A Story About How We Are Going to Teach this Guy Who Lives in the Middle of Nowhere...

About a month ago our ward mission leader told us he felt that we should go work in Kidwelly, a little village about 8 miles from here. So we've gone there once a week since then, via train. It didn't seem like anything was happening at first, but now we've got an investigator there and we should have to more this week. Well, sort of. One of them actually lives in the middle of nowhere a mile and a half outside the village. We met him in kidwelly when he got of the bus there with his groceries and started walking home. We started walking with him, and got halfway to the middle of nowhere talking to him until we got him to stop so I could give him a pamphlet and set up a return appointment ("its the only house on the left hand side about a mile further up this road" he said). So we're going to bring the bikes this Wednesday and find his house so we can teach him. I hope he is as willing to make the long trek into town for church as he is for doing his shopping. We've been struggling a bit in getting new investigators as we have been spending time teaching the ones we have--I think that's something I don't really have figured out yet but hopefully I will sometime. But we should have some new ones this week.  It will be awesome.

In other news, if everything goes well, I will baptize our friend Alex this Saturday, November 2nd. It should be very good. I'm still unsure about how good of an idea it is to baptize a 13 year old without any of his family, but we have prayed and felt that it is the right thing to do. Hopefully seeing his baptism will help his mum have the motivation to quit smoking and get baptized herself, and maybe it will help his sister to admit some belief in God at all. Its going to be an amazing week though, as usual, especially with Elder Thurgood. He is the man. We are really similar and have loads of fun together. Its good. Keep being awesome everyone.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Do Something to Build Your Testimony

This week has been very good. We don't really have any more new investigators, but hopefully we will have some awesome new ones this week. We are going tonight to go teach an awesome guy name Matthew we met on the street last week. We also met some really cool people on Saturday--we set up a stall in the city centre with loads of books and pamphlets and stuff. It was way awesome. I made this printouts about how the book of Mormon answers the questions of the soul.  Definitely made a lot more people aware of the fact that we are here and who we are, although we didn't get any return appointments really. Hopefully we will see more fruits as we continue to do it the next few weeks.

Also, our investigator Alex came and helped us out a ton. He place like 5 copies of The Book of Mormon. No one could say no to him because he is such a cute, twelve year old kid. The plan right now is to baptize him on his 13th birthday, the first of November.  Alex prayed and got his answer that he should come to church instead of playing rugby games, but upon discussing it with his rugby friends he was peer pressured into the compromise of switching off weeks between church and rugby. Dang. But he's going to interview with the Bishop soon and hopefully it will work out well. Tonight we will be setting goals with his mum Fran for quitting smoking and probably will give her a blessing. It will be awesome.

Somehow, this transfer is almost over. They keep going by faster and faster. It means my boy Elder Thurgood is almost halfway done being trained and will be starting to do a lot more soon hopefully.

Oh, one more awesome experience...We have started to work with this less active guy named Elliot and we are teaching him the lessons. He came to church this week. In the gospel principles class he shared with the class how he had sort of lost faith in the church but when we came and taught him and invited him to pray to know the truth, he was able to pray and feel the spirit telling him the truth of the things that we share. It was so awesome. He is 23 so definitely he could still serve a mission, so we hope to be able to work with him more and get him on track for that! I encourage you all to do something to build your testimony, something to feel the spirit. Probably the easiest way to do that is to share some part of your testimony with someone else. If you can't do it to someone who is not a member of the church, just share some of your testimony with your family member or something. If done in the right setting, I promise it will bring the spirit, and you will feel awesome. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Poulsen

Crazy!!!

This week has been a bit crazy. We had a special mission conference and a follow up training meeting in Birmingham two days in a row, so we were basically gone from our area for two days straight. Because it takes us four hours of trains to get to the mission home from here. It was okay though because the meetings awesome. We have some great new ideas and new motivation to be awesome missionaries in our area.

We still have these amazing investigators; they just happen to all have really big obstacles in their way. It’s frustrating. But we will press forward with patience and faith. Rhiannon, Alex's older sister has been in with us for a few more lessons. She still claims to be atheist, but we can tell when she's feeling the spirit...so we'll see how that goes.

We are going to start working with some less active priesthood holders. Hopefully we'll be able to bring some more strength to the ward and even find more people to teach them. I realized through the meetings we had that I should be doing a better job getting all the members to think we're worth referring their friends to--and just getting them to pray for our investigators and stuff. Missionary work is so awesome. I love it.

Love,

Elder Poulsen

A Cool Miracle

Conference was way good. We didn't get to watch all of it yet due to time differences but we will. I hope you all noticed Richard J. Maynes talking about Gloucester...

On Saturday we were walking to our ward mission leader's house and I had a distinct impression that we needed to knock on a specific door that was about 20 yards in front of us. I knew I had knocked it before, about a month ago when I was with Elder Gull. But I couldn't remember if there was an answer or not. So we knocked on it. A lovely lady opened the door and invited us in. We couldn't at the time, but we gave her a Book of Mormon and set an appointment to teach her tonight. It will be awesome. God really is looking out for us.

We have some really awesome investigators as well, and we are struggling to help them progress, we just need to be more humble and receptive to the Spirit so that God can let us know what we need to do to help them the best that we can. They each seem to have insurmountable obstacles placed in their paths as they strive to live the Gospel more fully. But I know that God will help them, and he will help us to know what to do as we seek to help them. Because God is awesome. I know I've said things like this a lot, but God does stuff for us all the time. I had an amazing moment yesterday when I switched from thinking about all of the things going wrong to thinking about the amazing miracles we have seen recently. I instantly became so much happier. Look for the miracles, and you will see them.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen