Another Week

My companion is going home this week. Probably a good thing, he's trunky out of his mind haha. But that's all right I still love the kid to death and have really enjoyed this transfer. But I'm excited to get a new companion too, hopefully someone who is super excited to do missionary work and we'll go kill it and talk to a million people and baptize all of them, or as many of them as we can anyway. I'm guessing I'll get a pretty young companion, probably someone who has been on their mission for 2 or 3 transfers, and I'll stay here as District Leader, but we'll find out for sure what the deal is tonight!

This week has been all right, we've still just had more and more lessons fall through--but we did actually have one lesson hold, with a jamaican lady named Shauna. We are supposed to teach her again tonight, so hopefully that will be amazing. A few weeks ago we helped a member here redecorate some of his house that he really needed to sell so that he could move to Bristol. And yesterday we found out that he was able to sell it to someone who came to look at it just a couple days after we helped him out. So that was really cool, its good to know that even though the missionary work here has been really frustrating this transfer, we still have been able to do some good. It was a pretty crazy story actually. We didn't really know the guy because he has spent a lot of sundays at church in Bristol with his fiance, but one day we ran into him on the street and we were able arrange helping him to redecorate. Later, he told us that he had just been praying for some way of having help in getting his house ready to sell, and just then he ran into us. This is just another proof of how amazing God is and how the power of prayer really does work.

This morning I studied D. Todd Christofferson's talk from General Conference, all about the Resurrection. It was amazing. It strengthened my testimony that the Savior Jesus Christ truly did rise from the dead that first easter morning, and appeared unto many. This proves His divine sonship and that all of the things which He taught must have been true. And they are. And I am so glad that I now have an even stronger testimony of this which I now can share with the people of Wolverhampton.

Love Always,

Elder Poulsen

The Day After (the Mother's Day Skype Call)

1. Here is a  more attractive picture of Elder Baker for you. Although I'm nearly positive there is another picture of us at a baptism we had 10 months ago in Gloucester that is on the blog. This is a crazy guy from Malta who we met on the street. He was preparing to go to Manchester to be on Britain's Got Talent, the TV show. Pretty funny.

2. We went on a crazy adventure the other p-day where we went cycling along canals. It was sweet!

3. This big posh manor house we visited for fun, called Wightwick manor. (pronounced "widik manor," don't ask why, I don't know). I don't know who thought it was a good idea to put out a sundial in the UK, as you can see in the picture there is no sun, and therefore the sundial is totally useless.

4. Cookies. Lots of them. All the ward members loved us for this.

5. So we went and saw a football game here in Wolverhampton. It was pretty cool. It was a post-season testimonial game for a retiring player, so it wasn't really an official game. But it was cool. And it was during our p-day on a Monday afternoon.

Well...guess what, this week we reached about 40 lessons fallen through. That was 2 Monday night, 4 Tuesday, the one with a less active on Wednesday actually happened, 1more fell through on both Thursday and Friday, and a whopping 4 again on Saturday. But the miracle was this--the less active we were working with (Kris) invited a friend to church and he came! We had never even met the guy before, he just walked in the door. It was amazing. His name is David. We are going to go teach him tonight. He said that religion confuses him, but we hope that the light of the restored Gospel will clear his mind.

This is Elder Baker's last full week of being a missionary, next week is Monday p-day and Tuesday take him to the mission home. So hopefully we can make it amazing! It was great to see you guys on skype yesterday, I thoroughly enjoyed it. I hope I was able to say something that you will remember. Above all, remember that I love you and I love God.

Love,

Elder Poulsen

Missionary Work

So the missionary work has still been a bit rough here. It seems like we just work and work and work and nothing much happens. No one who we are working with was able to make it to church (or chose not to). We have been blessed to have a few new investigators this week though. They are all quite a long shot at this point, but I guess we just really need to have the faith that the Lord can change their hearts.

One day this week we went a bit crazy and we made 78 cookies and left plates of them with cool notes and gave them out to 8 members/member families. We will probably do another round this week to reach out to more members. Giving service to people can be a great way to soften their hearts and to help them be more receptive to the Gospel and/or invitations to share the Gospel. We'll see if we get some really cool results from this. The problem is that people here are generally quite prideful and won't accept our invitations to help them. So I'm glad we figured out a good way to do it without them even having to ask. Its almost like we're tricking them.

I have recently been doing a lot of studying about the atonement. Oh my, it is so wonderful and fantastic. I love it. Not only does it give the power for us to be resurrected and forgiven of our sins, it gives us the power to be healed, and enables us to continually become a better person. It is incomprehensible, but it is also absolutely amazing. I hope we can all do a better job of making use of it in our lives.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Greenhill Close

So...we have spent a lot of time out and about and we still have almost no one to teach (apart from a few less actives). So that's a bit frustrating. Its not really that fun. But we'll keep going. Today we might go see an art gallery here in Wolverhampton that I heard about from Martin, our investigator in Rugby who let us paint with him at his house. That will be fun.

Our one ray of light, the one person who we have been working with who is actually progressing in the gospel is a returning member named Kris. He wants to come back to church, but he struggles socially. He was just baptised about 6 years ago. We had a really amazing experience with him the first Saturday evening I was here. We wanted to help him see how God could help him overcome his challenges, so we read Ether 12:27 with him. He then looked up and said something like, "I guess I just need come to church and have faith that God will help me overcome my weaknesses." We were just sitting there thinking, "yup, that's it. You got it." And he was at church with us the next morning. We had a few more really awesome lessons with him this week, he has a powerfully testimony of the truthfulness of the restored gospel and the reality of the plan of salvation. We are trying to bring as many members with us to see him so that he will be able to know more people and feel more comfortable when he comes to church. Hopefully this week when he comes to church he will speak with the bishop about preparing to receive the Aaronic priesthood.

That's about it for this week. We have been stopping by a lot of less actives and former investigators, so hopefully we'll get to build up our teaching pool more doing that, and find some people who are really ready to progress toward baptism and activity in the church. It will be awesome. I hope you all have an amazing week!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

This is in our area here in Wolverhampton.  We were cycling past, so we had to stop and take a picture. 

*Mother's note - My maternal grandfather, Jack Greenhill, was born in England.  We still have family living within Seth's mission boundaries and we hope that he will have a chance to teach some of them.

A New Old Companion

1. Does this guy look familiar? Well, seven transfers (about 10 months ago, it was last June) ago I served with Elder Baker in Gloucester. Now I'm with him again, in Wolverhampton! Pretty crazy. I guess I'm sort of following in my father's footsteps by having the same companion more than once. Elder Baker was the District Leader here before, but he was released for his last transfer (yep, I'm killing him off in a month, he'll be headed back home to Colorado) and now I am. I was pretty surprised on Monday when I found out I would be with him again, but also pretty excited. Its going to be awesome. Just so you know, the clay pot in the foreground of the picture with the roll of sellotape on top of it is what we try to flick a paper football (made of an old train ticket) through during our companion study and planning sessions. It keeps things interesting. I can't quite remember the score right now...I think its 23-24 or something like that.

*Mother's note*  I sincerely feel guilty for including such an unflattering picture of Seth's companion.  (you would think he could have gotten a better shot)  I hope if the poor boy's mother ever sees this that she will forgive me

2. This is me at the rugby manufacturing museum in Rugby. The balls used to be made here by hand out of leather and shipped all over the world.

So this week was a bit rough as far as missionary work goes in the new area. On Tuesday I went around Rugby and said goodbye and shared my testimony with the people I taught there, it was great. A few of them gave me some nice cards. It was also great when I told them I knew that The Book of Mormon is true scripture from God that they could turn around and say back to me that they know it too--that is really cool. What an experience. Wednesday was transfer day! We took a train to Coventry and then I got picked up on a coach full of missionaries headed to the mission home. Upon arrival I met up with Elder Baker, and we headed back to Wolverhampton by train.

When I got here we had no lessons set up with investigators. We have set up many since then, but we still haven't yet sat down with anyone to have a lesson. Hopefully we will tonight, we have one set up. But so far we have had 11 out of 11 fall through. (I did have 10 out of 10 written there, then we just a moment ago received a text message cancelling our lesson for tonight) So that's pretty impressive, but not in a very good way I guess. But we will press on, and have faith in good things to come. The ward here seems good and supportive, so hopefully we will see some amazing things happen here. We have been on the streets a lot, talking to people and trying to find more people to teach. Hopefully this will work out! But whatever happens, we'll be sure to have a good time in the process. I love you all, thank you so much for all the love and support and prayers from home.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Elder Poulsen Buys Pointy Shoes?!?

Probably the spiritual highlight of this last week was getting to do a baptismal interview for this super amazing 12 year old kid named Haydn who was taught by the other Elders in our district here and was baptised by his older brother this weekend. He was awesome.  His testimony was so pure. He was a really cool kid too.  He has two brothers. When I first went into the interview he was really nervous, so I helped him feel comfortable by just talking to him and being his friend and telling him some crazy stories about my brothers and I making holes in walls (one example being when Boone's head ended up in the wall while running football plays in the upstairs hallway and another being when we were playing tag at our old house on Cherry lane and I chased Alex into table, sending the edge of the table through the wall). After that he was relaxed and was able to share his testimony of the gospel with me. Hopefully he will soon be ordained to the office of a deacon and be passing the sacrament. 

I was going to send you some pictures of shoes, but I never got around to it. I found out that I could get my shoes resoled because pretty much every town centre (if I write center, then the computer puts a red squiggly line under it)  in the country has a cobbler or two. So that's pretty cool, so I got one pair of my shoes resoled so they'll last a lot longer now. And then I also am going to have to send a picture sometime of the crazy shoes that I bought with some of my birthday money. They're super pointy and crazy looking. But they're also really cool, that's the style over here - even if it is useless for walking in because the front is so long. I'll probably mostly wear them Sundays for church. 

In other news, I'll probably be leaving Rugby this week! Pretty crazy. Maybe I'll get to go back to Wales, that would be sweet. But wherever I go, it will be amazing, because we are doing the work of the Lord! We'll see where I am next week...

I hope you all have an amazing week!

Love, 

Elder Seth Poulsen

Lame Sick Week

So this week was pretty lame because I got pretty sick. So not too much missionary work has been getting done in the last few days, just a lot of sleeping and some watching General Conference. Our teaching pool has expanded a little bit. It now consists of: 

•                a Latvian lady who will listen to us, but barely speaks English. We don't even have any supplies in Latvian, so that's difficult

•                a Muslim guy who doesn't want to change (maybe Elder Myrtaj will be able to help him out, he was sort of raised Muslim)

•                a really awesome Hungarian lady who has been reading The Book of Mormon in Hungarian and has a bunch of questions, but we can't answer them because she barely speaks English. Fortunately, there is a Hungarian Elder named Elder Magda serving in Coventry right now who is from Hungary and so we're probably going to get him over here this week to teach her and answer her questions. It will be awesome. 

So that's pretty cool, but obviously not the greatest. Hopefully I'll get better soon so that we can find some more amazing people to teach. We actually have an appointment scheduled for tonight with an awesome family, so hopefully I'm well enough to actually go to that and we don't have to reschedule it. Our recent converts Jan and Julie are still awesome, they both enjoyed conference and everything. 

General Conference was Awesome!!! I've only actually seen 3 of the sessions, but they were quite great and certainly helped me to answer some questions I had about how I can be better. I just love that! Its so cool when that happens. Revelation through prophets is amazing. I especially liked President Uchtdorf's talk about being grateful in our circumstances. Being grateful because of Jesus Christ, not because of stuff that we have.  Also, When I was watching one of the sessions at the Coventry chapel, a member brought a friend along and so I was able to chat with him and be his friend, so that was really awesome. He was a cool kid studying Psychology at a university there - really smart. I hope he gets baptised and serves a mission some day. That would be amazing. Anyway, I hope you all always remember that God is really awesome.

Love, 

Elder Seth Poulsen