I feel like there was something funny that I wanted to put as my subject line, but now I can't remember

We had some cool things happen this week.

On Saturday I made a few phone calls asking people if they were going to be coming to church--one was an ex member named Martin who wants to come back--he has been meeting with the Elders here for a while, but but he hadn't been to church in 14 years. He said he would come. And then I called a lady named Becky who is a member, but also hadn't been out to church in years. We met her on Wednesday (I think) when we were out near the Town Centre talking to people. She came up to us and said she is moving soon and wants her new house blessed, and she also said she has been thinking about how she wants to come back to church. She also said that she would come.

Then on Sunday morning, they both came to church. It was awesome!

We have also met a few Chinese people to teach, which is pretty crazy because there are not very many Chinese people in Swindon. One has pretty good English, so I should be able to participate pretty well in the coming lessons with her. The other doesn't have very good English, so when we met with her the other day I was basically just sitting there listening to my companion teaching her in Mandarin. There actually is a chinese family in the ward here too though, so we will have some good fellowshipping for them.

Anyway, doing the work of the Lord is AWESOME. I love sharing the gospel with people.

I hope you all have an incredible week.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

What's a Swindon?

Surprise! I got transferred this week. It was bittersweet of course to leave behind Elder Tupou and the awesome people we had been visiting, but it will be good to have another fresh start. I decided not to tell you that it would probably happen because I didn't know for sure yet and I didn't want to make anyone worry for a week about where I was, if I was safe, etc. Just so you know, I am now in Swindon, and I am safe. Everything is great here.

1. This is my new companion, Elder Hsu (pronounced like "shoe," it is also sometimes spelled Xu, but none of those are actually correct, because of course it is actually a chinese character). He is from Taiwan and he is way cool. His English is quite good by now because he is always seeking to learn more and he has been over here since last November.

2. This is Mark Parry, another Less Active member in Wolverhampton

3. This is a sign that says Mullet. It is supposed to say mullet road, but it is broken. I thought it was funny, anyway.

4. This is Melissa and her son Caelan. They are great.

5. This is the view out the window of my new flat in Swindon. It is quite nice here. Affluent, I mean. There is a nice Porsche always parked down the road from us.

6. this is AJ

7. this is Kris (and the one next to him is me)

Swindon seems great so far. There is a huge ward, very supportive, and there are many people here who need the Gospel. I hope I can do my best to bring it to them. My companion, Elder Hsu is excited to work hard with me this transfer, and we have another companionship of elders and some sisters too in the ward with us here. We are going to see some amazing things happen here, I am sure of it.

So far, this week we visited a really good guy named Chris who wants to be baptised and has been taught much by the missionaries, but he is currently on probation. Probably more on him to come, but what it may come down to is just a lot of praying that his probationary period can end sooner rather than later.

Aside from that, we will probably be spending a lot of time on the streets talking to new people, and trying to contact people who the missionaries have taught in the past. It will be good.

I hope you all have a really amazing week.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

"How Will That Help Me With My Problems?"

This week we didn't have a single lesson to an investigator all week...until Friday, when we went out in the morning and had three in a row. That was awesome. And then we had another two on Saturday. We had AJ with us at church on Sunday again, and a new investigator named Daniel. Daniel is from Ethiopia and his English isn't amazing, so he had a bit of a hard time understanding what was going on. We got him a Book of Mormon in this crazy looking language called Ahmaric. AJ had a great time. I think that our church services are still very foreign to him, having been raised in Sikh culture, but he is beginning to become more comfortable with it and to recognize the peace that comes from feeling the spirit. At the beginning of Church he didn't seem to be in a very good state of mind, but by the end, he was happy and smiling. After the end of the meetings he started asking me some questions. "If I read the Book of Mormon, how will that help me with my problems?" he asked. I then had the incredible opportunity of being able to share my testimony with him of how studying the Book of Mormon each day can bring the spirit into our lives, help us know what to do, and give us the power to do it. It was great. I hope to be able to have many similar experiences for the rest of my mission and for the rest of my life. Because being able to bear testimony to someone who has a sincere desire to learn is great.

Anyway, I hope you all have a really incredible week!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Things Are Good in Wolverhampton!

Things have been good this week. We've been able to teach our friend Nyasha some more, and we had Melissa with us at church again. By the way, Melissa looks a lot like Aunt Jean. I'll probably get a picture with her this week to send and you guys can see. We haven't been able to get ahold of AJ, so that is sad, but we will just have to try, try again. I was blessed to be able to do a few baptismal interviews this week for people being taught by other missionaries in the district here. One was for this really cool kid named Ash who is just about 8 months older than I am. He found out about the church online because of somebody's mormon.org video (they actually do work!) and he has come to church 3 or 4 times now. He loves it. He will be baptised this week. Hopefully this week we will get to meet some more incredibly amazing people to share the Gospel with. Its bound to happen, seeing as how we have been called to be in this place at this time by revelation. Anyway, my favorite scripture of the day is Romans 8: 16-18. Think about it a bit. Its incredible.

I hope you all have an amazing week.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Good Things Are Happening

I hope you all know that I miss you all a ton. I basically take all the opportunities I can get to tell everybody how awesome my family is.

Anyway, I thought I'd tell you all about some good things that have been happening here. We were able to teach more this week we have in quite while, so that was nice. Although one lesson was to someone who didn't speak much English, and another was taught while the guys was cutting someone's hair (we were quite impressed by the man's ability to listen to us and give a good haircut at the same time). A few of them were with our friend AJ. Teaching him this week didn't really go as well as we had hoped it would, but we will keep trying. One cool miracle that we saw was being able to see Nyasha again, who we met about a month ago. He has been quite busy caring for his cancerous aunt, but she is getting better, so he should be able to meet with us regularly and progress towards baptism. Now that would be cool. We have also learned the bus timetables much better, we might be on them for another week or two until we get the bike situation sorted out.

Serving the Lord is good, it is quite a blessing, I hope I can use the opportunity to its fullest. Thank you so much for all the love and prayers and support all the time. I hope you continue having an amazing holiday.

Love,

Elder Poulsen

This....

1. This is my companion holding the end of a cut piece of cable. I'll give you a few spaces to try to guess what this means.                                                I don't know if you guessed right, but the correct answer is..............we no longer have any bicycles. They were locked up to a steel pole outside the back of our flat and when we woke up Wednesday morning they were gone, this is all there is left. We filed a police report, but we still haven't go much of a chance of getting them back. I think we're going to be on busses for a little while.

2. I don't know if I've mentioned this, but we live on top of an Indian/Bangali restaurant right now that just opened up a little over a month ago. It is quite tasty, but also expensive. There are a bunch of guys from Bangledesh who run it, they are quite cool. Also, it is quite easy to get on the roof.

We have had some quite good experiences this week. Melissa was at church again, that was great. We also had an investigator named AJ at church, that was really cool, I'll get back to him in a minute. But first I wanted to tell you about what happened on Friday night when we were walking home from the bus stop. We were just walking along, and we heard someone calling to us from behind. We turned around to see a lady speedwalking/half running to try to catch up to us. She asked us if we had any literature about our church that she could read. Her name is Holly. She explained that she is a baptist, but she wants to learn all she can about different religions so that she can be sure that she has found the truth. We explained that we have a series of lessons we teach people to help them learn all they need to know about us, and she quite happy about that.

So this was a great miracle, being able to meet Holly. The catch is that she doesn't live in Wolverhampton, she was just here for the day. She actually lives in Stoke-on-Trent, so I'm sure the missionaries there will have an excellent time teaching her.

Here's another British-ism for you, since I haven't given you many of these recently. Don't get too confused by the name Stoke-on-trent. All it means is that there is a town called Stoke that is on the Trent river. Ross-on-Wye is a villiage called Ross that is next to the Wye river, and so on with Burton-on-trent, Stratford-upon-avon, and others. Also, I still think people's accents here are quite cool and when I get home I'll probably be confused for a while about why everyone sounds like I do.

AJ is quite cool, we knocked on his door on Tuesday and he let us in, and we have been able to teach him a few more times after that as well. He came to a baptism on saturday and to church on sunday. I'm sure it was probably quite overwhelming for him, as he was raised Sikh (he grew up here, but his parents were Indian), so it was all new to him. This week we will just be teaching him so simply, trying to help him understand the doctrine and recognize the spirit. It will be great.

have an amazing week!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Personal Conversion

I'm not really sure what to write about this week, there is not too much to say about what has been going on here. I did get to go to a meeting at the mission home for all the District leaders in the mission, that was quite cool. President Rasmussen is always sure to be inspired and inspiring. He has given us a lot of training recently on conversion, and all the training done in the mission for the month of July is to be on following the Spirit and on its role in conversion. President Rasmussen said, "Spiritual preparation is the most important thing that we do as leaders." This week I was pondering on how I have become converted myself, so that I could use that knowledge to help me be able to help others become converted. I realized that I did not become converted to certain commandments, such as prayer, scripture study, and church attendance, until after having done them for a while and realizing how much they helped. This shows why it is so important that we as missionaries give so much help and support to the people we work with while they start trying to do these things, so that they can have good experiences with them and become converted. This pattern is also shown in Alma's sermon on faith in Alma chapter 32. It is quite good. Anyway, that's all for now.

I also heard another cool story about my Welsh convert Alex, that crazy little blonde kid, from a missionary who was just transferred to up here from down there. At a recent baptism down in the Llanelli ward, Alex bore his testimony as part of the baptismal service. From what I heard, it was full of the Spirit. He is still there at church every week, passing the sacrament. It is so good for me to be able to hear about how well he is doing.

I hope that you all have an excellent week this week, full of the spirit.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen