Goodness

God is good, so good. My Jamaican friends back in Gloucester used to love saying that (I'm sure they still do, as a matter of fact). It’s so true, He is so good. 

Today was actually beautiful weather, so my companion and I cycled up to a reservoir a bit north of town and went for a nice walk through the woods around it. It was awesome - totally beautiful! We saw some people jumping in the river to go kayaking and I wished I could hop on with them. That's okay though. 

Sometimes on Mondays I sit down to email and wonder what I have done in the last week. It’s not because I've done nothing. Every single day we do our best to spend every moment of our time giving the most efficient, effective service we can to God and His children (although we are very very far from perfect). It could be just because time is flying by and everything is blurring together. When people ask me how long I have been on my mission I have to pause and think a second before stammering out "almost 8 months now." Has it been that long? It’s really 1/3 over already. I can't waste a minute, it’s going by too fast. It makes me feel so bad for any time I may have had a bad day and missed an opportunity to talk to someone I should have or anything like that. 

All 4 elders in the ward spoke in sacrament meeting yesterday--that was fun. I talked about how awesome the Book of Mormon is, using some of the same elements as I did in my farewell talk (including my rewriting of the scripture of Nephi killing Laban into modern terms for those of you who remember that). I felt that I was able to really connect with the congregation, and bring the Spirit into the room as I shared my feelings with them. The Spirit is awesome. 

Yesterday Alex was ordained a deacon by a member of our bishopric, then his deacons quorum president taught him how to pass the sacrament so that he could do it in sacrament meeting. He did. What an amazing kid. I'm so glad we ran into him on the street 3 months ago. Looking back on my time here in Llanelli, especially my first transfer here with Elder Gull, we spent so much time talking to people, teaching people, serving people, who did not progress at all or who did so very little before stopping. But without doing all that work we never would have had Alex and his family. His mum should be baptized soon, but she still needs to overcome her obstacles of drinking and smoking and overall poor health. But with the Lord's help, she can do it. God is so good. 

After church I had the opportunity to give a blessing to a member of our ward who was feeling ill. The Spirit of God came upon me and some things came out of my mouth that I never would have expected. Part of the counsel given in the blessing, however, was that the things that were revealed should be kept very sacred, and only shared if guided by the Holy Spirit to do so. 

I am so glad that I was able to be a worthy vessel of the Lord in passing His blessing on to one of His children. Very few people will ever hear about this blessing, but I am confident that because I acted by the spirit, I did exactly as God would have had me do in that situation, making what was done just as amazing as any of the miracles in the scriptures. My point is not to boast, but to let you know that you can do it too! You don't even have to hold the Priesthood. The requirements for exercising the power of the priesthood and for having the right to being guided by the Spirit are pretty much the same anyway. But know that when you follow what the Spirit tells you to do in serving others, you are acting for God in ministering to His children. And that is pretty amazing. So don't waste any time--go follow the spirit in serving others. Its the way to be happy. 

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Missionary Work is Awesome

1. I found Rivendell! Its in my Area! This is actually part of our map that's totally in the middle of nowhere. The Rivendell name is probably referring to the name of a farm or a house or something. Unfortunately I'll probably never make it out there, because its like a 40 minute drive away. Yes, our area is quite large.

2. This is my companion with a mini Christmas tree that was in our flat. Its actually supposed to be about 6 feet tall but he took out the bottom segment because it looked really lame. 

3. This is my friend Alex. He's really awesome. I baptised him a few weeks ago. This Sunday he will probably be ordained a deacon in the Aaronic Priesthood and will be able to pass the sacrament with the help and teaching of his friend Matthew, the deacon's quorum president. To me, that's pretty exciting. We're going to be teaching Alex all the new member lessons after church and after youth activities so Matthew can be there with him. 

My companion made me get extra sleep a few days this week because I was still sick. I don't really like doing that. But now I am better! God takes care of His servants. We have met some cool people this week. Like most weeks, but we are still struggling to have new investigators. 

On Wednesday we had Zone Conference (loads of missionaries in one building)!  Its a bit crazy but it was cool because I got to see some past companions and friends. Also we had a general authority Timothy Dyches there. He taught us some cool stuff about how to plan better and use time effectively. And his wife showed us how to fold index cards into mini missionary shirts so that we can leave people cool notes that look like us! We might need to go buy like 100 index cards now so we can do that. 

Well, I'm trying to love people more and more as I continue to study Charity and seek to be like Christ by being loving to people in every word, thought, and action. You can try to do that too, if you want. Its a good way to be happy, if that's what you're after. 

Love, 

Elder Poulsen

This Week Was a Lovely Week

This week was a lovely week. Missionary work as usual. Elder Thurgood is still awesome and is learning so much (and so am I!). He will certainly be ready to stand on his own by the end of the transfer, as he probably would be able to by now anyway.

The proper welsh weather is beginning to set in...Lots of rain. I heard it will be like this for a while, then it will get too cold to rain, then it may snow. This winter will be a fun one, for sure.

My personal studies as of late have included reading The Book of Mormon each day and marking every part that helps me learn about Charity and Love, the pure love of Christ. This involves lots of red pencil and writing with a pencil my thoughts in the margins and cross-referencing, etc. It also has, with the persistence of doing it every day for about two months now, helped me begin to see a change in myself for the better. It has been a really cool experience.

Something that has really surprised me is the many things that we can learn about being loving towards others, not just from the example of the prophets and others, but by the example that God sets for us by the way that He deals with His children. A great example is Mosiah 24:14. It is a beautiful verse, leading up to the final statement, "I, the Lord God, do visit my people in their afflictions." Do we do this? Do we visit and help our friends and neighbors in their time of afflictions? We should follow God's example and do so. And we will find so much joy and happiness as we do.

Have an excellent week, full of service and love,

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Alex's Baptism

1. This is me at the top of the tower of Pembroke Castle. Look it up online or something. It really was quite awesome. 

2. A member of the ward had this cake made for us. Its pretty cool, if you couldn't tell. 

3. so the other day I was riding my bike and I heard a metal snapping noise. When I stopped, my back wheel had gone all super loose, like was shaking around. So I unscrewed it and found that the two pieces of the axle (that's when you think "isn't the axle only supposed to be one piece") pulled out easily from either side. Apparently it decided to snap in half. Bummer. Its sort of fixed now, but still needs some more work...maintaining a bike that you ride all day every day can be costly. 

4. On Halloween we had to be in at 6 for our own safety. So I figured out how to do missionary work from our flat: bake cookies for people! There were quite tasty. 

5. This is Alex. I baptized him. 

6. This is Alex and Mammy and Rhiannon and Elder Thurgood and I. 

7. This is a really attractive picture of me on a train. 

8. And a pretty awesome picture of me on a castle. 

So a few months ago I met this awesome kid named Alex Watkins and he introduced me to his mom and sister. Now Alex is a member of the church. Hopefully the rest of his family will be soon as well. This has been a bit of an odd weekend because I have been really sick and had to rest a lot (which if you know me at all you know that drives me absolutely crazy) but we had the great joys of seeing Alex baptized and confirmed a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. As a twelve year old kid he was able to pray and gain a testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and this is His church once again restored to the earth. He was also able to pray and receive the revelation from God that he should keep the Sabbath day Holy instead of playing rugby on Sunday. On Saturday night at his baptism one of his friends (there was a row of about six of them there) asked him about the rugby game the next day and he told him without pause for thought that he wouldn't be there because he would be at church. Most kids that have been coming to church their whole lives struggle with this, but due to his great spiritual sensitivity, he was able to find his answer. 

Alex was confirmed a member of the church by our ward mission leader, Brother Phillips. His blessing stated that he would receive the priesthood and serve a mission. It was an amazing and powerful experience. I nearly shed tears. Hopefully Alex's mum Fran will be baptized by the end of this month. His sister still claims to be atheist, even though we have seen her feel the spirit about five times now. We just really really want them to be all together in the church as a family, so that they can all strengthen and uplift one another, instead of Alex having to stand on his own in a sense. My other baptisms so far have seemed to be closed off by a sense of finality and completion afterward. I don't think it will come until we have seen the whole family enter the waters of baptism. 

God is so good, he works mighty miracles every day. Just look for them, and you will see them. Most frequently they will come when you follow the promptings of the Spirit. So do it. Have a wonderful week and I love you all.

Love, 

Elder Seth Poulsen

A Story About How We Are Going to Teach this Guy Who Lives in the Middle of Nowhere...

About a month ago our ward mission leader told us he felt that we should go work in Kidwelly, a little village about 8 miles from here. So we've gone there once a week since then, via train. It didn't seem like anything was happening at first, but now we've got an investigator there and we should have to more this week. Well, sort of. One of them actually lives in the middle of nowhere a mile and a half outside the village. We met him in kidwelly when he got of the bus there with his groceries and started walking home. We started walking with him, and got halfway to the middle of nowhere talking to him until we got him to stop so I could give him a pamphlet and set up a return appointment ("its the only house on the left hand side about a mile further up this road" he said). So we're going to bring the bikes this Wednesday and find his house so we can teach him. I hope he is as willing to make the long trek into town for church as he is for doing his shopping. We've been struggling a bit in getting new investigators as we have been spending time teaching the ones we have--I think that's something I don't really have figured out yet but hopefully I will sometime. But we should have some new ones this week.  It will be awesome.

In other news, if everything goes well, I will baptize our friend Alex this Saturday, November 2nd. It should be very good. I'm still unsure about how good of an idea it is to baptize a 13 year old without any of his family, but we have prayed and felt that it is the right thing to do. Hopefully seeing his baptism will help his mum have the motivation to quit smoking and get baptized herself, and maybe it will help his sister to admit some belief in God at all. Its going to be an amazing week though, as usual, especially with Elder Thurgood. He is the man. We are really similar and have loads of fun together. Its good. Keep being awesome everyone.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Do Something to Build Your Testimony

This week has been very good. We don't really have any more new investigators, but hopefully we will have some awesome new ones this week. We are going tonight to go teach an awesome guy name Matthew we met on the street last week. We also met some really cool people on Saturday--we set up a stall in the city centre with loads of books and pamphlets and stuff. It was way awesome. I made this printouts about how the book of Mormon answers the questions of the soul.  Definitely made a lot more people aware of the fact that we are here and who we are, although we didn't get any return appointments really. Hopefully we will see more fruits as we continue to do it the next few weeks.

Also, our investigator Alex came and helped us out a ton. He place like 5 copies of The Book of Mormon. No one could say no to him because he is such a cute, twelve year old kid. The plan right now is to baptize him on his 13th birthday, the first of November.  Alex prayed and got his answer that he should come to church instead of playing rugby games, but upon discussing it with his rugby friends he was peer pressured into the compromise of switching off weeks between church and rugby. Dang. But he's going to interview with the Bishop soon and hopefully it will work out well. Tonight we will be setting goals with his mum Fran for quitting smoking and probably will give her a blessing. It will be awesome.

Somehow, this transfer is almost over. They keep going by faster and faster. It means my boy Elder Thurgood is almost halfway done being trained and will be starting to do a lot more soon hopefully.

Oh, one more awesome experience...We have started to work with this less active guy named Elliot and we are teaching him the lessons. He came to church this week. In the gospel principles class he shared with the class how he had sort of lost faith in the church but when we came and taught him and invited him to pray to know the truth, he was able to pray and feel the spirit telling him the truth of the things that we share. It was so awesome. He is 23 so definitely he could still serve a mission, so we hope to be able to work with him more and get him on track for that! I encourage you all to do something to build your testimony, something to feel the spirit. Probably the easiest way to do that is to share some part of your testimony with someone else. If you can't do it to someone who is not a member of the church, just share some of your testimony with your family member or something. If done in the right setting, I promise it will bring the spirit, and you will feel awesome. Have a great week!

Love,

Elder Poulsen

Crazy!!!

This week has been a bit crazy. We had a special mission conference and a follow up training meeting in Birmingham two days in a row, so we were basically gone from our area for two days straight. Because it takes us four hours of trains to get to the mission home from here. It was okay though because the meetings awesome. We have some great new ideas and new motivation to be awesome missionaries in our area.

We still have these amazing investigators; they just happen to all have really big obstacles in their way. It’s frustrating. But we will press forward with patience and faith. Rhiannon, Alex's older sister has been in with us for a few more lessons. She still claims to be atheist, but we can tell when she's feeling the spirit...so we'll see how that goes.

We are going to start working with some less active priesthood holders. Hopefully we'll be able to bring some more strength to the ward and even find more people to teach them. I realized through the meetings we had that I should be doing a better job getting all the members to think we're worth referring their friends to--and just getting them to pray for our investigators and stuff. Missionary work is so awesome. I love it.

Love,

Elder Poulsen