Tuesday 21 January 2014

Merry January. . .Books of Mormon in Tegrina and Persian!

From 13 January 2014
Selections from the Book of Mormon are available in Persian!

Hello Everyone,
This week has been pretty decent. It's been tough and things aren't easy but that's okay as we're learning a lot. Our teaching pool just keeps shuffling as we drop and get dropped by flaky and uncommunicative people. We're learning to adapt though. Also, we have a Muslim investigator who has read all of 1 Nephi since we met him 1.5 weeks ago and wants to read the whole Book of Mormon before we get in depth discussing things. We just have to trust in the converting and convincing power of the Book of Mormon because I don't think I'll ever be able to convince anyone that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world (which is the main sticking point with Muslims of course). So, that's a pretty great accomplishment (crazy thing, he just walked into the library and shook our hands. He's great. His name is I and he's from Eritrea. He's an Asylum seeker. That's actually pretty cool and crazy that I teach Muslim Asylum seekers (he's not the first)). Also, I've officially added Russian to the list of languages that we have taught people in (with translators of some kind or another). AND, we added Sri Lanka to the list of places we've met and/or taught people from. This list is quite long and exhaustive but there hasn't been much change as we've plateaued in Coventry having met people from most of the ethnic groups. Also, weird thing is that you can tell Iranians apart politically by whether they identify themselves as Iranian or Persian... A "Persian" guy lives in I's house and we met him the other day. Now working on getting Copies of the Books of Mormons (my hybrid for the plural of "Book of Mormon" as people argue for "Book of Mormons," "Books of Mormon," or "Copies of the Book of Mormon") in Tegrina (language of Eritrea) and Persian...
Transfers are rapidly approaching. Today is the day that training calls usually come out. Anything could happen with the upcoming transfers. Really anything. We'll find out next Monday night. For the next week I'm still in Coventry C with Elder DeHaan and I guess that's what matters for the present moment.
Sorry this email is so short and pictures are scarce. We'll work on getting one of me driving the world's fastest car--may have to settle for standing next to it--for next week. Thanks for all the prayers and support. I'm learning a lot and growing. The Lord has especially taught me this week that often, we don't have total control of how we feel the His love but we do have a lot of control over feeling His love by being a conduit and representative of Him to others. That was a great help to me. We really are happiest when we are serving and loving others. Now the trick is doing it!
I love you all a lot. England is great. I'm learning a lot and I'm changing a lot. Heavenly Father is really blessing us and there are many miracles.
Elder Houghton

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