Ups & Downs

Hello everyone,

    This week was full of its ups and downs. The week started great, we had tons of service and meeting new people. The days were flying by and it felt like we were making some progress. We made a new friend... Carlos. Carlos is the first new friend in Meltham for over a year now and he seems great. He has a lot of background in Christianity and loves the Bible. We told him about the book of Mormon and he found the app and downloaded it on his phone. He says he's a little confused but we will have a lesson about it this week. 

    We also have loads of other potential new friends. We posted a service advertisement on a Facebook group and it is getting really big. We have even been referred to some groups so that's great. Just means that we have even more people to teach. 

    This last Thursday, we had exchanges with the zone leaders. It was really fun! They are great Elders. One of our favorite things to do is to go outside to find in unconventional ways. For those of you who don't know, missionaries don't knock on doors anymore. At least we don't here in England. (I don't know how it is for everybody else.) So we have to find different ways to contact people. We like to go on hikes and footpaths. Obviously we do service, but this week with the zone leaders we tried sports finding. We went to the local park and set up our spikeball net. We played loads of games and the games got heated. We were unable to find anybody who was interested but the most important thing was that we were able to be out and talk to people. Just helps them get to know us better. That we are normal people and not robotic salesmen. 

    The week went crashing down all in one day. Saturday was a rainy grim day and it felt like it was ages long. Carlos, our new friend told us he couldn't come to church., and also the members we were going to have a member lesson with canceled. It was just a really long day and made us feel like our progress was lost.  

    Overall the week was 8/10 but I think my mindset about being a missionary is more of a 4/10. I'm just trying to adapt to the change and get used to things. 

    I think if we see some progress this next week it might help. Or just if we keep busy like last week. 

                       -  Elder Asay