Missionary Work!

This week has been great, Chris came to church with us for the first time yesterday! He is so awesome. When we went to see him on Saturday, he basically bore his testimony of The Book of Mormon to us without even knowing it. He really feels the spirit when he reads The Book of Mormon. Also on Saturday, Iris passed her baptismal interview! She will be baptised by her uncle on Saturday. There will be a primary activity right beforehand, so hopefully all the members will stay for the baptism. 

On Friday I got to go to the mission home in Birmingham for a District Leader training meeting. It was great! Our mission President is so inspired. He taught us about how the love for the missionaries we lead and the people we teach is shown through how well prepared we are to help and serve them. He also told us that we were all foreordained to have the callings that we have. How cool is that!?

I'm so glad I have the opportunity to be a full-time missionary and to share the Gospel with God's children. It is a great experience that helps both myself and the people I meet to be better equipped to face the challenges that we all have in life. God is so good.

Love,

Elder Poulsen

I think Elder Poulsen is getting lazy......

*mother's note*  I questioned Elder Poulsen about his lack of a general email this week.  His reply was, "I thought I sent one."  Well, maybe he forgot to click send.

It's Cold Here

People didn't really want to talk to us the other day while it was snowing. Thankfully, it stopped pretty quickly haha. Things have been going great here. On Wednesday I got my new companion, Elder Palu from Tonga. He has a huge burning desire to do the work of the Lord. This transfer is going to be amazing. Crazy story--he has a cousin that plays for Newport's rugby team and for the Wales team and apparently he is one of the best players in the World for his position. Also the Rugby world cup is here in the UK later this year.

We have been teaching Iris this week, she is really bright for a 7 year old kid. Hopefully she will be ready for baptism on the 21st.

We also have a really cool guy named Chris who we have been teaching who I also think will be baptised. He has been reading The Book of Mormon and loves it. He hasn't been coming to church yet, but he has been trying to convince some of his family members to come with him when he does! He's so awesome. He works as some sort of engineer. We met him just by knocking on his door a few Sunday afternoons ago.

Thank you so much for all the love and prayers all the time, I love you all a ton.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Missionary Work in Newport

Pictures!

1. This is my companion and I about to replicate a roman gladiator fight. Not really, but those did actually happen here.  This is in Caerleon, (pronounced kuh-lee-un, with the stress in the middle), a town just north of newport that was a roman settlement. There is also remains of a roman barracks there. This ampitheatre used to have a wooden structure extending 50 feet above the foundation where the seats were. 

 

2. A closer picture of us. 

 

3. Some more detail in the foundation of the ampitheatre.

 

We have a bunch of really incredible people we are working with here--unfortunately none of them are doing all of the things they need to do to prepare to be baptised...yet. We hope that will change soon as we help these people to have spiritual experiences to help them to change their life. 

 

This week we are also going to start teaching another member of the Chavarria family (the part member family from El Salvador). Her name is Iris, she will turn 8 next month. I'm really excited for that, it should be awesome. Kids are great. Also, she's been going to school for the last year in English, so her English is pretty good and we won't have to try teaching in Spanish.

 

I am so grateful for the opportunity I have to be a missionary and to seek to help and serve the people here. It truly is an amazing opportunity. I really hope that we can see some amazing things happen here in the work of the Lord in the time that I have left. This week I'll probably get my last companion! Its pretty crazy. God is so good. 

 

Love, 

 

Elder Seth Poulsen

This Week

This week has been good, we have been able to teach a lot of awesome people (mostly the same ones as the week before). We're hoping that some of them will really begin to progress toward baptism. This week Rafael's son Dennys (who is a member) didnt' make it to church, but Rafael did. That meant that I got to sit with him and had to attempt to read along with the lessons in the spanish manuals on his tablet and occasionally try to tell him in Spanish what the teachers had been talking about. It was a cool experience. Unfortunately our Angolan friends didn't make church this week. But we'll be teaching them still, and praying for them to receive some good revelation. I've been told by more than one person that I need to send pictures, so I'll have to work on that. Thank you so much for all the love and prayers, I love you all a ton.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Cwmbran

This week has been really good. I got to spend a couple days up in Cwmbran working with the missionaries there and interviewing a kid named Daniel for baptism! I also got to go see his baptism on Saturday, that was great. Great things are happening in Newport too, we had three people come to church yesterday! One was Rafael, our friend from El Salvador. The other two were a guy from Angola who we met on the street named Antonio, and his friend Eddy who he brought. I think they really enjoyed it. We had Dennys, Rafael's son who is a member, teach the Gospel principles class in Spanish! It was so awesome. The guys from Angola grew up speaking Portugues, and they can understand Spanish too. They have different levels of English comprehension, but its not too bad. I managed to understand a lot of the lesson as well, so that was really cool. I'm probably getting some sort of Divine Aid because I am understanding a lot really fast it seems.

I'm so glad to be a missionary, its such a great blessing. We had a really cool District meeting this week where we talked about how great our calling is and the amazing things we can do to help people. Its great!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Happy New Year!/Feliz Ano Nuevo!

I figured I can justify putting a subject line in Spanish since I taught two lessons in Spanish this week. It was very difficult, but awesome. It was to the father of a Part-member family in the ward here--the Chavarrias, from El Salvador. They are so awesome. Thankfully one of our investigator Rafael's sons, Dennys, who is a member, can translate for us. I have managed to teach the principles of the lessons in really simple Spanish, after lots of study, but I still have such a hard time understanding what they say when they talk so fast.

We also had some other really cool experiences this week, like being able to see a well-loved member of the ward who hasn't been out to church for a few more than a few years now, and seeing Georgia, the girl that was baptised just before I came here, get up and bear her testimony in sacrament meeting yesterday.

     2015 is here and 2014 is gone! How crazy is that! 2014 was the year that I spent entirely in the full time service of the Lord, and at the end of it, I'm still the one indebted to Him, "and will be, forever and ever" (Mosiah 2:24). I will forever be so grateful for the opportunity I have to serve as a missionary.

      Our Bishop gave an incredible lesson in church yesterday to present the area goals by the Europe area Presidency to double sacrament meeting attendance in 10 years. The plans for each person to do individually are to bring a friend, become physically and spiritually self-reliant, and to find an ancestor (it matches the 3-fold mission of the church). Anyway, I'm pretty excited about it because if the members do there part we will see some amazing miracles here.

I love you all a ton and I hope that you have an amazing week!

Love

Elder Seth Poulsen