Monday, February 20, 2012

First Week as Zone Leader

Dear Family,
how are you all doing? For your information, I sent a card last week for Dad for his birthday. I sent it last Wednesday so it should get there soon. I am doing well here. Things are starting to pick up. If you remember last week, we challenged the zone to give out 360 copies of the Book of Mormon in 4 weeks. Well we started off strong and gave out 120. Elder Freckleton and I gave out 31 between us. We were really blessed to have those opportunities. As a result of this we were able to teach a couple on Sunday night named Victor and Beth. Victor is from Nigeria and Beth is from Scotland. Victor is really excited to learn about the Book of Mormon and see what he can take away from it. When he was in Nigeria, he went to a lot of churches and some of his friends called him a "christian tourist." He has wondered why there are so many churches in the world. He said that if he believed in the Book of Mormon, that he would be baptized. We also started teaching a man named Emmanuel. He is from Nigeria as well. He loved learning about the Restoration and he will hopefully soon come to church and worship with us. Endurance is doing well. He is a bit stressed out over his studies and work. I hope that he can be baptized this Sunday, but we shall see. We taught Das again. He is very prepared and has already seen blessings since he started coming to church. I hope that he can gain a testimony that the Book of Mormon is true.
On Saturday I was exchanges in the Bridge of Don area with Elder Ellett, a former companion. There we were able to teach two new people that were a direct link to finding with the Book of Mormon. The first is named Abagail. She is from the Cayman Islands in the Carribean. She is really prepared. When she met the missionaries the day before, she was thinking about spiritual matters and funny enough, the missionaries were led to here and are now teaching her. The other was a man named Clark. When i first met him, I thought he would be in his mid to late 20s, but it turns out that he is turning 20 next month. He feels that this is what he needs to turn his life around and felt that we were sent by God to him. He feels that it was not a coincidence that he came out of the gas station at the time he did when the missionaries were walking past there. I feel that he will be very good and sincere about repenting and getting his life turned around.
(Reader discretion is advised for the following story) While we were at Clarks. His father and mother were there as well. They had order pizza and it arrived while we were there. They let us have some which we were very happy about. However as soon as he opened the pizzas on the coffee table, his father who was sitting right in front of the pizzas, just took a swig of his whiskey. He then for some reason, spit it all out over one of the pizzas. We were a bit bummed at this, but ate from the far corner of the other pizza. To be honest, it was a funny experience. Missions: got to love them.
Another neat experience was while i was on exchanges with a missionary, Elder Riddett, we were walking back to our flat for the night and he felt prompted that we should turn back around. We had some time and turned around. This was this guy coming towards us and he started talking to him about being with his family forever. At the time, I thought why in the world he would be speaking to him about that since he was a man in his 20s, but it turns out that he was thinking about that at that time. We were able to give him a copy of the Book of Mormon and he is excited to read about that and find out more about the Plan of Salvation.
Last thing that happened to us this week was that we did service for this member who has just moved to Wales. We had to take some stuff off the walls and put the rubbish out on the street corner. The most challenging thing we had to do was to take a piano out the house. The only thing was that she lived on a hill and there were quite a few stairs up to her home. Thankfully we had the other missionaries in the ward and we were able to amazing lift and push the piano out of the house, down the grassy hill (which was just dry enough to allow us to do that), and onto the curb where we then loaded into a van and took it to the church until some members would get it after they came back from holiday. To say the least, we were helped by angels to get it down the hill.
So I am in the Aberdeen Ward. There is another ward in Aberdeen called the Bridge of Don Ward. Our building is on North Anderson Drive and Lang Stracht if that helps Sister Bourne pinpoint where we meet. It is the stake centre. I spoke to Margaret and Tommy Thompson. They remember the Thoms and asked me to say that they were asking for her. The other people I know are the Mundies, Wares, Goldies, Sims, Livingstons, Brother Rae. Oh, I don't know if I'll ever get to meet Mike King because he lives in the Bridge of Don Ward, but I think I know where he lives. Ask Sister Bourne if she wants me to say hello to any people. So the zone covers from Aberdeen to Invergordon. There are 6 units in the Aberdeen stake (Aberdeen, Bridge of Don, Buchan, Elgin, Inverness, and Invergordon). We have to go on exchanges with several of the missionaries within this moves. We will be going on one tomorrow in with the missionaries from Inverness. The wards in Aberdeen are normal for over here. They are no where near the size they are over in the states.
Have you signed me up for classes yet or are there still some problems?
For my birthday package, i would really like some rolls from either costco or homemade. Butterfingers would be nice as well. There was something else, but I can't think of it right now. It must not have been very important.
I hope that all is well at home and look forward to hearing from you.
 
Love,
Elder Buxton
 
P.S. It snowed Saturday night, but it melt away throughout the day. Hopefully that will be the last of the season.

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