Christmas/ Boxing Day

I'm getting transferred this week so don't send me any letters to my address, just the mission office. I'm glad you gave me the pictures of my family and Midnight in the book thingy. I showed that to some investigators last night and it really helped them to see that I'm pretty much a normal person. 

Well, anyways, Christmas was good. I watched Indiana Jones on Christmas with some members, and then we went over to some Hungarians and they had a party and played gypsy music. So that was pretty good. It was really funny to watch one of our Hungarian members dance. He's really good, and he's pretty old. He has a son in his twenties. 

On boxing day we went to the chapel in Oldham with some other missionaries and I played a lot of the music you sent me. That was really good.

So anyways, happy new year. Bye!

Elder Ferguson

Christmas Skype Instructions to family

Do I email you 5 am on Monday? I will be emailing about 6.30 pm or something like that, so it will be somewhere around noonish. The ward member's address thingy is _______

You can call it if you want, he'll probably get who it is. Or I think you can even send him a chat message or something. I will tell him your name thingy today too. Just remember that if you call him in the evening it will be the middle of the night here. I guess I'll just call you on Christmas. You should make a list of things to talk about too, because I don't really want to spend too much time thinking about calling home. It's not really an effective use of time, and I will probably just run out of things to say faster if I have a checklist. Bye!

Ward Christmas Party / Every nation kindred, tongue, and people.

(Everything written in pink is from me - Amy, his mom)
I had asked him if he's got his Christmas package from us.  He responded:

I probably won't get it until January because it will go to the mission office and we don't get stuff from there until we have a zone meeting and our next zone meeting is in January.

Did someone send you the picture of me playing my trumpet at The Ward Christmas Party?  

(Yes, and they're on the blog now.)

I had told him about our ward Christmas party and teased him that he probably couldn't jet out of there as soon as he was done eating, like he was use to at home, in his new ward on his mission, from their Ward Christmas party.  

 I actually did leave it early because it was late at night and they started playing dodgy music, so hah. 

I will probably Skype you from a member's house around the middle of the day sometime. Like one o'clockish or something. I'm only allowed to Skype with my family members, so don't let anyone else over on Christmas cause they aren't allowed to see me. What is your Skype address thingy? 

This week was good. We taught a lot of people. We are teaching a Romanian family too now, and we have a Latvian potential investigator and a Polish potential investigator. And we have a Nigerian family we're teaching, so that's pretty fun. We had about 12 Hungarians show up to The Ward Christmas Party on Friday. That was really funny. The ward members didn't know what to do about it. 

Well, Bye!

Elder Ferguson

More from Mom- 

After reading this last part of his letter I kept thinking of a phrase that kept coming to my mind.  I looked it up.  In the Book of Mormon, Alma the prophet is entrusting the records (which is now the Book of Mormon) to his son Helaman, and He said of the records, 

"They should be kept and handed down from one generation to another… until they should go forth unto every nation kindred, tongue, and people."   

It sure sounds like that is happening.  I never even heard of Latvia!  I had to look it up.I googled and found out that the Book of Mormon is printed in 91 languages, if Wikipedia is right.  I couldn't find it on the LDS website. 

I can't wait to talk to him at Christmas and ask a few more details.  

Ward Christmas Party

I got an email from his ward mission leader. 

This is from their Ward Christmas Party.

 He's looking pretty happy.  

Look what the ward mission leader found for him.  

I think I see a smile under that trumpet.

-Amy

Christmas at the Mission home / Learning to speak Hungarian…

Wow, so yesterday we went to the mission home for Christmas dinner and stuff, and it was really good. Sister Preston played the video of my solo that I guess you sent them the link to. Or maybe my ward mission leader forwarded it. 

It must have been the ward mission leader.  It wasn't me. - Amy

Oh well, I don't have a lot of time to email today, but I think there were a lot of things I was going to tell you… :/

I forgot what they were.

Oh, we are teaching like twenty people who are Hungarian. I am learning a lot of Hungarian now. My ward mission leader probably told you all about it already. He thought it was really funny. XD

We're also teaching a Romanian family. Right now Elder H is using google translate to learn the baptismal interview questions in Hungarian. It's pretty exciting. We may start baptizing them this month. 

We went caroling at an old person's home on Sunday and I played the piano. That was nice.

I think there was still more I was going to tell you, but I don't remember what it was. Oh well, maybe I will write you a letter if I remember.

Bye!

Elder Ferguson

I found the following pictures on his mission's facebook page.  (These ones are ones that have Ryan in it.)  I downloaded them and am posting them on here too.  Check out his smile!  He looks so happy.  If you want to see more of them you'll have to go to my facebook page.  These are the ones with Ryan in them. - Amy

Some real progress!

Ok, well this week was good. You know that you need to send a package to the mission office, not the mission home or my flat right? Cause that would be really bad.

I don't remember if I told you, but a week or two ago, Elder Teixiera came to our mission and we had a multi-zone conference with him. It was really good. He gave us a lot of good tips, and we've started to apply them. Yesterday we followed some advice to keep looking for people to teach in the same area as we have already found other people, so we started tracting a street we had an investigator on, and we found two families to teach, and both of them had small children, which our ward is definitely in need of. It was really exciting, especially because both families let us come in and teach them when we knocked on their doors. We have multiple appointments set up with both of them throughout the week now, and it should be really good. We have 17 lessons planned with investigators next week.

On Saturday, we also had a lesson with a lot of our Hungarian investigators. Four of the six there agreed to be baptized on December twenty-eighth. And the other two said that they would pray about it. So stuff is pretty exciting here. Yeah.

On Monday we are all going to go to the mission home to have a training and a Christmas Dinner with President and Sister Preston. So I will probably email on Tuesday next week. 

Bye!
Elder Ferguson

Ashton Zone - Zone Conference