Time just keeps on passing by

Wednesday, June 18, 2008 3:55 AM
I think the time is starting to pick up. I think the longest part of my mission is starting to come to an end. I can't believe we're at week two in my next moves already. Time flies when you're working hard. We've had quite a busy week of appointments. On Thursday we had Zone Conference in Poole. It took pretty much all day. It was about 8:15 when we arrived back in Portsmouth. E. Dutson and I rode with the Wheelers from Southampton station to Poole and we took the scenic route through what's called New Forrest. We went through a couple villages called Burley and Lyndhurst. They were amazing. Small streets, flower baskets hanging on the outside walls of the pubs, we even went into an authentic sweets shop. It was like travelling back in time 50 years. They had jars full of so many different kinds of sweets. Every wall was lined with them. The roads we went on were so small too. They were about the size of a biking path back in Utah. They were lined with pastures for wild horses and cattle. It was amazing. I didn't take any pictures. It was too much to take in; you'd just have to be there. Look it up online. It's worth it.
On Friday we picked up an Albanian investigator named Arben. He's really nice and quite interested in the Book of Mormon. Saturday we had an amazing testimony builder of prayer. We'd prayed a couple nights previous to know which street to knock. E. Dutson and I looked at different maps and were impressed to knock the same street. When we got there we prayed that the people we were about to meet would be prepared and that we'd be able to get in and teach. Well we were about 3/4 done with the street until finally we met a family from Ghana who gladly let us in and we taught them. They have 7 kids total, but we taught the mother and 5 of the children. It was a really spiritual teach. Unfortunately the next day the mother said she didn't want anything to do with us anymore for some reason (probably spoke to her pastor, it happens a lot) and refused to even read the Book of Mormon. It's sad when people do that, but they have their agency. Sunday after church we taught a young couple named Jamie and Deon. Jamie is in the Royal Navy and is from St. Helena Island off the coast of South Africa. Deon is a Portsmouth native and a stay-at-home mom. They'll be coming to church on Sunday. Yesterday we were blessed even more. We taught a lady named Sandra (different one than before) and she'll be coming to church as well. We also taught a woman named Julie at the church with Margret. It went really well and she is now preparing to be baptized on the 14th of July. She'd met the church in Hong Kong whilst travelling so she knew loads about the Church. We had an appointment with a guy from Ethiopia afterwards who turned out to be a preacher at a small, local church. It was a great meeting, however, without any contention. We just taught him about the Book of Mormon, gave him a copy, and now he's committed to read and pray about it.
We've been so blessed with so many people to teach. There were a few other new people that we were able to teach as well, but for time's sake I'll wait to see if anything develops. My testimony of the power of prayer has grown so much. Obviously we don't get ALL the answers we want, but we do get some, if they're righteous ones :-). Well that's my week. I should be sending a DVD and tape home this weekend or maybe early next week. I hope you all have a good week. Thanks for all the support. I've got a Plethora of e-mails to read so I'll talk to you all next week.

Elder Kyle Warner