Brown and Blue With Jordan

There were four people baptised here this weekend. That was really cool. Unfortunately, none of them were people that I taught, but I did have the opportunity to interview 3 of them in preparation for their baptisms, which was really good. I gained a testimony this weekend that God doesn't just send us to certain areas to teach certain people, but sometimes to interview certain people as well.  I'm sure this applies to pretty much everything, God will always help us, as we are willing and obedient, to be able to be where we need when we need to be there to serve and help the people that are prepared for it.

This is a really cool picture of me with Jordan Whittaker, one of the Priests in the ward here. We have the exact same suit size. And he loves studying maths (that's not a typo, that's how they say/spell math over here) and physics. So we're basically the same person.

I hope that you all know that I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, He is our Saviour. I know this from personal experience. It is something that we can feel helping us in our lives, and we can have the Holy Spirit witness of its truth to us as we read from the scriptures. I also know from my study and experience that The Book of Mormon is divine scripture and a great gift from God. And so Joseph Smith must have been God's prophet, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must be God's kingdom on the earth today, preparing us and the world for the second coming. Just beacuse people haven't been listening to us here doesn't mean it isn't true. Because I know it is, and I know that I've been called by a Prophet of God to share this message--so I'll just keep on doing it. I love you all, and hope that you have an amazing week.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

"Am You?"

That's what people in this part of the country say instead of "are you?" Its pretty funny. They also say "them" instead of "they're." For example, you knock on someone's door and a kid anwers it. To say that their parents aren't home, they say "them out." Sounds really weird, but its normal here.

We had some really awesome experiences this week (no, we don't really have any more people to teach [yet], but we did have some cool experiences). Last monday we had dinner at the Mitchell's house, a part member family in the ward (the father, Don, is not a member--his wife was taught and baptized about 6 years ago and they have two sons who are members as well). Afterwards eating dinner, we offered to give James, the older son, a blessing of comfort as he was really nervous for his upcoming exams. He accepted, and we were able to do that. The whole family really appreciated it, especially Brother Mitchell. Its funny because he will decline the invitation to pray himself, but he has all the faith in the world that when we do it, it works. Apparently the exams went really well this week, and Brother Mitchell attributes a lot of that to the blessing we gave his son. On Wednesday, I was asked by a councilor in the Bishopric if I would speak on Sunday. I used this as an opportunity to invite Brother Mitchell to come to church to see me speak. He only stayed long enough to listen to my talk and then he had to go somewhere, but it was great to have him there.

So I had this crazy dream the other day, I guess I'll tell you about it. I can only remember a few seconds of it. I was at the mission home and one of the Zone leaders or Assistants was talking to me, and they had a sheet of paper in their hand. They said something like this: "President wants you to work more in the Low Hill area." That was it. Low Hill is an area of town which is part of our proselyting area. Yesterday after church, we were cycling around Low Hill and we saw a kid trying to saw a large tree branch into peices, so we stopped to help. We dragged it into the back garden to find a yard full of large tree branches, and we spent over an hour helping saw them to smaller peices so they could later be burned in a controlled fashion. We met a bunch of the neighborhood kids while doing so, so that was quite cool. Afterwards we saw a lady painting a fence and spent a while helping her paint while she asked us all sorts of questions about what we do and what we teach. We hope to have another opportunity to teach her more.

Everybody, have a fantastic week.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

"That's Rubbish"

Do you remember how Alex used to always do his subject lines in Portuguese? Maybe I should start saying really english things in mine, like "lets go to the chippy for lunch” and that’s rubbish”

 This has been another week of hard work. We had plenty of lessons fall through, as in every week I've been here in Wolverhampton. But we did have one amazing lesson with a guy we met named Stephen. He seems ready and prepared to change his life. He is a great man. He is currently an active Catholic, but he is willing and open to change. We were able to share with him the message of the Restoration of the Gospel. Hopefully we will be able to teach him more this week. Please, pray for him if you get the chance.

Aside from that, I think we're going to be targeting more working with members and following up with them on the stake missionary program. Its actually pretty cool, they were given a list of a bunch of missionary things they can do and they are supposed to do four each month. And as always, we will be on the streets talking to people. I pray we can be led to those seeking for truth.

Have an amazing week everybody, I love you all.

Elder Seth Poulsen

I Love It Here!

1. This is me with my new companion, Elder Tupou. He is from Tonga and he is SO awesome. His English isn't amazing yet (he has been here almost 5 months now), but he is still hilarious. And he is super excited to do the work all the time. It was his 20th birthday yesterday, so I made some candles and birthday hats out of paper. The sign is for his younger twin brothers who he wanted to send the picture. He has 2 older brothers and 4 younger brothers. Pretty crazy. Just so you know, "Repent and be Baptised" in Tongan is "Fakatomala pea paptaiso." (There is no b in Tongan, only p. which make it a bit hard for Elder Tupou to hear the difference between the two). So next time you meet a Tongan person and you want to Preach to them, you can say that to them. 

2. The Wolverhampton district! Although there are a few different people now after transfers--I am now the smallest elder in the district. Frightening, I know. 

So I thought that my accent hadn't changed much since I have been over here. But the other day I met a missionary who has only been out for like 4 weeks and he sounded SO American. So maybe my accent has changed a bit. 

On transfer day last Wednesday, I was at the mission home and I ran into a missionary who was getting transferred from Llanelli. He told me that President Rasmussen went to the recent stake conference down there, and he met Alex Watkins. Apparently he shook his hand and gave him a five pound note, telling him to use it to start his mission savings fund!

The other day we met someone who said he was not as Christian, because he was a "messianic gentile." Think about that for a minute. Anyone who can figure out how that is different than being a Christian should probably be given a prize. 

I love my mission. I thought you all should know that. It seriously is awesome. Funny enough, having my companion go home did not make me want to go home. It made me even more grateful that I am not going home yet. I love it here. I know that I have so much more work to do here, so many more people to teach, before I go home. I'm sort of freaking out that I only have 7 transfers left, I've already completed 10. The opportunity to serve the Lords as his representative is such a great privilege. I truly love the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the great message that we can change, and how to do it. 

well anyway, I hope you all have an amazing week. 

Love, 

Elder Seth Poulsen

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