to say no, but literally every time we go over there now she has prepared a really good Nepalese meal. And also the Nepalese crew of Laxman and all those guys seem to cook for us everytime we go there as well. They are the most hospitable people ever. Actually, there was one point during this week where I ate 8 meals in 29 hours. After district meeting we all went out to eat, and I bought an entire chicken and chips. Then we went to see Jay, who had cooked us a roast dinner without telling us, of chicken and potatoes and vegetables. And then we went to see Laxman and them, and they made us another big meal of pasta and some eggs. And then we had our D.A., with one of the American families in the ward, and they cooked us a ton of food. We had meatloaf. And then we went with them to young mens because we were running young mens (Lukas, the son in the Baral family, came to young mens with us. And actually, he loved it. He told his parents he had never had so much fun in his life. We played spoons and chair football and wallball and just some fun games like that). And then after young mens, the young mens president was happy so he drove us home and on the way home he stopped and bought us chicken and chips from this dodgy resturant on the high street. Like he bought us a ton of food. 4 pcs. of chicken each, a XL chips, a large box of popcorn chicken each, and a milkshake. And then he had a breakfast the next morning of leftover chicken and chips, and then a d.a. for lunch that day. I have seriously never been so sick. I used the toilet like 100 times. I was so fat. And most of this stuff happened when I was on exchange, so I had Elder Izatt with me. He just started his mission like a week ago, and so by the third meal he just couldn't eat anything and just left it on his plate. I didn't want to be rude though, so I seriously ate everything. I felt like I never wanted to eat anything ever again. I have since recovered, but I will never forget that day. The other good news is we are teaching this lady named Lee. She is like 40, english (for once!) and is single and pretty successful career wise. We had two teaches with her now, in which we talked about the plan of salvation and she loved it. She called us and asked to come to church, and so yesterday she was at church as well. It went really well, she told us that a few things that were said really resonated with her. It probably helped that this was the best sacrament meeting I have been to in this country. We had a really solid and funny 22 year old YSA girl speak, and she is a really good speaker but also had really good points. She mostly talked about youth and about her experiences as a EFY counsellor. And then the new Senior couple each talked, and they were both really good, and then we had a counsellor in the stake presidency here so he said the closing talk. It was sweet. And gospel principles was about prayer, and Lee was like asking really deep questions and having really good personal insights. So then we had to send her to relief society, alone. The greatest fear of every missionary with female investigators. She came out of there, and as she left the church she said she was confused and told us she has a lot of questions and issues she wants to talk about. I have no idea what went on in there. Other than that, we saw a 82 year old guy who just wants the company and a 20 year old guy who was intrigued when we told him we have physical evidence that God exists. Also, Ernest was supposed to be coming to church this week but was working. So he isn't getting baptized next sunday. It is really frustrating. Me and Pettersen had a really good week... we are really good friends even though we are really different. I actually really like him (most of the time).So things here are going really good. I can't believe Mom didn't email this week. love Elder Steed