July 14, 2014

Dearest Ones of America, I can't believe I've been here for almost two weeks. I get really excited for P-days to write home and detail these crazy experiences out here. Also, thank you everyone for the great letters on the airplane, I really enjoyed them. I forgot about that last time I was emailing. I am in the Chorley library to email you all, by the way. We live in a city called Euxton that is only a few miles long, I think. I still don't even know North from West here. It's only rained 2 of the days I've been here. I don't know how I'll handle when it starts to rain more, apparently it gets pitch black at 4:00 in the winter. Never realized it, but England is as far north as Canada and Alaska. So my week. Well on Saturday I will celebrate my birthday. Here's the crazy part. The first missionaries to come here arrived on July 19th, 1837. They left on July 1, the same day I left. And my first baptism will be on the 19th! Such coincidences. The lady we are baptizing is a school teacher from Sunderland, England, and has progressed really well. We teach her daily and she loves the ward. It's so cool to see somebody talk about how the Gospel has given them this light that they have never experienced before. The ward here is so helpful; it is full of cute elderly couples that are soooo British. I don't even know how to describe British people. Then we have two dated for August. One is Lee, a 19 year old thug who always comes to lessons with a little boombox playing. We gave him a blessing at church and he says everything just makes sense to him about the Gospel. And then there is Ethel, in her 70s, who is very sweet and gave me a fake daffodil to pin onto my bag. Hahaha I am not totally sure she is accountable. When we asked her about baptism she got her planner out and the business of the proposed date was the first concern... But hey, what do you do? I've gotten to meet a few of the Chinese missionaries, which has been fun. They are kind of this club of elitists who hold mission records and have this totally Asian culture to them. Wonder how all that will be. I'll probably be here till like September working in my native tongue. But! We found this man from China who speaks like no English that said we could come over. That will be really cool, hopefully I can reach him. I kind of blanked when I couldn't speak English to him. My companions saw him and just stopped and looked at me and my heart dropped hahaha. As for any funny experiences, this one was crazy to me. We went into this person's house and started talking about the Restoration. The lady wasn't very interested, they more wanted to talk about world views and ghosts, but after talking about the First Vision for a moment she explained that she believes God is an alien who is experimenting on us. I had to stop myself from laughing; she was totally serious. My companions didn't even think anything of it. And at that point, my friends, I gained my first sense of pride for serving in England. We eat at member's homes almost every night. It's really nice to have a break. Since Chorley has the temple, it's kind of like the Utah of England. So it's a fairly mild area, which is nice to start in. My companions have practically served in Babylon, also known as Blackpool or Liverpool. I can't wait to go to Liverpool eventually, the accent is so cool. My pride makes me feel so ghetto here! We walk everywhere, except for buses a few times a day, and share this old Nokia candy bar with T9. The mission life, folks, haha. But we get iPads in a few months for online proselyting. The church is getting really big on family history as a means of connecting people to the Gospel, so that might be a big part of my mission in the future, as well. We had a multi-zone conference where half the mission got to meet President Ulrich. He is so powerful and enthusiastic. He wants our baptisms to double in a few years. If anyone can do it, it's him. I guess he read a Gospel-scholarly book like Lectures on Faith every week since his mission and has gone to the temple every week. Blows me away; he knows everything. I'm a man for simple doctrine at this point, though, haha. Love you all and hope your week was swell, Elder Webbcaster