July 28, 2010

So I'm tired and it's transfers and so I'll just write a little and then maybe catch up next week.

Elder Shrubb is leaving(well, left) to be a Zone Leader in another Zone, and I now have Elder Mower as my senior companion. His name is pronounced M-ow(as in, pain ouch)-er so it's not like lawnmower. Ummm things are looking better here in Kidderminster, Shona and her children are looking to be baptised on the 14th of August (the lady with the child in the hospital) we've taught her maybe 2 or 3 times since last email and she seems really solid on everything, we've even gotten past 2 of the big 4 commandments (still have word of wisdom and tithing to go so wish us luck) and Ann our awesome recent convert (from before my time) has a friend she's bringing to church that hopefully we'll start teaching and she'll want to learn and be baptized! So I'm trying to be excited. I don't really know Elder Mower well enough to be pumped or sad that it's changed but everyone is like aww yeah he's awesome so I'm excited-ish right now.

It's a little weird to know that I'm 1/17th of my mission in the field. Not really sure how I feel about that and I'm not counting down the time it's just a fact that presents itself. It's weird to think BYU will start up soon and stuff will start happening in Provo and stuff but it's cool here, and as soon as I sleep and don't have a headache it'll be grand. I do need to call President Ogden today to see if we can waste out err, teach investigators on a guided tour of a place called Bishop's Woods. By the way, last Saturday Elder Shrubb and I went to Aston Manor Hall, so you can like Wiki that and be like "Yep, our son went there on his mission. Cause he's a waster." If I haven't said before, wasters are people in the field that don't really work. We did have a reason to go though so yeah it's all good. Oh man I just kinda want to sleep, and it doesn't help that I'm sorta senior companion for a couple of days. I'm also working on humility cause I fear I'm becoming a striver (someone who wants leadership for selfish reasons) at least in part, because I DO have a want to be recognized as talented and a leader etc. At the same time part of me is like you fool that means more work, just chill out and try to learn. It'll be interesting to have this transfer without being a district leader junior companion, which is pretty nice. I'm still a little worried that it'll be weird to adjust to a new senior. I feel like if it was a junior it'd be easy to adjust to but since this kinda changes how I do things because he'll do things differently it'll be interesting. I'm just glad I'm not getting a dead companion. (dead as in let me off the mission bus now[missionaries that have served but are done now are also referred to as dead and if you were their last companion you 'killed' them])

So yeah, also if I never said before Kidderminster is REALLY hilly, and Elder Shrubb loved to go as fast as possible up the hills, so that was kinda a pain. Oh well, it's all pretty good.

By the way, odd request, but can you dig in my Brother Parker BoM manuals for where it talks about Satan's plan? It's organized by the parts of the Book of Mormon so look in areas that correspond to parts of the Book of Mormon that talk about the Pre-Existance, like maybe Alma 37-43 area. I think somewhere in First or Second Nephi it also says something like that so maybe try that. I wanna know what book of Bruce R McKonkie he wrote about it in, it's the part that talks about how Satan's plan was for us to have no agency but to live in sin basically, I think he calls it a "philosophical impossibility" so maybe just try googling that with Bruce R McKonkie. Not very important, but I'm curious about it. Well Love and take Care!

Elder Ryan Baxter