Reporting from... Aston 2nd Ward!

"I am so excited for this transfer! I am very sad to have left Shrewsbury, but I am excited to serve here in Ashton 2 – or Zion as I like to call it now! The last three transfers were a great opportunity to do a lot of learning and growing, and I will forever remember the things I learned there.  My new companion is Elder Lesueur from Arizona, USA. He is only 6 weeks old so I am follow-up training again. Elder Lesueur seems like a fantastic missionary! It’s fun to be follow-up training and doing 2 hours of Companion Study again! But let’s see… This last week was my last chance to give it my all in Shrewsbury, so we definitely did that!

First of all, two Mondays ago, during our p-day, Elder Debenham and I managed to find our incredible investigator, P., again! Hopefully the elders there wont lose contact with him again and will help him to be baptized. Later on that week we taught him about the 10 commandments and Keeping the Sabbath day holy. When we asked him if he would live it all, he said “Let me pray about it”. And then went on to promise God to keep – not try to keep – His commandments. I will remember P. forever!

 

 

I also passed my theory test! I felt so relieved after it. Like, seriously, I was getting a headache because I was so nervous! But it is all ok, and we might even have found an amazing Investigator, who used to be a Driving Instructor and spoke to us after pretending that he was going to run over us. Yes, I was scared when he kept moving his car onto our direction…
 

My favourite part of the week though, was applying what the Zone Leaders taught us at the Zone Meeting and receiving 12 referrals! I had never received that many referrals in the previous 8 months of my mission! It was incredible. Member work is so important, and the fact that Ashton 2 has a goal of receiving 400 referrals this year makes me excited! Member work is so important. I don’t think I had quite realised how much we could actually do to help members become more missionary minded, but now I know how to, and even found scriptural evidence to support it! “And now it came to pass that I, Enos, went about among the people of Nephi, prophesying of things to come, and testifying of the things which I had heard and seen. And I bear record that the people of Nephi did seek diligently to restore the Lamanites unto the true faith in God.” It was as Enos went about prophesying and testifying to the people of Nephi (or the people of the church) that the Nephites (or the people of the church) tried to restore the Lamanites to the knowledge of God.

 

 

When I look at Elder Lesueur I can kind of imagine myself at the end of my first transfer! At the moment he is slightly quiet when talking to people on the street, but so was I! And I am sure that if my mum saw me talking to people on the street as if I’d always known them she probably wouldn’t even recognize me! I love how much a mission helps us grow. I remember on my exchange with Elder Francis back in my first transfer, he told me that it is not so much that the mission changes us, it just magnifies the Christlike qualities already within us."