llanelli

I'm in Llanelli! I bet you're wondering where that is. Well, its in Wales. Just down the road from Swansea. And right next to the beach. Not a ton of missionaries get to serve in multiple countries on their mission or on the coast, but I am getting to do both. Its pretty awesome. Now you should know how to pronounce Llanelli properly. Suprisingly enough, it is even less intuitive to pronounce than Gloucester. The pronunciation for Gloucester doesn't make much sense becasue it comes from Olde English. The pronunciation for Llanelli isn't English at all. Its Welsh. To be able to pronounce it properly, you need to know how to make the double L sound in welsh. Here's how you do it: put your teeth together and open your lips a little bit. Then push some saliva out of the sides of your teeth. Now you know how to pronounce "Ll" in welsh. And now you should be able to pronounce Llanelli properly. I'm sure you feel really ridiculous doing it, but I promise that really is how you pronounce it. You can youtube it or something if you don't believe me. The accent down here is crazy. Its absolutely hilarious though, I love it. Especially when two welsh people are going at each other. Thats when it gets really hilarious.

My companion here is a kid from Spanish Fork, Utah named Elder Gull. I'll get you a picture of him eventually. Probably. He's a way cool kid and excited to do the work. We're gonna tear it up. He has been in the mission field for 5 weeks less than me (my first transfer was a 5 week transfer). So that's a bit crazy. But that is what is happening all over the mission because about 100 of the 260 missionaries in our mission came out with me or after me. So our mission is extremely young. Some other people from my group are with people from the group after me, like I am, some are training, and some are district leaders all ready. Its crazy! But its so exciting because the work is pressing forward. So I guess I technically have that "senior companion" title now, which is a bit scary because it means I'm supposed to know what I'm doing. Which I don't feel like I do. But with the Lord on our side we'll be all right. So we'll have to make sure we stay on His side and give him the credit that He deserves for everything that ever happens in the mission field.

A few weeks ago an awesome guy was baptized here, so we are going to be making sure he and his wife (who was already a member) are on the road to temple marriage! Its way cool. Other than that, there are not a whole lot of investigators here, so we are going to be doing a lot of finding new people to teach. We'll have to get creative--some ideas we will be pressing forward with are setting up a booth in town centre and drawing the Plan of Salvation somewhere with sidewalk chalk. Aside from that, we'll just need to talk to absolutely everyone we can. This is a new challenge for me (and I am a bit scared, to be sure) because in Gloucester we always had plenty of people to teach. But we'll just have to rely on the Lord a lot. We'll do our best and know that whatever happens is his will. Being a missionary is great. I highly recommend it.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Tonight is Dodge Night!

Another week of missionary work done. I can't say that anything terribly out of the ordinary has happened, but we have certainly been blessed by the Lord every single day, as always. We had an excellent Zone Conference on Tuesday. My favorite part was probably when my mission President said that we can keep using backpacks even though the new dress and grooming guidelines for missionaries say no backpacks. His reasoning was that though backpacks might make us look like schoolchildren, shoulder bags make us look like Jehovah's Witnesses. Also backpacks are much safer for biking with. Anyway, he sent in a request that we be able to continue to use backpacks. In all seriousness though, He taught us some amazing stuff about how to let Jesus Christ become even more the center of our lives. Mission Presidents are so inspired. It is so cool to learn from people who have the Priesthood keys for the revelation that will help us progress (i.e. the Prophet for all of us, as well as our Stake Presidents, Bishops, and Mission Presidents for missionaries). God really inspires those men to say what we need to hear. And as missionaries, we get to be that person for our investigators. We get to be that portal to God--he gives us the revelation of what these people need to hear and what they need to do to be able to come closer to Jesus Christ. Joseph Smith said, "Salvation cannot come without revelation; it is in vain for anyone to minister without it." Its so true. We are so reliant upon the Lord for what we need to say and do to help the people here. And it is so awesome because He gives it to us when we are humble, and we are able to do His work. 

Tonight is dodge night! Chances are that I will be moved from Gloucester. So who knows where I'll be emailing you from next week...

Love, 

Elder Poulsen

Missionary Work is so Exciting!

This is super English. This was my dinner last night. English people like to put beans on their toast. And when you say beans here, it means baked beans. You may be able to see that I threw some eggs in there as well. It was pretty tasty. 

 This is our phone. Until I got here, I didn't even know Nokia still existed. But it does here. They make some smart phones as well, but this certainly isn't one of them. This is basically the cheapest phone ever. For some reason we can receive text messages but can't send them. But that will probably change soon. 

 The Book of Mormon in Farsi! Keep reading to see why we have it. It looks just like the other ones, bound with the same blue cover and everything, but it isn't actually the full book. The translation isn't complete yet, so it just has the excerpts in it that are done. 

So about Paul, the less active guy we ran into a week ago...we started teaching him and his girlfriend! He knows the truth (well, most less actives do I have found) the struggle now will just be getting him back in the doors of the chapel. 

We had another amazing experience finding an awesome person this week. So there are these things called Media Referrals that we never get. Its where people enter on Mormon.org that they want a visit from the missionaries and the message is sent to our mission office and then from there to us. Every week my whole mission when we do our weekly planning we read this part of Preach My Gospel that says we need to make plans to contact media referrals and we think "man, it would be really cool if we actually got those." I hope you've figured out where I'm going with this by now. On Friday we were in our flat having lunch and we got a text message from the mission office. It was a media referral!!! It was pretty exciting. 

So, that evening we stopped by. Halmet (that's his name) let us right in. He was excited to see us. We weren't quite sure what to expect. But it turns out that he is a single father, and he has been looking for the best way to raise his 5 and 8 year old sons. He has been looking at things on the inter-net, and so he requested that we visit him. So we did. We saw him again on Saturday, and he brought his kids with him to church on Sunday. They absolutely loved it!  What a great miracle that we were able to come into contact with him!  He has kind of a crazy story. His family is from Kyrgyzstan, but he grew up in Iran. He had somewhat of a Christian upbringing though. Then he was in Iraq because he was working for the Iranian Democratic Party, which is way not allowed because Iran's gov. is run by Islamic law right now. So he was eventually caught and sentenced to fifteen years in prison. After a year however, he starved himself until he was so sick they had to take him to the hospital. From there, he escaped, and now he is here! That story is straight out of a movie or something - so awesome! Anyway, his English reading is not that good, he prefers to read in Farsi or in Kurdish. But t The Book of Mormon is not in Kurdish (yet--he may be one to help translate it, which is really exciting to think about. He actually already expressed somewhat of a desire to do so as well) and only some of the Book of Mormon is in Farsi. Thankfully, our Zone leaders had  a Farsi one, so we were able to get it from them and will be able to give it to him when we see him tomorrow! Missionary work is so exciting. I love it. 

Love, 

Elder Poulsen

Whhaat? No Rain in England?

The weather here has been CRAZY!!! And by that I mean that it has only rained once, and it was just some evening drizzling, in the whole month of June. That never happens in England. Everyone is kind of freaking out about it. I've been in England over three months now and I still think people's accents are really cool--although I'm definitely more used to it now than I was a few months ago. This week I will hit my four months as a missionary mark. Thats crazy!

We saw some cool miracles this week. One was yesterday afternoon. Elder Baker has a fancy racing bike. But he hit a crack or something and burst his tube. so we pulled over and he set to patching his tube. It took FOREVER because he had to do it three times before it worked properly. So we proceeded on to where we were going I was riding my bike and this guy yelled at me from down the street, "Hey Elder!" So I stopped. Because people don't usually talk to us. It can be hard to get people to talk to us. So if someone decides of their own free will to talk us, we will most certainly stop. I waited for him to walk over to me and for my companions to catch up. As he walked up I could see he was totally covered in tattoos. He said, "I'm a Mormon too, I just haven't been going recently because I have been in the ICU and stuff...But I want to start coming to church again." So he gave us his phone number and we are going to see him on Tuesday. (he was baptised a couple years ago--we were able to find his teaching record in our flat). If Elder Baker hadn't gotten a puncture, we wouldn't have run into him. It sounds cliche, but remember everything happens for a reason...even flat tires.

I love you all.

Elder Poulsen

God's Got it all Figured Out

 This is the Gloucester Cathedral organ console. Usually people don't get to see it. You have to go through a secret (well maybe it isn't secret but it is usually locked) door and up some stairs through all the pipes to find it. But we happened to walk in right when they were finishing up a rehersal for a school concert. So I asked the man in charge if I could go see the console. He let me have a look at it. I bet my organ teacher would be jealous. Too bad I didn't get to actually play it. Maybe someday.

Beautiful pipes.

Cool story

Cool stained glass

Cool painting, cool people

 So there's this hill called Robinswood hill that Gloucester is built around and I have wanted to hike up it every day (thats a bit exaggerated) since I got here three months ago and we finally got the chance! It was only like a 15 minute hike. But it was still way good. Even England can have beautiful weather sometimes--to be honest its actually been a bit too hot for my taste. It was 31 celsius the other day (89ish farenheit). It doesn't sound hot, but when you are wearing a long sleeve shirt and tie and trousers all the time and biking around all day and nobody has air conditioning it is quite hot. I am getting a sweet watch tan, long sleeve shirt tan (just the hands), and a collar tan as well. My legs are going pale though. I guess my California tan can't last forever.

This is Gloucester

This is the bottom end of Gloucester that we rarely get to because it is far away by bike. It is highly likely that we will get another companionship of Elders in Gloucester next transfer though, so these areas won't remain untouched forever. If you look to where the land meets the sky round about the middle you may be able to make out some huge suspension bridges. Super cool. They go across the Severn river from England to Wales (at the part of Britain where England and Wales split apart and go down to their seperate points.)

The work here has been so so good. On Sunday I was able to confirm Jessica a member of the Church and bestow upon her the gift of the Holy Ghost. It was awesome. We also had a new investigator come to church as well, a lady named Jenny. She was taught by missionaries a few years ago, so we decided to stop by. She previously told the missionaries no more visits, but she now seems very open and ready to recieve the fulness of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. What a miracle. God is so good. We also had the opportunity to share the message of The Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ with an amazing Seventh-day Adventist couple. They are such good people (so are their three awesome sons) and would make absolutely amazing members of the Church. They are already so devoted to Jesus Christ, they have just have not yet had the opportunity to recieve the fulness of His Gospel. I hope and pray that they will open their hearts to it.

I have found, in the last week, that when I try my very best and my very hardest to do everything I can, it still isn't good enough. But when I start to be thankful for what God has already done for me in my life, constantly looking for and therefore seeing miracles, everything seems to work out just fine. I don't really know what a lot of these people need right now, but thankfully, I don't need to. God's got it all figured out. He is so good. I love Him, and will continue to serve Him the very best I can.

Love,

Elder Poulsen

Jamaicans Are Awesome

I have very little time, this will be quick. This is the baptism we had this week! It was awesome. This picture is Bishop Chambers, Elder Poulsen (yes Alex, that is the tie you gave me for Christmas), Jessica, Trevor ( the baptiser--he was just baptized himself a year ago and is now preparing for the Melchizedek Priesthood so it was a great experience for him as well). Yes, those are his dredlocks on top of his head. He's so cool. Anyways, it was awesome. Also,we met James Lowsley-Williams on a train this week. It was sweet. Look him up.

 Love, Elder Poulsen

(Mother's Note:  Appears to be a young cyclist with Olympic prospects)

I Thought I Was Going to Get a New Companion......

...and then somehow I ended up with two. Thats right, they put me in a trio. I guess there must just be an odd number of Elders in the mission this transfer. Anyway, I am now with Elder Baker from Colorado and Elder Lapi from Albania. Also, Elder Baker's name is Seth. Weird. So now I'm trying to get used to working with two new people at once. Its been working alright so far, everything just seems to take longer. But we have already had some absolutely amazing experiences together.

On Saturday was the baptism of Aleah, an investigator of the Sisters here in Gloucester. And she asked me to baptize her. So I did. But I don't have the pictures of that...or any of my new companions...yet. This coming weekend will be the baptism of Jessica, our investigator. So missionary life is going way good. I am so tired all the time though. This stuff is hard work. It can be stressful too. Yesterday morning I read Alma 58:10, where the people talk about how they prayed for God to strengthen them before going to battle. And then in the next verse they have the spirit manifest to them that God will help them, and they have peace brought to their souls. When I read that, the spirit brought peace to my soul, helping me know that it will be all right and that God is helping me.

Love,

Elder Poulsen