We have a picture of my first day just before entering the MTC and a picture of me 7 months out and back with Elder Peterson. So much change, it's unbelievable! Oh and Shout out to the Lowrys in St. Helens!
This week has been incredible, if you could get missionaries who were ever too busy, it would be us, being busy is a good thing! This week has just flown by and I can't believe I'm e-mailing you all today already. So we start the week with a Zone Leader exchange, Elder Peterson goes to Liverpool for a bit because he has to keep up his Chinese and Liverpool is a Chinese speaking missionary area. We mostly find on Tuesday, I can empathise with those people stopping you on the High Streets for Charities and such, it is a noble cause trying to speak to people to tell them about the wonderful message you share. Some messages are more important than others, but it takes a great deal of courage to talk to them, and that is what we did for a whole day.
One of the greatest feelings as a missionary is coming home tired, knowing that you have achieved a great deal, I love coming home in the evening tired, I wouldn't have it any other way. One question members ask missionaries the most is: how do you manage to go to sleep at 10:30pm, well I'll tell you... when you are that tired, your bed becomes salvation! until 6:30am. You could say, the only personal time missionaries get is those 7-8 hours of peace and quiet. We managed to even teach a wonderful investigator on Tuesday evening, such great times!
Miracles always happen in St. Helens, so we found a couple this week, we live near a Cineworld (a Cinema) in St. Helens and some of the best places to talk to people are along those busy roads, however alot of the times where there are busy roads there are busy people so we look for the prepared people who are willing to stop. I love getting in the mindset of "ok Elder we have an hour to talk to people, lets go teach a lesson" I don't like finding people for the whole hour, I enjoy when I have that expectation and we end up teaching someone then, we taught a new Investigator called Danny in front of the Cinema, it was great, his grandparents had just passed on, and the Lord just loves preparing peope for us to teach. We taught danny again the following day, he is just a miracle and now he is going to progress to Baptism. The power of setting aside an hour to find people a day and expecting to teach.
We met as the Liverpool Zone (all the missionaries in one Stake) on Friday, it was the best, we learn and grow off of each other as missionaries, and I even saw my trainer Elder Misbach. He really has grown and it feels great to talk to the Missionary who trained you how to do things and it feels great for him to see how much I've changed. I love how missionary work works!
So on Saturday we went to a Chinese activity where we had over 60 Chinese people attend, investigators, recent converts, members. We met at the Preston Temple site in Chorley, it was great we interacted with all the Chinese people and I even used the Chinese I had learn't (I also got to wear my Chinese missionary badge, shown in Picture 2) we celebrated Chinese new year with them, it was of epic grandeur (the ensign material, methinks) I got to use alot of my chinese I had learnt and well people were convinced I was Chinese.
Funny Story: A Chinese man approaches me speaking Chinese, he hands me his Camera and gets into a pose with his friends, so I suppose he wants me to take a Picture of him and his friends, so I did so, I didn't speak a word... it was funny to see that people were really convinced that I was Chinese. Gift of Tongues.
This Sunday was great we were privilaged to see a Baptism, we had some visitors from Rochdale, so it made me feel at home, a less- active we have been working with also came to Church and Elder Fielder was there aswell...
Miracles happening in St. Helens! What a wonderful time it is to be a missionary!
Love,
Elder Sapaden
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