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

The Miracle of the Week

We had the pleasure this week of being able to sit in the back of the chapel next to our friend Melissa and her 4 year old son, they were back at church for the first time in over a year. As we sat and listened to the testimonies being borne, something incredible happened. Melissa got up and began to make the long walk to the front of the chapel to bear her testimony. She spoke of how Satan always wants to keep us down and out and keep us away from the Church, but our Heavely Father wants us back. She said she knows its true and she always has, she's just been lost at times. She spoke of how grateful she was for us missionaries turning up at her house to bring her back (what's funny, she said, is that she never needed the missionaries to show up at her house for her to join the church--she just walked in one day about 6 years ago and said she wanted to join, but I guess she needed us to show up for her to come back).

We also had the great pleasure of teaching a great guy named Nyasha this week, he is from Zimbabwe. He was meant to come to church as well, but that didn't work out, but hopefully we will be able to see him more this week.

This morning I read a fantastic talk by President Utchdorf, about being grateful, regardless of what circumstances we are in. He teaches us that we should "see gratitude as a disposition, a way of life that stands independent of our current situation." Such gratitude, he says, "heals the heart and expands the mind."

I love you all and hope you have an excellent week.

Elder Poulsen

Lessons

We saw a few more incredible things happen this week.

We got to teach Sharon again, and we will continue to involve the members more in her teaching. One family has offered to have her and her boyfriend over to their house for dinner and lesson. That will be really good.  

We also had a really good visit with a less active member named Melissa this week, we felt the spirit and she felt that it was a turning point for her. I think she actually sees herself maybe coming back to church now, whereas it seemed impossible before.

Aside from that we have, of course, had plenty more lessons fall through and plenty of people not want to listen to us.

Anyway, I will continue to try to do my best to serve the Lord. I hope that you all have a really incredible week!

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

More

More ups and downs in the missionary work here. We spent sooooo many hours this week out talking to heaps of people on the street, knocking on doors, etc. It was quite intense. But the amazing thing is, we actually had a lesson today!!! We just came from it actually. It was great. It was this awesome Jamaican lady named Sharon. We also got to teach this really cool 19 year old kid named Alex (oh my, another Alex...this is going to get way too confusing) yesterday. We are waiting on them both reading and praying about the book of Mormon, and hopefully we will be able to teach them both more this week. So, things are looking up here. We are looking at having a really amazing week this week. Transfers is next week, so maybe I'll just leave this place on wings of glory...or maybe I'll just stay here for longer. I haven't been here for long, anyway. Anything could happen though. It is actually getting quite hot here, today its in the 70s. Killer, I know. I hope you are all having an amazing summer. Remember, Jesus loves you.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen

Brown and Blue With Jordan

There were four people baptised here this weekend. That was really cool. Unfortunately, none of them were people that I taught, but I did have the opportunity to interview 3 of them in preparation for their baptisms, which was really good. I gained a testimony this weekend that God doesn't just send us to certain areas to teach certain people, but sometimes to interview certain people as well.  I'm sure this applies to pretty much everything, God will always help us, as we are willing and obedient, to be able to be where we need when we need to be there to serve and help the people that are prepared for it.

This is a really cool picture of me with Jordan Whittaker, one of the Priests in the ward here. We have the exact same suit size. And he loves studying maths (that's not a typo, that's how they say/spell math over here) and physics. So we're basically the same person.

I hope that you all know that I know that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, He is our Saviour. I know this from personal experience. It is something that we can feel helping us in our lives, and we can have the Holy Spirit witness of its truth to us as we read from the scriptures. I also know from my study and experience that The Book of Mormon is divine scripture and a great gift from God. And so Joseph Smith must have been God's prophet, and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints must be God's kingdom on the earth today, preparing us and the world for the second coming. Just beacuse people haven't been listening to us here doesn't mean it isn't true. Because I know it is, and I know that I've been called by a Prophet of God to share this message--so I'll just keep on doing it. I love you all, and hope that you have an amazing week.

Love,

Elder Seth Poulsen