England is great. Elder Ramos is fantastic and hilarious. . .

This week is a bit slow for dinner appointments and I saw
this at Lidl this morning and couldn't resist.
Pictures of the final product hopefully next week!
Next week Reindeer.

Dear Everyone,

I can never think of a good subject for these general email/blog entries so sorry if it's repetitive or boring.

England is great. My companion, Elder Ramos (correction on the pronunciation: RAY-moss) is fantastic and hilarious. Missionary work is moving forward. I'm learning a tonne. Life is good. The weather is dreadful. The Book of Mormon is true. Jesus Christ Lives.

What more is there to say?

We've had a bunch of really great experiences this past week which have taught me a lot about trusting in the Lord and doing his work his way. I'd gotten into a bad habit lately of inviting people to be baptised "softly" i.e. "when you learn that these things are true, will you be baptised." However, that method hasn't been working very well because it's really hard to get people to really commit or see what they need to do to find out if it's true and why that's so important. This causes Investigators to not really make or keep the commitments that will help them build their faith in Jesus Christ. However, if they are invited boldly on the first or second visit (basically, as soon as possible) and given a date to prepare for, they are much more willing and able to accept and keep the commitments that will help them learn of the truth of the Restoration of the Gospel and the importance of their learning and living it to be temporally and eternally happy. We saw this with an Investigator this week who I will call "Frances" (which is the real name of a lady we met one day who told us that Frances is for a woman and Francis is for a man). We met Frances on the street and she has been to the church before when she was very young with her Auntie. She invited us to come and teach her so we did. On our second visit (not the first one, unfortunately, because of a situation which I won't elaborate on), we asked simply "'Frances,' will you follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptised on December 7th?" She said of course and was at church a few days later telling people that she was being baptised soon. She was reading the Book of Mormon on the train and someone asked (in a bit of a hostile manner) what it was and why she was reading it. She explained and felt the spirit as she did so. She feels the spirit strongly when we come to visit and really wants to learn and have that feeling always. She is wonderful. There are a lot of hurdles to clear before December 7th though so please pray for her even if you don't know her real name. It's also wonderful for us as missionaries because we are learning and growing and as we do so, the Lord is using us more and more. I have so much more to learn though. It's great to see the Lord preparing us slowly and surely to do his work the way he wants and needs it done.

Also, this week, I was prompted that I need to pray for people individually and by name a lot more. I realised, it would be hard to remember everyone I needed to pray for so I wrote a list. It ended up being quite a long list. It's quite a lot to pray for. Already though, I'm seeing that the Lord gives specific answers to specific prayers. It's wonderful and it's much easier to see the answers to prayers when you ask for specific things.

I love you all loads! I'm enjoying missionary work and everything. I hope everything is going well and things are wonderful!

Elder Houghton