Week 83 - March 5, 2018

Beast from the East!

This week was cold! ❄ A huge storm hit the U.K. and really slowed the work down for us, but we still saw some miracles!

Tuesday:  Today was Scotland South, Elder Pelham and I gave 2 instructions on utilizing the Book of Mormon in our finding, as well as giving Jesus Christ's voice in our teachings!  That took of a majority of the day.  

On our way home, it was getting pretty snowy outside, and we let Elder Swenson drive.  He slipped, and our car is a bit unaligned.. aha . Whoops. should be getting it fixed tonight! 

Wednesday:  We drove over to the church in the morning and had our interviews with President.  It was well.  I love him so much.  We talked about my focuses for these last few months of my mission and what he needs me to do! Afterwards, we planned on helping getting missionaries back and forth from the church, but the blizzard started picking up and he said to cancel it and make sure missionaries don't get stuck out there!  We drove back to our flat and the storm hit pretty bad.  We were stuck in the flat the entire rest of the day.. I have never seen a storm that bad! 

Thursday:  Today was just as bad with the weather, but we tried to get out!  All the mission cars were grounded, but we walked over and got a subway to the west side of the city and towards the church.  By this point, the storm was getting well bad, so we went into the church and worked on a new plan President has for Sundays.  Elder Swenson and Huang came over and we all just chilled in the church waiting for the storm to pass.  There was a One-Pound pizza left in the fridge and so we decided to throw it in the oven.  We forgot about it, and an hour later we go running into the kitchen, smoke is everywhere and well, we trashed that pizza haha.  

We realized that the subway was shut down because of how bad the weather was, so we went with Elder Swenson and Huang to sleep over.  On our way back, these people from across the street started to have a snowball fight with us.  It was fun, and then these uni kids in their room a few stories up opened the window and started throwing snowballs, too!  We threw some up into their flat and hit the people across the street haha.

Friday:  The weather was pretty rubbish still, but we got up and over to the subway and trekked back to our flat.  We got showered and headed back over into the west end to see Sophia.  We had lunch and then talked to her more about baptism, and I asked her, "What is holding you back from being baptized?" and she said, "Nothing!" :O  So Elder Pelham and I did the movie reaction where we just both look at each-other and smile hahhah.  She will be getting baptized this Thursday!  We walked over to the church with her and she had her interview and passed. Afterwards, the snow began to pick up again so we went and had dinner with the STL's, GQ'd, and headed home.

Saturday:  Finally, the weather was clearing up a bit so we could drive around.  We ended up GQ'ing most of the day, and in the evening we met with RC Joe who had just been to the temple.  He is a legend.  He reminds me a lot of Elder Wang, which makes me miss him!

Sunday:  Well, this was a first, our church service was cancelled due to the Weather?!  Yikes!  None of our friends could come to church.  We decided to dedicate some time to finding a family.  President's new theme is that on Sundays all missionaries will go out to smaller towns in their areas and work with part members, less actives, and hopefully find some new families to share the gospel with!  We found out where a really cool French family is, so we will hopefully meet them this week.  In the evening, we had another cool experience.  We were able to get in contact with Rafael who disappeared and wasn't answering his calls.  His grandmother had passed away on Monday, and he really just shut down.  We had a powerful lesson on the Plan of Salvation and about baptism.  He committed to being baptized this Saturday and be that example for his family, as well as help them do their own temple work one day. Miracles!! 

So the week was a bit slower, but we still had a lot of success and miracles.  This week, we should be on a few exchanges and we are hoping to find more friends to teach leading into the transfer ahead.  Please pray for Rafael and Sophia at this time as they progress towards Heavenly Father through the covenant of baptism!  I love you all!  Have a great week!

Elder Copeland