A Missionary in England: Finding & Castles & Such!

Elders Smart & Houghton
on Preparation-Day at Warwick Castle.
Luke promises he is not a drunkard, really!

Letter from 27 August 2013

Dear Everyone,

Before the computer times out, I'll explain that yesterday was a bank holiday so we got to email today. We had our District Meeting in Coventry today as well and because we were a bit late to the train, we had to lock our bikes up at the Coventry station instead of the Leamington station. Coventry is a bit rougher of a town and the bike storage areas are outside the actual station. Anyway, when we got back from District meeting to head home, both of our bikes had the cables cut away. Fortunately, the cable on mine was only attaching the front wheel to the D lock and nothing was stolen (except my cable is now in two useless pieces). Elder Smart's however was cut in half and his bike (which was pretty nice) and helmet had vanished. So we now may not have time to make it to the other library for long to finish emailing.

A whole new meaning to the Armour of God.
I almost got my head stuck in there.

Anyway, this week has been wonderful! We have figured out finding a bit and now have lots of work to do which is awesome! Our Zone Leaders and District Leader helped out a lot and now we just have to go and get to work. It's awesome! Unfortunately, we may be slowed down quite a bit now by having only one bike for two people (the maths don't work well for that).

We've had a number of amazing miracles this week. On Sunday, we had decided to tally up our numbers for call-in reporting at the park instead of heading home (so we'd have more time to do some finding (because finding is actually not just drudgery now!) before dark). We were sitting there and all of a sudden, this Indian man walks up and asks what we are doing. We explain that we are missionaries. He tells us that he wants to do missionary work with us on the weekends. We tell him he has to learn what we're teaching first. We met him last night and committed him to be baptised on the 14 of September. I don't know how much of what we taught him he really understands as he has no religious background and it was in a park. We shall see tonight though as we've arranged to teach him at a member's home. It's crazy because this could actually happen. Admittedly, I did think he might have been high the first time we talked to him but we shall see tonight.

Other than that, we have a lot of real investigators and people to teach. It's wonderful. Many of them are just the first lesson so they may not be particularly fruitful but we shall see. It's amazing and wonderful to actually have missionary work to do! I'm loving it.

A picture of the huge Rim Fire at home in CA.
We're ok though!

Fires at home sound really scary. I hope everyone is safe. I hadn't heard much about anything there other than that there were big fires in California but that there always are so there was no need to worry. Tuolumne County people will definitely be in my prayers.

I love and miss you lots, sorry this email is crazy,

Elder Houghton