Yay.. another email!

This week was pretty good.  We had twenty lessons, and yesterday we decided on a date for our investigator to be baptized.

On one day during the week, I forgot which, we went to the chapel to have a lesson with one of our investigators. He is usually really happy to see us and stuff, but this time he was pretty stressed. He has been having a hard time finding a place to live for himself and the girl he has been living with, who was living at her mom's temporarily. He had basically started loosing hope that he would ever find a place for them, but we talked to him about how he could be comforted by The Holy Ghost and showed him some nice Mormon Messages, and then we played and sang a song with him. His favorite hymn is 86, "How Great Thou Art" and we played it, and he sang, and then we did one verse really fast, and it actually cheered him up a lot. Then yesterday we were talking to him about baptism, again, and we gave him a scripture to read, and we were about to leave, and our fellow-shipper, who was baptized in March, said that he sort of procrastinated his baptism and he regretted it, and then David said that he wants to be baptized next month. Yay!

Someone just left for his mission in this ward, and his grandpa got called as the ward mission leader, and his mom got called as a ward missionary, and she's also been assigned to get us Tea Appointments (dinner appointments), so between the two, the ward has basically been turned around because they're both really assertive, but they're really nice, and basically made it sound like we're incapable of making meals for ourselves, which is not totally true, but now we have all of our dinners, and probably a little more than that planned out for the next two weeks.

And they've decided to start having weekly ward activities to build ward unity and to fellowship less-actives and investigators, and they want me to play jazz at them, so I'm fine with staying here for a long time... ;)

Yup. Bye!

Elder Ferguson

Update Pictures and another great letter!

     The bag we bought for him didn't last as you can see.

Ernie (Ryan's Dad) had written to him about the mosquito problems here in Bountiful.  He had told him about going to a park to try and fly his new airplane, but he never got to that day because a huge swarm of mosquitos were all around him and he just had to make a run for it back to the car.  

 There are no mosquitos in England. At all. 

We had a multi-zone conference this week, which is about half of the mission. It was fun. President Preston told me that my companion is probably going to leave next transfer because he's been here a while, and I'm probably going to stay one or two more because the ward still doesn't have a pianist, but I think it will probably just be one more unless I train because the ward members keep requesting to keep me, like they can tell him what to do. 

On Thursday we went tracting and we met someone who is a 24-year-old Roman Catholic, and he told us we could come by later and talk to him. We did, and we told him about The Book of Mormon, and he said he'd be really interested to read it. When we gave him one, he was really excited and he told us we could come back in a week and talk to him about it. So that was nice. Normally, most people just tell us to go away, and the only people who are willing to listen to us don't really seem to understand what we're talking about, but he seemed to get it, so that was nice.

(I asked him if there was anything he wanted or needed for Christmas)

For Christmas you can send me money on the card. :) I don't really think it's worth the money to actually send me something, I can just buy stuff with the money here. It would be nice to get some church movies or music or something. Or if you really wanted to send me something, you could probably order it on amazon and tell it to deliver it to the mission office. They can take it and give it to me, but it will still cost more than normal probably because of the way the postal system works and stuff.  

Elder Ferguson 

Update with pictures! - Nice and neat. (Oh good!)

Hi,

If you send me letters, it usually works best to send them by air mail or something like that. I don't think it costs any more, you just have to get a sticker or something. At least that's how it works here. 

My address is:

Flat 2, 8 Kingscliffe St.

Moston, Middleton

GT MAN

M9 4PG

United Kingdom

This week was good. I don't remember anything that exciting that happened. We had a lesson with someone this week after about two weeks of not seeing him. He has a really hard life, but he wants to believe that God can make things right, even if he doesn't think it's very fair that He would make things this way in the first place. Last time we had an appointment with him, we showed him the chapel, because he says he has a hard time trusting people and he doesn't want to go to church if there are a lot of people and he's never been there before. We showed him the baptismal font, and this week he said that ever since he saw the chapel, he's thought every day that he would like to be 'blessed in the water.' So hopefully, once he really understands what baptism is, he'll be ready to be baptized. So that was pretty exciting.

We had another investigator who has been living with another woman. They weren't in a relationship, but they lived together, and they didn't like each other enough to get married. It was really tough, because he couldn't kick her out into the street, but he wanted to be baptized as well, and he couldn't be until she had moved out. But this week, they fell out, and she left to her mom's house. They're figuring out a way for her to live on her own, but now our investigator can be baptized, so I guess there's still some good that can come out of it. He doesn't really want to settle for a date, he wants to 'take it slow' and all that, but hopefully soon he can be baptized. =)

I don't really have anything else to talk about, but here's something kind of funny I noticed reading Jesus the Christ yesterday. Jesus referred to himself as 'The Son of Man,' but Mary is not a man. And Joseph is not his father. So what is he saying? ;)

Bye!

Elder Ferguson

He also sent some fun pictures I'll share with you:

Below: I edited this pictures to take off the names for privacy sake, but where there is a black dot, there was a name beside it.  You get the picture.

A snail mail letter! (One of my favorites so far!)

Hi,

This week is transfer week.  P-day got moved to Wednesday because that is the day people are transferred.  My companion and I are both staying so we got to go to the temple this morning, but we were there for a long time so I don't have a lot of time to write this letter.

We had  a fireside on Sunday for missionaries.  We brought investigators and recent converts and some of them bore their testimonies.  We have a couple we are teaching right now.  They are both progressing fairly well, but they are living together although they are not in a relationship.  They can't get baptized until they live apart, which they are working on.  Anyways.. The guy said he wanted to come to the fireside, but the girl wasn't interested.  She changed her mind right before we left but there wasn't any room in the car anyway, so we left her.

Then we saw them on Monday and the first thing she said when we walked in the door was that she prayed and she read the Book of Mormon and she got an answer.  I guess she read while we were gone and she felt the spirit really strongly.  She had been having a hard time accepting it at first, although the guy sort of took what we said as the truth straight off.  It was really great to see her testimony grow.  Then she was willing to pray and read, which she hadn't ever done before.  It was really good.

We did service for an old lady yesterday.  She is 88 and has been in the hospital for 2 years.  She just got out a few weeks ago.  She's been robbed several times probably because her garden is so overgrown, it looks like no one lives there.  We came and basically cut up her hedges for a couple of hours so it looked clean.  Then she made us some bacon sandwiches.  She almost burned her house down because she turned on the wrong burner and lit her kettle (electric kettle) on fire instead of cooking the bacon.  She apologized to us, like she had somehow inconvenienced us.  It was kinda funny, and it felt really good to help her.  She was really grateful.

Elder Ferguson

An email update

Today is a normal p-day again. I shouldn't be off schedule till next transfer from now on. So that's good.

This week was pretty good. This Sunday there were special stake conferences all over England. Two Members of the Quorum of the Twelve spoke, but we just got an area seventy, Elder Teshera or something like that. It was really good. They talked a lot about eternal families, which was a little weird for me cause I'm a missionary and that's kinda the last thing on my mind right now, but it was good. They also said that there are going to be quite a few new stakes in the next little while in the Europe North area. But none of them are in the UK, so it's not that exciting. I was hoping that when Elder Nelson and Elder Holland came, they were going to split our mission, but they didn't. Oh well, I think we're still doing pretty good here. Elder Teshera did say that there would be a lot of new stakes here in the future. We do have the smallest stake/ward boundaries anywhere outside of the states in Chorley. So that's pretty cool. The Chorley stake is right next to my stake, Ashton. So yeah, cool stuff...

We visited a family last night that was from Hungary, and we brought a Hungarian man from our ward, and the family let us in, and then the man we brought, started talking with them, and he basically talked for a half hour straight, and we only know what he said because his twelve year old son was translating little bits in English. It was kinda sad, but we showed them the restoration video in Hungarian, and they seemed like they felt the spirit. They said we could come back on Saturday. So we got four new investigators all at once, and we hardly said a word ourselves... XD

Bye!

Elder Ferguson

A Letter in the mail! Yay!

(I typed out his letter) - Amy

Hi,

This week was good.  I don't really remember what happened on Tuesday, but I'm sure it was great.  Wednesday we went on a tour of some historical church sites.  We went to Liverpool, which is a port where a lot of saints emigrated to America.  They said there was a time when there were more members of the church in England than in America.  There was also a museum there, and it had some stuff about the pioneers.  It also talked about taxes, which was really interesting.  I sent you a few pictures of the exhibits.  Some are kind of funny.  A lot of people are on welfare here...

We also went somewhere else.  I forgot where, but we saw the river the first baptisms in England happened in.  It was pretty cool.  There was a chapel there that we had a meeting in talking about church history.  I don't remember if I said, but I was asked to be a part of the musical number for it, playing piano.  There wasn't a piano in the chapel though, only an organ.  I don't actually know how to play the organ, but I told them it was fine.  I was just supposed to accompany them anyways, so once we had finished talking over what we were going to do right before the meeting and people stopped watching me, I started freaking out.  I don't know how to play the organ.  Then I said a prayer, and I felt ok about it.  Then we couldn't find the organ so we just sang a cappella.  Anyways... Yay! :)

I went on an exchange with one of the other missionaries on Thursday.  He was from Ecuador, I actually ended up doing more talking than him.  That was weird.  I have a Spanish Book of Mormon, so I think I might just learn Spanish just cause I need something to do in my free time...

We also went to the temple today.  It was a little different than I've experienced before, but it was good. ;)

Yesterday, my companion and I did the conversion for Petrol (Gas) prices, and I guess it's about $8/gallon here...but the cars get way better mileage.

Bye,

Elder Ferguson

                                            I think Ryan is in the back in the middle right side with the blue tie.

I also got an email that came this morning.  It reads:

P-day got moved to Wednesday because of transfers this week. I still don't have much time though, so I'll send you a letter, but I have one story I already typed for Adam, so I'll copy that one here. Also, could you send me some money? my Side bag has already fallen apart. It wasn't very good, so I need to buy a new one... :/

I met a man on the bus on Monday, and this is what happened.


Man: Are you a mormon?
Me: Yes! (yayayayayay! he wants to know about the church!)
Man: Can I ask you a question?
Me: yes. (of course)
Man: What does God look like?
Me: A man. (So far so good. :) )
Man: You should have checked first. You just follow man.
Me: What?
Man: When you put your shoes on in the morning, do you check to see if your toes are attached first?
Me: (oh no...) Uh, no. I actually already know they're there...
Man: Yeah, that's flesh, so that means you believe in man.
Me. -
Man: You have to check first- do you know what the difference is between a mind and a brain is?
Me: (well this is awkward...) Well, I guess it -
Man: Let me give you a hint, what does a brain run on?
Me: Uh, oxygen...?
Man: Let me give you a hint! What is the difference between a dog, what does a dog's brain run on?
Me: uh...
Man: A dog's brain runs on instinct, and....

Then I got off the bus. The end. :)

Church History Tour

We didn't get an email this week.... at least as of 7:33 am our time 2:33pm his time.  However I have something to share anyway!  I found this on facebook this morning.  Someone posted a picture from their Church History Tour.  I found Ryan.  (With a short haircut!) (I wonder what he thinks of that haircut)  He's standing on the bridge.  He's kind of in the middle of this picture.  I zoomed in on the photo so we could find him and then took a screen shot of the zoomed in part for you.  ;)