Rain and Opposition

Dear Family and Friends,

This week has been a fun one with plenty of ups and downs.  The week started off on Sunday night with an alert that England was to have the worst storm in a long time.  We were told by many members not to go out on Monday unless it was absolutely necessary.  The great news is that the storm did not even hit Worcester.  I awoke to beautiful sunshine and a great day.  For the past few weeks though we have had lots of rain.  More rain than I have ever experienced, therefore, I had to go do a little bit of shopping.  I brought with me from the States one rain jacket.  I am now the proud owner of another rain jacket, waterproof pants and shoes and waterproof cover for my back pack.  Here in England we have also changed to day light savings time.  We changed on the 27 of October so we have had a few weeks to adjust.  It now gets dark around 5:00 pm so it makes it hard for us Missionaries when we have late appointments.  My Companion Elder Gardner told me that by January it will start to get dark around 3 or 4 in the afternoon.  I am not looking forward to that.

The weeks are pretty much the same with the days and routines changing maybe just a little bit.  But on Halloween when had to be in the flat at 6.  I found that a little ridiculous.  Most of England doesn't even celebrate Halloween.  So anyway, we had many hours sitting in the flat bored out of our minds. But one good thing that happened earlier in the day is that we had a really good sign lesson.  Since transfers were last week we had a Missionary transfer out of the area. There are two teams of Missionaries in Worcester, so the new Missionary was at our sign lesson and we started back at square one.  It is funny because for the next two lessons we will go over stuff that we have already learned and then the new Missionaries are expected to catch up.  It takes some time to catch up but when you are forced to catch up you learn quick or at least I did.

One thing that happened to us was we where going to contact a less active member that we had been asked to visit by the Ward.  And so we left after a dinner appointment to go and visit.  So this address was in a way nice area.  I felt so out of place.  We usually work in the middle and lower class areas and stay away from upper class areas like that.  But we had a good discussion, we started the long walk home.  We got to a fork in the road and we needed to choose which one to take, one side went uphill the other down hill.  So Elder Nielsen, being the smart guy he is, used his brain and assumed that we should go down hill.  I kept thinking that we wanted to go home which in my mind was down hill.  So, we started down hill and about 45 min later we ended up at the member's house we just left. Long story short don't assume that down hill is down hill.  We laughed about it and the extra long journey made our night very fun.

Sunday was a pretty interesting day.  In Priesthood we talked about opposition.  So the teacher had half of us looked at the story of Jonah Jonah 1 and the other half looked at the story of Esther.  You can read about Esther here Ester 1-10 .  Me and my companion where put in the group that was looking at Esther along with the deaf members in our Ward.  I thought I was going to wet myself watching the member try to sign the story of Esther.  I could not have done better but he kept looking at us for help.  But it was cool to look at opposition. We can deal with it and face it or we can run to Nineveh and get eaten by a whale as Jonah did.  Sometimes we just have to face opposition head on.  The one part of Sunday that was hard was Sacrament Meeting.  The Elders where on deck to translate in sign. Translating is not really that hard expect when you need to do testimonies. You are supposed to sign them as close as you can.  Luckily when I was up I had about five primary children bear their testimony.  What a great experience to sign for little children who have great faith and pure testimonies.  I found only one to be hard to sign and I had no idea what to do.  But it all worked out and it was fun.

I have a great love and testimony for this Gospel and the people that I come in contact and work with daily.  I testify of Christ and know that he knows and loves me and wants me to succeed.  I know that He will help me, all I have to do it ask.

Thanks for all your prayers and support.

Love, Elder Nielsen