God is Good

This week we had our interviews with the mission President. That was a good experience. I had the extra opportunity of being able to have an interview to renew my temple recommend. The first two questions asked relate to our belief In God the Father and in His Son, Jesus Christ, as our Saviour. These questions touched my heart with such great power, I was nearly brought to tears. I realised that during the last year and a half of serving the Lord full time, my knowledge of and closeness to the Father and the Son seem to have grown so very much. Regardless of how frustrating this work can be, I must always remember how good God really is.

We've been teaching the lady who said she would never join our church--her name is Carly. Its been an experience. She has been reading the Book of Mormon though, and I have great faith in the converting power of The Book of Mormon. So we'll see how this goes. Tomorrow evening we will have a lesson with her in a member's home. It will be awesome.

I hope you all have a really amazing week!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

General Conference

This week was pretty good. I really enjoyed being able to tell people who I met on the street, "there is a prophet on earth today...and he is speaking this weekend!" Hopefully this week I'll be able to say to people, "there is a prophet on earth today...and last weekend he told us about how we should seek to follow the example of Jesus Christ in everything that we do..." Maybe it will actually work sometime.

We met some cool people this week for sure, and were able to teach a few of them. Again, however, we've been stuck at mostly only one lesson for each person, and then they don't go anywhere (yet--there's always the possibility that they'll remember us in the future, of course).

Here's a cool story for you: a few weeks ago my companion and I knocked on a lady's door and she told us maybe we could come back sometime so that she could tell us all of the reasons that she would never join our church. She gave us times that would be best to stop by based on when her daughter was with her or not. We tried by again the next day, but I guess it wasn't a good time again. So we just went by another day and put a family proclamation leaflet through her door (most doors here have post slots on them where the post man (mail man) puts their post (mail) through in the morning--if you're not sure what I'm talking about, think of Harry Potter) with our phone number on it. A few days ago she sent us a text message thanking us for the leaflet and apologising for her rudeness. We will be meeting with her tomorrow morning, I sure hope it goes well.

Martin is progressing really nicely. He is awesome. We taught the Plan of Salvation to him this week and he asked a lot of thoughtful questions. He also told us that he is beginning to become more conscious now of when he is breaking the Word of Wisdom--pretty much his spiritual sensitivity is coming back after having been dulled by years of being disregarded. So that is pretty amazing, it is definitely a step in the right direction. He has reestablished habits of daily prayer and scripture study. 

I hope that you all have an amazing week!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Out of about 280 missionaries in our mission, there are only 3 from Albania....

and I have now been companions with all 3 of them.

My new companion is Elder Farrici. (the rr is a rolled r sound and the c makes a "ts" sound). He is really awesome, we have been having a good time. I bet I am the first missionary ever to have 3 Albanian companions. Maybe I should be famous or something. Actually, probably not, I don't think I'd like being famous.

We didn't waste any time going on a fun p-day adventure. We cycled to a lake this morning (its just on the other side of the trees on the left side of the picture).

So we actually have had tons of new investigators since I have been here in Swindon. The problem has been that we see them once or twice and then they disappear and we aren't able to teach them any more. Hopefully in the coming week we will be able to find some people who will really "stick" and will keep commitments to read and pray and come to church and will prepare to be baptised.

Aside from that, we are still working with Martin and Chris, who I have told you about before, and will continue to try to help them all we can.

I hope you all have a really amazing week!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

!!!

I guess I'll just give you guys some highlights of the week:

Zone Conference was awesome! We had some really good inspired training from our mission President about how we are at our best when we are doing what God wants us to be doing. He also talked about how we receive more spiritual power as we keep our covenants, including those which we made in the temple.

For Zone Conference, we traveled to Cardiff, which was cool for a few reasons. First, because I LOVE Wales, and I hadn't been back since I was transferred from Llanelli last December. Secondly, because the missionaries currently serving in Llanelli were there too, so I got to talk to them about how the Watkins family is doing. I guess they have been teaching Fran more recently, but she still refuses to give up smoking for now. I'm not too worried, at this point, I am confident that the Spirit will continue to do its work on her. I still remember the first day I met her (over a year ago now!), she told me she didn't even believe in God.

We had a really good lesson with Martin the other day--I think he really is starting to catch the vision of how he can overcome all his challenges and be rebaptised one day. He is going to make a list of all the things that he has overcome so far and all the things he still needs to overcome to get there.

We taught this cool kid named Rujit from Nepal on saturday. He didn't make it to church, but hopefully he will in the future. I really hope we can start to see some more spiritual progression in at least some of the many people we have met here.

Anyway, have an amazing week!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Missionary Miracles!

We've actually had tons of new investigators since I have been here. Unfortunately, they just haven't stuck around for more than one or two lessons. I would like to tell you about some really cool miracles that happened this week.

On Monday night we ran into a member of the Church from California who is here for just over a week on a military assignment. Since we ran into him, we were able to tell him about how we are having our services in a school now, and he was able to come! That was quite cool because he may have missed out otherwise.

On Tuesday I was on Exchange with Elder Greaves, one of the Elders who is in North Swindon, on the other side of town from us. We were out in the town centre talking to people and we had stopped briefly to write something down. While we were standing there, a 17 year old kid named Liam came us to us and started talking to us, asking us what we do. So we told him. We ended up walking down to the library and sitting down and having a proper lesson with him too. He lives right by the other Elder's flat, so he's theirs to teach. But he is so awesome. He came to youth night and church and he has a really humble and sincere desire to change his life for the better.

Later that night, we went, as arranged to go to a skate park to meet up with some kids we had met before. (I don't know if I mentioned it last week, but I started spending some time making friends with kids in skate parks because I was sick of just spending hours talking to random people and having none of them want to listen). We met some new friends there too. Anyway, I told one kid that I would play a game of SKATE with him and if I won he would have to listen to us teach them about Jesus for 15 minutes. He agreed.

After our game finished, I grabbed my Book of Mormon out of my bag and took a seat on the edge of a quarter pipe next to the kid. "This is going to be interesting," I thought. Elder Greaves came over with me as well. Thankfully, the kid, Leon, was ready to listen, and he even went so far as to invite some of the other kids over, beckoning to them with, "hey, are you going to come listen to the Jesus talk?"

As we opened with a prayer, there was another group of kids off to the side making noises and swearing, which wasn't a good sign. But somehow or another they soon disappeared, and we had the perfect setting for a spirit-filled lesson. Five or Six kids listened intently as we spoke of prayer and how it helps us. Some of them even asked sincere questions about prayer and about baptism. It was truly amazing.

Unfortunately, we haven't had the chance yet to teach any of these kids more, but we hope that the opportunity will present itself in the future.

I hope you all have an amazing week, and take advantage of the missionary opportunities that present themselves to you.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Well here's

the miracle of the week for you: On Tuesday we went to visit our friend Martin and we had a brother from the ward named Iain come with us to visit him. When were driving home, Iain told us about how he first met the missionaries through his brother Nigel, who is not active in the church anymore. After we got home we went out just to walk around and talk to people. And we ran into his brother Nigel! It was crazy. We met with him a couple times, and then he came to Church on Sunday! It was great to have him there. We hope to see some progress with him.

This week was our first week having Church in a school because they are starting construction on the chapel to double its floor space. Swindon ward will be meeting in a school for the next year now. It was a little odd, but the spirit was there notwithstanding it all. President Rasmussen told me that when we talk to people on the street we can tell people, "our church is growing so fast that there's not enough room for us anymore and they have to make the building bigger!"

All of the training in our meetings and exchanges for this month will be on The Book of Mormon and how to use it to help people become converted! I'm really excited for this, because I love The Book of Mormon. So much. I am so glad that I get to read it every day.

Have a great week everyone!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Good Old Swindon

I really do like this place. Its nice. Anyway, our friend Martin came to church again this week and loved it. He got to meet with the bishop too, and they got to talk about what he needs to do to be rebaptised someday. Basically we'll teach him mostly like we would any investigator but he will need to work with the bishop when it comes to actually being baptised.

We also picked up a family from Sri Lanka this week, who have been taught by missionaries before. We'll teach them again this week, hopefully it will be good. We are probably going to be contacting a lot of people this week who were investigators in the past, I hope that with some extra member fellow shipping and commitment, they can make it to baptism this time around.

There's not too much else to say. We're here, working, and hopefully things will work out. I did get a lovely email from Kris in Wolverhampton today, saying how grateful he is for all I did to help while there--he also said he made it to church last week! So good to hear. I really hope he continues to progress.

One thing I've been doing recently is walking around a copy of The Book of Mormon in my hand, telling everybody about how great it is and how it can change their life if they read it every day. Its almost worked a few times. If they would just try it, they would know how great it is. Anyway, hopefully it will work this week.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

*Sent by way of Nana: a picture of Seth with his Nana and Papa's friends (the Daleys) that are visiting England