Missionary Work is Awesome.

1. [mission] Family picture!!!

2. There were some tennis rackets and balls in our flat. So this morning we played some tennis at this awesome low-quality tennis court down the road. We had to stop after about 15 minutes because both of the balls ended up over the wall. One was on someone's roof, and the other we couldn't find. But it was fun. 

3. Did I show you this yet? Its the Iron rod. I never knew where it was, but now I know that its on the street in Cardiff. 

So, like I said, missionary work is awesome. It really is. I love it. So does my companion. Which is good. Also we found an old deep fryer under our sink. We've been cleaning it up. And so we're gonna make chips tonight (remember--chips in the UK are not what they are in the US)! It’s gonna be awesome. 

This week was amazing. We didn't even teach that many lessons, and we spent endless hours talking to random people and having them not very interested. But the lessons we did have were with some amazing people. We had two investigators at church this week, more than we had all of last transfer. And we now have two investigators with baptismal dates and another one will soon--the first time we have had an investigator with a baptismal date since I got here almost two months ago. God is so good. Look for the miracles, and you will see them.

Love,

Elder Poulsen

What?

So my mission President called me 9 days ago and asked me I would train a new missionary. So...I am. His is Elder Thurgood from Nampa, Idaho and he's super awesome. He's actually training me. Which is good becasue I still feel like I'm supposed to be the new missionary. He's so excited to do missionary work and has so much faith. On his first night he gave a blessing to our investigator Francine. It was awesome.

We had a really cool/unique church meeting yesterday. It was a special meeting to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the stake center in Merthyr Tydfil, Wales. It was a way awesome, beautiful building. I heard its the biggest chapel in Europe. The speakers consisted of a lady that helped build the building, the first person to ever be baptized in the building, the mission President, the stake president, and Patrick Kearon (remember him from General Conference?), the first councelor in the Europe area presidency. It was way cool to be part of such an occassion. Though it was mostly in English, there was a prayer and a musical number in Welsh for good measure. Merthyr Tydfil is where the legendary Dan Jones, one of the best missionaries ever, did a lot of his work.

The few people that we are teaching are doing well. We have had some amazing experiences recently, but are still working hard and seeking to find more people to teach so that we can soon have people progressing towards baptism. On Saturday, Francine gave an amazing, heartfelt prayer at the end of our lesson. I realized that I have probably seen more change in her than anyone else I have had the opportunity of knowing on my mission. She has come so far since I met her sitting on her doorstep and she told me she didn't believe in God. The family still has a lot of obstacles keeping them from church, but we'll work on it. God's miracles are amazing.

Love,

Seth (I decided to do that on my emails today instead of Elder Poulsen so you wouldn't forget my actual name).

Good Stuff

This has been quite a rewarding week. We were able to have many lessons and had three new investigators!!! It was way good. We are seeing the fruits of our many labors. Yesterday there was a crazy storm where there was tons of rain being blown sideways by the wind. It was pretty awesome, especially for cycling in. We also got fed loads of chips (the type of chips you think of when you think of fish & chips--potato chips here are called crisps) by our ward mission leader. Loads of people have their own fryers here so they can make their own chips. I might have to get one when I get home because I'll miss chips too much otherwise. 

I'd like to share with you another miracle that happened by the spirit. These happen all the time. Its where the spirit tells you to do something but then you think "why would I do that?" and then you (hopefully) have enough faith to do it anyway, and then something awesome happens. We were riding to church yesterday and the thought came to my mind that we should stop by Peter, a recent convert here. So we did. He had slept in by accident, so we woke him up when we knocked on his door and he was able to come to church. Way good. Trust what the spirit tells you to do. Always. And remember that is through the Atonement of Jesus Christ that all these awesome miracles happen. 

Love, 

Elder Seth Poulsen

So Last Week I Got This Crazy Rash

Ten days or so ago I got stung by a wasp. Which was cool until a couple days later when I had this crazy infected rash. I decided not to tell you about it last week because I didn't want you freaking out for a week only to find out that I'm perfectly fine. Which I am. Rash is all gone. I just have a tiny scab on my wrist where the sting was. Moral of the story: when wasps are flying around, don't ride your bike into them (not that I did it on purpose).

 Our week had some big holes in it--we lost tons of proselyting time having to go to Cardiff so I could see the stake president there who is a doctor. He prescribed me some antibiotics and antihistamines so now I'm all better. Seeing Cardiff was cool though. They have this huge stadium for football (not American football) and rugby and the city center there is absolutely MASSIVE. Its super crazy. There is a huge castle in the middle of town too. So now I've officially done some exploring around the capital of wales due to awkward amounts of time between doctors appointments and train rides. Cool story, I know. One of the times we went, however, we ran into an almost investigator of ours who works in Cardiff and I got to talk to him the whole way home. That was way cool. He taught me some welsh history and stuff. Apparently the whole King arthur/merlin myths all originated and are centered around Carmarthen, a town which is part of our area here! some of the members live there. But I've never been there because its a half hour train ride away. Shoot.

We are still struggling to find people to teach as far as the missionary work is going. We keep having a lesson or two with people then they drop us. Its frustrating. But we do have two really awesome investigators, and God will keep blessing us more because he's Awesome.

Love,

Elder Poulsen

*Mother's Note* -Now I can see why he sounded kind of down and out last week!  He is probably right though, I would have worried.  Hate it when they know you better than you know yourself!

This Week

This week has been trying, but we have seen the rewards as well. After weeks of trying to find people to teach, we finally had tons and tons of lessons set up to teach people. And then almost all of them got cancelled or dropped. Four cancelled Wednesday, three Thursday, one Friday, another three Saturday.

On the upside, we were able to begin teaching Alex (the little blonde kid in the picture of the castle last week) and his mother, and Alex came to church! That was the first time we had an investigator at church since I've been here - so awesome.  He is a super bright kid too. The Young Men’s president was telling us afterward that he was way good in the young men's class (he's almost 13), even answering questions. So the Lord is definitely richly blessing us and rewarding us for the hard work we have put in. It is so awesome. God is so good to us. We see miracles all the time. Llanelli is still beautiful too. I love it every day. Keep practicing saying Llanelli. Maybe you'll get it some day.

Love,

Elder Poulsen

Just so you know how awesome my life is...

I thought I'd run you through a day of mine. Last Tuesday, to be exact. I would say it was an average day, but it wasn't really. It was actually really awesome. But actually its fairly normal for days to be really awesome. So I guess maybe it was average. 

After studying in the morning, we stopped by an investigator named Andrew and set up an appointment to teach him the next day. Then we stopped by another investigator, and set up an appointment with him as well. We probably talked to some random people along the way, but nothing much came of it that morning. 

After lunch, we went to knock some doors on a street that we had picked on the map. It turned out to be a really posh street. So everyone was at work and people weren't home (in less posh areas, tracting during the day is fine because a lot of people either aren't working, or work random shifts and so might be home during the day). So we moved on from that. We headed down to the bike path to ride the four miles down to Burry Port, a village that is also part of our area. Its no boring bike path though, it happens to run along the coast. So its absolutely stunningly beautiful. 

On the bike path we met this cool guy named Richard who was a Choir conductor. So I talked to him about choirs and Gloucester Cathedral and also who I should talk to to get to play the pipe organ at the Baptist chapel in town (yes!). Anyway, he has a friend who is a member of the church who has talked to him about it a lot. We were able to testify to him about the truthfulness of the Gospel and leave him with a copy of the Book of Mormon and a pamphlet about the Restoration. 

When we got to Burry Port, we got to help a nice lady carry her shopping home, and set up an appointment to come back and teach her. Then we stopped by and met someone who had been previously taught by the missionaries. Tomorrow we are going to begin helping him fix up his back garden, and hopeful through our service he will open up again to the Gospel. We were then able to go visit a member who we had seen the week before, and told to invite her friends over so we could share a message with them. She had invited a friend over, so we were able to teach him and we are going to be seeing him again tomorrow night. We also met one of her neighbors, who told us we could come back later to share a message with him. 

We had a dinner appointment with a member, which was way good. When we went back to visit the man we had told we would come back, he had already gone to sleep, which was unfortunate, but we'll try again tomorrow. We also talked to some of the cool neighborhood kids. We tried to stop by some other former investigators and some less actives, but with no success. We were about ready to head home, but then we ran across some kids playing cricket in an empty car park (that's parking lot in English), and they let us have a go at bowling and batting cricket style. That was way fun--Elder Gull is a baseball player as well, so we were both thoroughly entertained by it. 

Finally, we took the coastal bike path back home. It was an absolutely beautiful evening. Unfortunately, none of the people we talked to were all that interested in hearing what we had to say. But considering how much success we had in Burry Port, there was no room for complaining about that. We were both pretty dang tired by then. But it was quite the day. 

This is a picture of a castle we saw today. It’s actually more like a really big house (people still live in it too), but I guess it can be called a castle because it has that tower on the left side. (check out those sketchy external stairs). It was built in the 1800s. Pretty cool. The kid in between us is a kid named Alex we met on Saturday. He showed us how to get to the castle. It was quite an adventure. And also today he told us he read the first 20 pages of the Book of Mormon! Pretty awesome!  We'll get to teach him and his mother on Wednesday. It'll be good. 

If you haven't noticed, we run into a lot of people who are interested in listening to the Gospel. Considering that you can find out from just about everybody in the world that not many people are interested in religion anymore, there is no way that this happens by chance. God most definitely the one who places in our paths the people that we need to meet. It is amazing. It is miraculous. And we are so grateful for it. Look for the hand of the Lord more in your life, and you will see it. Have a lovely week. 

Love, 

Elder Poulsen

Kilts

Well this has been a crazy day. We did some shopping and some going to the beach. A guy who was recently baptized here and his wife were nice enough to tote us around. So I don't have much time to write now. But that’s ok. We were at a suit store and they had kilts for rent. We decided against buying them since they were about £380 or something like that (something to do with being handmade out of extremely nice wool). But we tried them on, of course. 

The Lord blessed us with three new investigators this week. That was lovely. We still didn't get anyone to come to church though, which was sad. But we hope that the Lord will continue to pour out His blessings upon us as we continue to work hard. We're trying to lighten up and have some fun at the same time though, or else we may just end up miserable. We'll have to find a good balance, I suppose. 

Here's a cool scripture I shared with some members this week as we encouraged them to keep up their missionary efforts: 

 12 For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are ablinded by the subtle bcraftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to cdeceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they dknow not where to find it—

 13 Therefore, that we should waste and awear out our lives in bringing to light all the bhidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven—

D&C 123:12-13

There are so many people who need the truth and want the truth--and these are people that we know--we just need to open our mouths and share it with them. 

I hope you all have a lovely day and an amazing week. 

Love, 

Elder Seth Poulsen