Weekly Update 25 February 2013

Hello!

 

I've had the time of my life this week. It was fairly fun, yet again we have been running, driving, travelling like crazy people. It is a good feeling to be busy, I'm sure it isn't good for you to be as busy as we are and the stress it causes, perhaps compared to your lives it isn't stressful at all but I would say our average moving speed is above 30 miles per hour. This week we even went as far as Blackpool, hence the title. It is the Vegas of England and people definately need the gospel over there. It seemed to be a good place. We have driven about 1600 miles from the beggining of this month, this is a relatively calm month. We would higher with our mileage this month but we have been smarter and more tight with what we do.

 

My companion Elder Webster doesn't have his licence yet, so there have been weeks from Tuesday - Saturday he has been away from Runcorn and I've been with different missionaries. Sometime people wonder why we have such a great companionship, my simple reply is that we never seem to see each other. We have been from Manchester - Blackpool - Northern Wales this week. We seems to be spread far. Although a lot of miracles have taken place in Runcorn pretty recently. We taught just under 30 lessons this week and the area seems to be very alive. I love the members here they are just great and seem to be so understanding. I feel a little guilt when they have the desire to feed us everyday and at times we are just too busy to be fed. Carnally, my mind tells me "Elder Sapaden... are you really saying no to food? That's really unlike you" Members have been good and they have even dropped off food for us when we only have a few minutes to eat instead of a usual hour. If I could describe in a sentence what I learnt form experience this week I would say: Consecration is the only surrender which is also a victory. Really think about that one. The gospel isn't about sacrafice, the gospel is sacrafice, hence... the Atonement isn't part of the gospel. It is the Gospel.

 

I had an time to do some service this week, a part of me seems to crave just hard physical labour. We did some gardening, not a usual favourite passion/ hobby of mine before my mission but it definately is rewarding. The ward is calling more and more ward missionaries and my vision is to have a very serious missionary ward where perhaps even if they did lose missionaries they would be fine because the ward are finding and teaching non- members on their own. I feel way old as a missionary, I'm not counting down or counting my days on my mission because of want for home or anything of that sort, but I hit my 20 month mark yesterday and I feel quite old in the mission field, but it really does seem to fly by quite fast. It is such a great time to be a missionary.

 

With Love,

 

Elder Sapaden