Happy Anniversary!!

Dear Family,

I am doing very well. You had some questions regarding the pictures that I sent last week. Most were taken in an area called New Lodge, a Catholic area. Many of the murals depict cultural and political circumstances of Ireland during the last century. If you read up on the history of Northern Ireland and the troubles than you'll learn more. We hope to do another area of town called the Shankill today. Another day we plan on going to a place called the Falls with Brother Valliday since he grew up there. I did get my debit card. Is it activated? I also finally got a package from Sarah Combs which was filled with stuff like butterfingers and stickers and church pictures and what not. I really hope that you enjoyed your anniversary.

Eddie is doing extremely well and hasn't smoked in 11 days now. He is really determined to be baptized next Tuesday and he has asked that I baptized him. We have a nice serviced in the planning stages and we hope that many members will be there as well as his family and friends. He also just got a dog to help him keep busy. It's a boxer. We were there with him the first day that he had it and it was very calm and I even stroked it to sleep, but the next day it was off the walls. It must have felt a lot more comfortable. It is a really friendly dog and should keep him occupied. He is the only one that has shone any real progress at the moment. We met with Sid a couple of times, but he seems quite reluctant to come to church let alone be baptized. Maybe it's just not his time right now. However, we are finally meeting this lady this week named Carmina who the other elders found. She seems quite promising. We also started teaching this lady named Precious who is a former investigator. She is from Nigeria. She's really quiet and a bit hard to know what her desire is, but we hope to see her more and hopefully prepare her to be baptized.

So now funny story time. On Friday night we were tracting and as we were walking to our next appointment, we had noticed that there was a large group of teenagers gathering at the bottom of the street. We walked past them as we were getting to this appointment we had when these 3 girls walked up to us wanting a Bible. We gave 2 of them copies of the Book of Mormon because that's all that we had and then some pamphlets as well. They all said thank you and then Elder James got a hug from one of them and exclaimed, "I don't know what to do." It turned out fine. He was a bit shocked, but we went on our way.

This week we also have started meeting with all of the members and making a list with each one of the people in their lives that they could share the gospel with. We got this idea from a suggestion in Preach My Gospel, but also we heard from a member at church who quoted from Elder Clayton of the Seventy that "The Holy Ghost likes lists." So we committed each to pray over the list and pick someone that we could pray for as well. The power of pray is so amazing. I really know that as I have prayed with faith for Eddie, he has really come through and has changed dramatically.

 

I love you all.

 

Elder Buxton