ONE MONTH OLD! and two days.

All settled in! I wonder what colour shirt he'll wear tomorrow?

Will's comments are black, and mine are blue! 

My missionary is officially one month old! I cannot believe it has been so long! Sometimes it feels like he's been gone forever and sometimes if feels as though he just left. I still vacillate between excitement for him, and selfish sadness. It is getting easier though. I'm getting used to the idea of Will being gone, but this week Morgan sat in Will's favorite spot on the couch, beside the phone charger and with her feet up just like he always sat. If Will was home, he was sitting there! Or sleeping there! Anyhow, I walked into the room and for a split second thought in amazement and excitement "Will! " only to realize that I was wrong. My stomach turned upside-down and I choked on the reality of his absence. A few deep breaths and I'm good! For the most part, I'm positive and excited for him, and waiting for his next letter. 


ONE MONTH OLD! and two days.

So to start off I wanna talk about some of the weird things over here: The mowers, weed-wackers and everything else that has to do with yard work is all electrical. Really long extension cords and the lawn mowers look kinda like big vacuums.

strange outlets

The electrical outlets here have twice as strong of a current, and all have an individual on and off switch beside the outlet. All the cereals have different names even if its the same kind as back home (Frosted Flakes are Frosties here). 

This is called "Squash"

Oh, I don't know if its all of my pants, but its definitely some of them, but the color of the pants is rubbing off on my shirts. Really annoying, Ive been putting some bleach on the stains and throwing them in the wash, it looks a lot better but still color marks. :/ I should have got more short sleeves than long, my companion prefers short and we are supposed to match.

We have a total of two investigators right now, one I asked to be baptized and he said yes (YAY), but both me and my companion are a little hesitant on how dedicated he is to being baptized. He has both a drinking and smoking problem. The other had a baptism date set 4 years ago, but ran away the day before and turned off his phone. So we are working really slowly with him to help him understand everything we teach. He actually walked into church for the first time in years on our first Sunday here. Miracle/blessing. We teach him every Monday at a members house.

Slithering down from the top bunk!

 I sleep on the top bunk of a bunk bed, every morning at 6:30 we have companion prayer then personal prayer. Elder Oakey says I "slither down" onto my knees. haha. 

Double Decker!

The Keighlys' are really nice, they apparently get along very well with the Elders, and they have invited us for dinner every week and at one point twice. Their boys are inactive, two are in their twenties and out of the house, two more are 14 and 16 and have decided not to go, and then they have two little kids, one boy and girl who don't really have a choice because of their age. It's nice to see some people with such strong faith even when they're in a terrible place, it helps us remember the blessings we have.

We are trying to get permission to play football on Saturdays, because there are a lot of less-actives and non-members there. I really wanna go. Over here practically everyone smokes. There are some of the youngest kids smoking here, like 12-14, or at least that's how old they look. But everyone does, and all the girls dress really skimpy, from 10 and up. It's pretty sad. 

The Flat

The top two windows are ours. We live on the top floor but our door is the far one on the left. As soon as you go in the door you have to go upstairs.

One thing I miss is having a fully stocked fridge!

It's good to hear the kids are becoming little fish, great skill to have, I wish I could go swimming right now. I've actually been working out with my companion everyday for the 30min we are allowed, he says he's lost a ton of muscle so he wants to gain it back. We have a bench press in the flat so we are taking advantage. 

One thing I'm really happy about over here, there are no mosquitos and it still hasn't rained that much, but everyone keeps telling me to wait until winter. That's another thing, it gets hot here, but not hot enough that i need a fan, the temperature doesn't fluctuate to much which is nice.

Apparently all the other missions only get two hours for emailing because they have to go to a library to use them, but we get to use the ones here at the church because we are so close to it. So after I'm done training I probably wont have time to send as much detail or answer all the questions. But I get trained for two transfers which is about three months.

OH, I got the package, thank you. I was confused by the seeds at first. 
Sending the apricot seeds were dad's idea! We wanted to make you laugh! 
I thought it might have been, he did say he'd save me some apricots. Ha Ha!

Talk to you in a week, Love you

Castles and Medieval Stocks?

 This week Elder Young sent us some great pictures taken in Wales! 

Clock tower in Wales

Will's letter is in black, and my comments are blue!

Hi Everyone! 

Its good to hear everyone is having fun outside, my farmer's tan is gonna stick, just you wait. 

I (Will's mom) sent this pic to Will after he wrote about hay-fever last week! I asked if /i should find one on amazon.co.uk and send it to him!

HAHA You should get one for my companion too, both of us have hay fever. It guarantees that I'll always be able to blow my nose, it's PERFECT. Umm, speaking of carrots, (I wrote and told him that I cooked half the amount as when he was here, but we still had leftovers. we never had leftover carrots before!) I need to buy some... it's been too long. I'm planning on getting a bunch of fruit too. I'm trying not to buy junk food, and be as healthy as possible with easy foods, but im not the one who cooks, I just clean the dishes after. YESSS! I am missing coming home to food filled fridges and having all that variety. Sounds like its a blast back home, but Morgan's email takes the cake for making me laugh!

I'm learning lots, like what to say when starting a random conversation with someone and how fast we need to say it, as well as learning more and more about the gospel. I'm trying to strengthen my faith right now, I've been studying faith and hope in the Preach My Gospel book and learning ways to strengthen my own faith and how you need hope before you can have faith. Right now we are trying to find investigators because we don't know where the last missionaries left off (not the best missionaries), so we have to find new investigators because the ones they were teaching don't have an address or phone number written down. UGH! So I need stronger faith of receiving miracles to receive those miracles.

Those are some well maintained Stocks!

It has only rained a couple days on me while being out. One day we were late at getting back to the flat, and ended up getting a little lost. Mainly my companion was lost because I knew where to go, but he didn't trust me because we got lost earlier in the day too. We got rained on really bad, and got to the flat late. Earlier that day we were looking for the train station in the morning, to make it to a missionary meeting to say goodbye to President and Sister Preston, and we got lost on the way there and missed our train by 5ish minutes. So we were late for the meeting needless to say. The other time we got rained on wasn't even that bad. It was more of a drizzle and then we got picked up for an appointment right before it started to come down hard.

Castle walls

Oh, and there are a lot of people here that think we are Jehovah's Witnesses, they like to yell things at us while they drive by. The members here are super nice though, the church is about half the size of ours and doesn't have a gym and just one hoop. There aren't that many members but for how many there are we get tons of dinner appointments which is always awesome. I'm also learning to be cautious with money, spending wise. 

Elder Young, center

On Saturday, I saw "Meet the Mormons" its a British documentary about an elder's experience getting ready for his mission and then going on it for a couple weeks. It portrayed us as strange creatures like on animal planet or things like that, it actually bugged me a little. It might be on youtube if you want to see it.

So, that's it from Elder Young! Once again, I can't wait until next week's update! I have to write down all the funny things that happen here to be sure of an interesting email! I may or may not watch "Meet the Mormons"...though now I must admit my curiosity is growing!