June 2 - June 6

Family,

Oh my goodness I cannot believe that Shelby is already married! Wow, that is crazy. I feel bad I haven’t written her yet but let her know that one day I will. When it is I don’t know… Make sure you tell her congratulations and that she looked beautiful.

All my friends looked great and I love the blanket. Who would have known…?

Well you would not believe it but I am gone from Liverpool and now in Chester. Chester is the zone that includes Wales and so I am extremely excited to be here. This will be the true English/Welsh experience. The town is beautiful and everything is green green green. Also, my companion is not from UTAH!!!! He is actually not even from America but from Finland. Elder Metsaranta is amazing and we are going to have a great transfer.

Well saying goodbye to all the wonderful people in Liverpool was quite sad. On Tuesday we had another huge Chinese hot pot where we were able to all get together as well Fiona and Olivia had us over for lunch. It was truly a wonderful opportunity getting to teach them and see the change that the gospel brought to their life. Fiona is one of the kindest persons in the world. When she found out that I was leaving she stayed up until 3 in the morning making me a gift. What she did is she folded these Chinese stars that are made out of thin strips of paper and folded into a star. On each of them they have little had written inspirational thoughts. She made over 200 and I am supposed to open up one a day. She is incredible. I will have to send a picture so you can see how much work it really was. She had already started a while ago but didn’t expect me to leave so soon. That’s why she stayed up the entire night.

Sunny is still doing well and is getting ready for her baptism next weekend. She is an amazing person and hopefully we will be able to drive up and witness it. You would not believe her understanding of the book of Mormon. She gets it better than most Mormons let alone someone who knew nothing about Jesus Christ a year ago! The other day she wanted us to explain to her Alma 41 and why Adam could not partake of the tree of life anymore.    

Well family my life has turned around in only a day and so my memory is shot of what happened last week. Hopefully by Monday I will have some good stories for you. Tell then I love you.

Richard

 ps. the boat looks good.

May 23rd- June 2nd

Family,

Alright I cannot believe this! Am I going to have any friends by the time I get home? Wow, this is so crazy. I am excited for Melissa though, that is great. Also, I want it to be known in big bold letters Hillary Taylor owes me some DINNER! We had a bet that Megan would be either engaged or married by the time I got home and sure enough Megan sent me a letter telling me the news.

Okay so first thing first, Qian wen chen (Olivia) was BAPTISED! It was a really great baptism and had a very sweet spirit. Fiona her friend made an intermission DVD that is so great. She gave me a copy and so I will send it home soon. It is extremely Chinese/great you will love it.

Sunny our other Chinese investigator whom we have been teaching for a while accepted a baptismal date! She is going to get baptised on the 11^th of June and is very excited. On Saturday she had us over for lunch. She homemade sushi and pot stickers for us all from scratch. It was delicious and I am actually starting to really like fish, well at least the sushi. Can you believe it?

Last week we had our Multi-zone-trainings and it went really well. We trained on weekly planning, specifically, how to plan efficiently and by revelation. Tomorrow we are having another sports day at the Manchester South building (the one I just came from) and so every one is excited for that. Pray that it won’t rain. Today it is raining but that’s not much of a sign of anything.

This week I spent a little time studying the epistle of Timothy. These scriptures have touched my heart greatly and that is because of the motivation it gives me to do missionary work and accept persecution. I especially love in 2 Tim 1: 7 were he speaks about God giving us the spirit of power and love and of a sound mind so that we can go out and find the elect. I never before knew the power that these scriptures have but after my study recently I have much greater appreciation for Paul’s writings.

Love you,

Richard

Mom was it a huge bday party or was it more intimate? I would have loved you to stop that wheelchair and get to speak to him! His family is amazing. Also, sounds like some Chicago trip! Wow. Too bad we just spoke sometime I wish we could skip this whole email business and just give you a ring. Good thing the next one is only in a few months! Love you

May 16th- 23

Family-

Great emails this week. thank you. Loved all the pictures you sent as well. The house looks great and seems like it was an amazing party!

Okay so some great things have happened this week.

First thing is Olivia, one of our Chinese investigators, is getting baptised on Saturday! She is really funny and what we would consider a PA (pop Asian). She is 20 and is going to school here in Liverpool. We found her through a recent convert named Fiona. It is amazing the testimony that she has. Her family is not aware of the decision she is making and if they knew they would be really angry. She says that she wants to tell them when she can sit down with them and explain it but even if they don’t like it she doesn’t care. Our ward mission leader phrased it as “she is bad to the bone!” Fiona and her have fed us Chinese a couple of times recently and it is delicious. The other day we did what you call a chinese hot pot. Basically you get a boiling hot pot filled with all sorts of Chinese spices and then you kind of like fondu put whatever vegetables/meat in the pot you want and it cooks. It was delicious and you would be so proud of me because I ate squid, shrimp, tofu, fungi and these fish balls. Not only that but i liked it.  

                                                                                              

Since I am on the topic of food we also had some of our Indian investigators feed us one of the largest/spiciest /most delicious meals I have ever had in my life. Alright so they invited us over for dinner (the first white people they have ever cooked for) and just brought out piles and piles of food. This was some of the spiciest food I have ever eaten yet they said they made it especially mild for us (yeah right). We were so excited when we first started but towards the end I was wondering if they would ever stop bringing out food. They just kept bringing in more and more and more and more .... I used to think my stomach was a bottomless pit I now know better. They had curies, kebabs, salads, nan and sorts of delicious Indian things. It was by far one of the greatest meals I have had. I think they main cook, rajan, was sad when we had to explain to him that we literally could not fit anything else into our stomachs. I think he could of kept going for a long time. It was great experience I will have to send pictures sometimes.

The other day we went tracting and we knocked on the door of Rodrick who is a massive (muscular not fat) African man. It was freezing outside and so we knew we knocked on the right door (Africans like their houses HOT). He goes to school in the US but goes home for the summer. Immediately he had a few questions about why there are so many denomination of Christianity and so on but we were able to answer all of them. Finally when we went to share with him the first vision we told him to pay attention to his feeling because he was the spirit tell him the things we were sharing are true. Half way through the first vision he goes “wo, Wo, WO, what is that? What is that feeling?” He was practically out of his seat. It was funny how strong the spirit was and his reaction to feeling but he was definitely touched. After having such a spiritual witness he accepted all the commitments we left him.

It is great to know that the spirit is the true teacher and the one who converts those we teach. It brings comfort to me to know that with all my imperfections the spirit makes up for the rest!

Love, Richard      

Ps. DAD The boat looks amazing! I hope it has some big speakers on it so we can blast some jenny Philips/ motab when I get home. Also, don’t let them give you a hard time about being in the spa with the phone you’re a “hip grandpa”!!!

How did Rowland and Amanda like Africa?

May 10th - 16th

Family,

It was so good to see you and speak to you. You all look great!

Alright mom it is time to spill the beans. Have you had some work done? If yes you look great. If no well then take it as a compliment that you still look young and beautiful!!!

Elder Packer was amazing. He came and spoke to us about the language of the spirit and how to learn and recognize it promptings. After he took a little meeting with a few of us just to talk about what we need to do for the mission. He was great and told us that follow up is the key to success. It was funny he gave the 8 of us all a hug.  

I will just keep this short and sweet. I love you all hope you have another great week.

Love Richard

Ps. Love all the pictures especially with maddie! 

 

 If I have some dark conservative sunglasses that would be great. I cant remember all the ones I have had but If the blue ones are around you can just through those in the box.  Thank you

May 2nd- 8th

Family,

It was so good to see you and speak to you. You all look great!

Alright mom it is time to spill the beans. Have you had some work done? If yes you look great. If no well then take it as a compliment that you still look young and beautiful!!!

Elder Packer was amazing. He came and spoke to us about the language of the spirit and how to learn and recognize it promptings. After he took a little meeting with a few of us just to talk about what we need to do for the mission. He was great and told us that follow up is the key to success. It was funny he gave the 8 of us all a hug.  

I will just keep this short and sweet. I love you all hope you have another great week.

Love Richard

Ps. Love all the pictures especially with maddie! 

 If I have some dark conservative sunglasses that would be great. I cant remember all the ones I have had but If the blue ones are around you can just through those in the box.  Thank you

*** we all had a great laugh at this email, and the answer is NO...... no work done, just a nice shower before the skype call. 

April 25th- May 2nd

Family,

Wow. I cannot believe it actually happened! Congratulations! It looks like the wedding was quite the event. At least from what I can see... The pictures come up so small on the computer so make sure to send them to me in print please!!!!  Everyone looks amazing. I forgot to write what I wanted to say to Amanda for Rowland and so you will just have to tell her. I wanted to give her some nail polish and then tell her that, “you may be used to having a girl’s day out and getting your nails done but now that you are married to Rowland you’re going to need to make sure he is invited. Just make sure to pick out your favorite color first because who knows he may steel the one you wanted!”  I also thought about getting her the affirmation ball you sent me and telling her that whenever Rowland asks her questions just shake the ball and it will give her the right answer!!!  

This week was great. I may not have been at the family wedding however I did watch the royal wedding. President gave us all permission to watch it for two hours. Although it may have been completely apostate and terminating at death, it was still great to see. I think the princess got the short end of the stick, she is much prettier!   

Also, today is a bank holiday so we were able to go to the temple. It was great. I was able to see lots of people from other wards as well as missionaries because it is the one day that we can go. Famous sister unsworth from bolton was there and still remembers that wonderful package you sent her!

Alright well great things in the work are happening. This week my companion was telling me that in his morning study he learned that you can know you are working by the spirit if at the end of the day you can remember when you received revelation. Later that day I was sitting in the car and out of know where the name of an investigator popped into my head. I realized that we needed to be at a specific spot at a specific time. She was there waiting for us and we were able to have an amazing lesson and resolve some big concerns she has been having. Revelation is such an interesting thing but I know that it is true!!!  

Mother’s day I will Skype you at 4:00 pm your time 8:00 am. I am looking forward to seeing all of your beautiful faces.

Love, Richard

Ps. Osama Binladen news is so exciting! It is interesting. If you could send me some more news on it that would be great. Right now president bullock is being very cautious and we are not to work in any heavily populated Muslim areas just in case.   

April 21- 25th

Family,

This has been quite the week! We were blessed with six investigators at church and we now have six dated for baptism all on the 14^th of May. I know I haven’t been good about writing about each so I will just give you a brief summary.

Sunny- Sunny is from Inner Mongolia (China) and we have been teaching her for a few weeks now. Back in china she had a bad experience where she went to one of her friend’s baptisms in another church and thinking she was just a spectator got forced to be baptized by the pastor. Well fortunately this week we were able to take her to a baptism in the zone and she felt the spirit so strong that she accepted a baptismal date! I think she like the fact she left dry.

Jithu, Tony, Praveen- They are students from the southern part of India, Carla. Jithu is hindi but the other two are Christian. This week we taught about the 10 commandments really emphasizing the first two. They are very pure in heart and have identified the spirit many times. It is sad to take away jithus rich culture however the church is true!

Kayley- A member referral! She was in the hospital and became friends with the woman sitting next to her who happens to be a member of the church. Kayley is 21 and the member is 50 but God works in mysterious ways. Only a few days out of the hospital and kayley was at church excited to learn more about God and strengthen her faith which had been wavering for some time. WOW! Blessings from heaven.

Ako- (Not to be confused with akon) is an amazing man from the Congo. His brother is actually a member but lives between London and Liverpool. He has come to church a few times with his brother before but never been taught. I set up an appointment with him a few weeks ago but it fell through. Yesterday he came to church and we were able to teach him. We walked with him to a member’s home and had dinner/taught him the restoration. He accepted baptism immediately.  

These are just the people who have accepted baptism not to mention the many others who we are teaching.

Just yesterday we had only a few hours of finding and were able to meet and teach this Chinese student who wanted to know what the difference was between all the Christian churches. We were more than excited to tell him.  He accepted baptism and all the other commitments we left him.

This week we had zone leader council at the Bullocks home. It is my favorite meeting of the transfer. We come together and do a SWOT or strengths and weakness evaluation and then make plans for the coming transfer. The mission is doing incredible. Lots of great things are going on and are only going to get better. There is lots of talk about transitioning the mission and making it ready to hand over to President Preston.

Family, I cannot fully explain all the wonderful things that are happening here in Liverpool via email. We have been the recipients of so many blessings. I feel as though each day we go out and work the Lord is guiding and directing us to his children who are prepared to hear His message!

Love,

Richard

PS. If you have any questions ask.

Tell Rowland and Amanda congrats got the invite and it looked really great. AKA Posh

Tell Shelby congrats as well! One day i will get around to writing.

PPS. Have you heard from elder aaron darrow??