Alright so I've been rebuked by Alisa and last week was a non-emailer, really. So to start I'll make up by explaining what we did that caused my email to be a bit short. So we had a zone P-day where we all go into Birmingham, eat at a Chinese buffet and then go bowling. Well we were meant to be there at like 12:30 but there was a bomb threat in a Birmingham station so Elder Shrubb and I had to wait an hour to try and get on, then we had to run and catch a bus instead, so we got there a bit late. The good news is that I was able to quickly pig out on Chinese for 45 min to and hour so I felt decently compensated for my sufferings, though when we left I was thinking of getting a bit more. I gained weight at the MTC and here in Birmingham but it's plateau'd at around 180 so that's not too bad. I do plan on losing 10 of those either right before or right after the end of my mission though. But that's so far away I don't really care. It's on the to-do list whenever that day happens.
But I digress, so we then went bowling which was pretty sweet. It's always great to see all the other missionaries in the zone, and we had a bit of fun. I ended up being the grand champion of our two lanes with I think a score of 132 which is my life top I think, so that was nice. It was a fun break from all the monotony of what we do but it would later turn out we had a bit of such activities in the week.
I remember Dan asked me some questions but I forgot them all sorta and I forgot to bring them with me, but I'll try to answer them to the best of my memory. Kidderminster is a smallish town (it's very urban yet compact in the center areas so I though it was kinda big) and the population is mostly white English people. The only real minority is Polish people but they're not really any more receptive to the gospel so no dice there. Our mission has our own little program thingy called 10/10/10/20 Which means in the first 10 minutes of leaving the flat you speak to someone, you speak to 10 people each day, and you place 10 BoMs a week. Obviously the second 2 10s are encouraged to be exceeded. the 20 is 20 sit down lessons with investigators, but that one is like the dream goal. Our zone, however, has had 4 weeks of perfect 10/10/10s which is like mission history so we're trying to get a perfect transfer.
Yesterday Elder Shrubb and I had a down-up day. Our most promising investigator dropped us because of her issues with her partner, cause she decided it would just be easier to try and work things out with him again, and she said she'll keep in touch, so that was nice and ugh. But the rest of the day was actually pretty great, our other good investigator apologized and explained why she wasn't at church (she was at the hospital with her daughter) so it's not like she's a waster and we had a great lesson with her, and we place 5 BoMs in 1 day so it was pretty good, we met a lady named Denise who's CoE(Church of England) who when we told her about Joseph Smith's First Vision was like 'I never heard of that before! Isn't that wonderful!' So I was just kinda like whoah, is she for real? She seems pretty golden and hopefully she'll read and pray by tomorrow when we'll go to teach her.
The other big highlight of this past week was a stake barbecue here in Kidderminster. Lots of good food, we had a family we invited from just around the area come in and speak to us about the church, they seemed to have a great experience, and I had real Hamburgers, for non-extortionist prices as much as I wanted. We also had a fun and completely chaotic game of football(soccer) where I got tackled by a former professional rugby player, so that was fun. It wasn't a real tackle but I did get knocked off my feet. So that was like 4 hours of wasting out that was sorta justified, with other missionaries there too. We have 2 sisters in our zone so I feel a little bad for them being so isolated, but Elder Shrubb told me sister missionaries do all sorts of weird things that sorta go out of the bounds of regular mission rules, so I don't feel too bad anymore.
I happened to go on an exchange this week out of Kidderminster so that was fun, I went with one of my zone leaders Elder Zito from Italy to his area of Harborne in Birmingham. It was a good experience but it made me totally jealous because we stopped two ladies as they were going in their door, and they accepted a Book of Mormon and an invitation to come to church just like that. We also taught a couple where the husband (and this was their first sit down lesson) was trying to understand how long it would take to be baptized. They're Indian and there's a bit of a language barrier, but they're pretty much golden and I was just like, why do you get to teach these awesome people while people in Kiddy just hate the missionaries?
Well such is life as a missionary. Apparently President Hinckley was a mission president here in Birmingham because I heard a fun story about how one of the Elders here then got hit by a car, broke his leg and the guy that hit him came out apologized and then healed his leg. Well they told their Mission President and he told them to stay there until he could come. So later that night he came and rebuked the spirit in the Elder's leg and it snapped again. So, fun stuff happens here. One thing I don't understand is that in Louisiana I don't think I even knew of people that professed to be spiritualists. Like some kids might have fooled around with it and stuff but I didn't know people that like professed to be that religion. So that's one interesting thing to get used to as a missionary here in England.
Can't think of anything else exciting to tell you, we do the same stuff each week, though I did have a weird realization that like, as far as incentives to come home go, I don't have any huge thing to look forward to. This stems from thinking about 2 missionaries in my district that are dying this transfer and getting a bit trunky. I know one of them has been struggling to stay focused on the work and it makes me wonder how I'll handle it. I'll definitely do my best, but I realized that like at least now looking at it, there's stuff I'll definitely want to do immediately and there's all of you who can't wait to see me but like really if today was my last day I'd be like well I guess I could go home. I thought maybe I could trick myself into thinking a mission is 4 years long and then going 'wow! 2 years in! Only half-Oh I'm done. Ok.' So maybe I'll do that, or I'll just try to die the best I can.
Well Elder Shrubb just got up, so Love, Take Care, i forgot I was supposed to write more about what he's like, Don't worry Alisa I love you and enjoyed your rebuke, take care, if Christa wants to include the Tab Choir CD of like American music I'd like that in her package she was planning to send me, if she already sent it then oh well.
Love all,
Ryan Baxter
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