Moves

Dear Family,

Well six weeks are over and moves are coming on Wednesday. You probably won't believe this, but I will training a new missionary! I don't know who yet. What they do is that I fly there on Wednesday early in the morning and then we get some training to be trainers. Then the greenies arrive and we go and hike Pratt's Hill. Afterwards we come back and do some more instruction before we come to the time that we learn who are companions will be. During this time, President Griffiths calls the trainer up to explain a little bit about the area. Then he announces who he will be training. That person comes up, they embrace and go sit down. Then on Thursday I believe we take the ferry over to Ireland. That's always fun. You get to go through much of Scotland and then travel on a boat. This will give me a lot of time to get to know my new companion. So I won't know until Wednesday who is my "son" as we call him. Elder Ihalmo is being transferred to Galsgow somewhere. He's looking forward to that.

Anyways as far as things go. Jimmy has expressed that he wants to be baptized as soon as possible. So after talking with President Griffiths, he can be baptized in the middle of next month. Please keep him in your prayers as we want him to really make a concerted effort to live the word of wisdom and be baptized. He came to church on Sunday and quite enjoyed it. He told us that the night before that an old drinking friend of his invited him over to watch the football (soccer) match, but he prayed for strength and turned his friend down since he knew that there would be drinks there. So I feel that he is getting stronger and stronger to resist temptation that will really help him as he prepares himself to be baptized. Rakesh, the Indian man, is doing fine. He is striving to live the word of wisdom as well. He continues to make food for us-which i love eating every time I go over there. He is also feeling a lot better. We also starting teaching this guy named Paul, but when we went over there the second time, he wouldn't come to the door. However, we are excited to see some people this week. Today we are seeing a couple, Meg and Willy how were quite receptive to what we taught them on the street.

The only funny story that I have is that we were in a member's home and told them we did some gardening (yard work) for another member not too far away and the member asked what we did for them and Elder Ihalmo said, "We lawned their mow."

Other things that we did is that on Saturday we went over to a newly married couple's home. The husband is from Japan and the wife is from Bulgaria. They met each other at BYU-Hawaii. So he was here studying Conflict Resolution for his masters. Anyways, tomorrow they are moving to Japan and they need help in their garden. So we went over there with the other missionaries and learned that their entire back lawn needed to be ripped out. So we spent the next 2 hours using shovels to dig below the roots and pull it out. Also there, a bee nearly stung me, but I swatted it away. The only thing is really did was pierce my skin.

As far as less-actives are concerned, we are helping a few. One couple is nearly active now. Another, the wife is coming regularly, but the husband has lost his testimony and wishes that he could believe, but isn't really making any effort. Lastly, this isn't a less-active, but we see an excommunicated member who is working on being rebaptized and I think that he'll really make it back. He's the one who's girlfriend was baptized in July.

  Well I love you all.

 

Love,

Elder Buxton