Welcome to 2015! This may be the only year of my life spent completely in another country or as a missionary. It was a really good week, pretty normal overall. We are getting more ingrained with the ward and I can see a lot of progress in myself from what I've learned from Elder DiPeri.
We had part of New Year's Eve off and all of New Year's Day. A member fed us and then on New Year's Day our mission president didn't want us going back up hiking so we just watched films and played games at the chapel with some other missionaries. We watched 17 Miracles and I was so proud to call out my ancestors in England and brag to the other missionaries of my sacred progenitors.
And guess what? We found a Chinese family! I met the dad on the street one day going to pick up his kid from school and he didn't really know what was going on, but he gave me his address. So we tried by one day and he is like a visiting scholar from HeNan and lives with his wife and daughter who is about Kindergarten age. He had studied the Bible before and actually visited Jerusalem, but didn't really know too much. So we gave him a Book of Mormon and asked if we could come back and teach him about it because he was about to eat a meal. Wooohooo! We're seeing him on Saturday, hopefully we can bring the power. Elder DiPeri always uses the phrase that people stand no chance if we teach correctly hahaha.
Then the other really great part of the week was actually this morning. We went with a member called Brother Holden with some other missionaries to the Lancaster castle. It is really old, maybe 1090, and was built originally to keep the Scottish from invading. Brother Holden is a postman and listens to podcasts and such all the time so we just picked his brain with questions of British history. We got a tour guide for the castle and learned loads. It's been used largely as a prison and courtroom for the last 200 years and had all these old cells and shackles and shields on the walls and everything just like you'd imagine. Really interesting, I just kept thinking of the Apostasy.
Oh yeah and we saw another amazing place this week! There is a little town south of Morecambe called Heysham and we were tracting there and took a walk kind of near the seashore where there is a really old chapel. I can't remember exactly, but I think someone said it might be the oldest in England. It's called after St. Patrick and looks over the ocean and has all these little ruins and tombs and gardens. This week was amazing for some of these sites!
But I love you all and that's about it. Aside from the external beauties of this area and my mission I am really growing in learning how to handle the stresses of a mission. The adversary is always working against us and I'm afraid he does more damage than we sometimes realize if we're not always careful. But I truly have learned of a God here who loves us and delivers in miracles. He is watchful and never forgets us, and there is greater power in this Gospel than anything our silly world can throw at us. I am learning of the mission of Jesus Christ to all people and how He really does require everything of us, but nothing has ever been so worth it. I hope included in your goals for this New Year is something to help you better know Him.
Sincerely,
Elder Webb
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