Week 13
Hiya loves!!
England:
-since its been so hot lately (aka 20 degrees Celsius so like 68 Fahrenheit lol thanks dad) all the English men are outside rollin around shirtless. It's so awk haha but now we're used to it
-in england if you skyve school (sluff) your parents will get fined like loads of money. I wonder how my sister would survive here.. btw shoutout to Cali for graduating this week, even after her 175 absences she's made it. Incredible Love ya cal hehe
-happy memorial day Americans! We have a holiday today here too, bank holiday. There's a bunch of them, Idk what's the purpose, just for the queen to let people have a lil break I guess
-waiting for the bus just barely and got cultured by a gangster guy doing some English rap for us. Swag money
Funny:
- so yesterday, basically the whole entire ward was out of town on holiday, like it was the smallest congregation at church ive ever seen. Last sunday, one of the counselors in the bishopric asked sis cook and I to speak on self reliance and time management each for 5 min, and of course we remembered yesterday morning an hour before church we had to speak... so we prep our talks and I went up and didn't want to just read off my talk but then I just started saying random things so Idk what I even said. Something about time lol. But then we had tea at the Boomes (fav fam, also the ward mission leader) and stayed way too long, did not manage our time well there. So now we have repented and are working better on our time skills smh lol
-this week we went on exchanges with the huddersfield sister training leaders, and I was with sister ligaliga. She is from new Zealand, and so incredible I love her. Hahahaa we had the STRANGEST lesson of my life that day, we went to visit their friend Shamus, he had been to church before and she prepped me before that we have to go really slow for him and focus the lessons on him learning to follow Christs footsteps. We got to his street like 30 min early, but he was chillin outside on his porch so we just went over and started. Just to give you a mental pic of him: he has long curly bright red hair that he dyed with red all over his face and hands from it smearing, red hat, red shoes, red coat, red painted fingernails, and red rings. He must love red. He gave us plastic chairs (which had red smears on them also) to sit on and we sat outside his house in the pouring rain. I tried starting to say an opening prayer, he interrupts and insists on all of us holding hands and singing the Lord's prayer. I literally couldn't hold in my laugh. Okay weird.... then we tried to start talking about Joseph Smith and he goes off "oh Joseph Smith he was a beautiful man" and doesn't listen to us at all, keeps trying to shake our hands every 5 seconds and we say "shamus we only can shake your hand once." Then starts telling us about his 15 kids from Ireland, and keeps telling me how beautiful and what a blessed gift I am. Over and over and over lol, we said shamus it makes us feel uncomrtable we don't want to be called beautiful while we're missionaries haha. I kept trying to be like Jesus or book of mormon or Joseph Smith but he just was in another world lol. Oh shamus, sis ligaliga was like yeah we're gonna have the elders take care of him lol
-theres some chinese elders in our zone who asked if we would go to wakefield to teach one of their investigators, they said her name is Usher and she works at the wakefield bus station. So we went, and turns out we actually already knew her, sister cook bought a lil purse from her shop a few weeks ago haha. Anywho, so we go to the bus station to teach her (which is a terrible environment but shes always working) and she introduced herself as christine. She is so nice and her English is pretty good, but tbh the lesson didnt really go anywhere. So we were about to catch our bus and this bus driver guy came and was acting like a 12 year old flirting with her, like poking her and saying he wants to marry her and she's like ew go away I'm married sicko! It was so weird. Then we friended her on Facebook, and her name on there is Jun wu. So don't know if her name is usher/Christine/Jun wu... I like usher tho
Spiritual:
-we had interviews with the Turveys this week! They are the best. We had some training also about tailoring lessons for people. Later that day, we had an appointment with our friend Declan, and last minute decided to do a tailored lesson for him and talk about baptism and how choosing to follow Christ will help him in his life, before we got into actually teaching him. He loved it so much, and we scheduled him to be baptised June 23! It was cool to see that little miracle by applying the training we had received. Boom yeah
-speaking of Declan, he's awesome. We found him knocking a week and a half ago, his dogs were going nuts and trying to stampede us and he came out to stop them barking and we talked and hes been meeting with us this past week. Hes 19 year old and wants to come closer to God and Jesus, and be able to have peace. He's one of those shirtless dudes but luckily he's been putting a shirt on for lessons and church. He liked church yesterday and after church we went and met his family and talked with him mom about it all, and she's 100% supportive of him getting baptised so that's good. Yay!
-Jose! This week is the week!!!! Hes getting baptised on friday!!!!!!!!! Ahhhhhh so exciting. Back story, so he would've gotten baptised way sooner but he had this wine tasting event in london with a bunch of famous people this past weekend, and since he had paid a ton of pounds for it, he wanted to wait until after. Which is good, but also like just don't drink the wine? Lol anyways, he had his interview last week and the district leader was trying to convince him not to do it, and had jose pray at the end and promise God never to drink alcohol again after his event. Jose said it was so powerful and spiritual. Even though he was gone this weekend, we've been reading the book of Mormon with him every night over the phone and helping him understand it. He's seriously so golden, like so humble and has taken everything in so well. Ahhh Friday is going to be amazing! My first baptism!
-nashville tribute band came and did a concert for us this week! Ahhh it was brilliant! I loved it, we got to meet them afterwards and they are sooooooo nice! It was incredible to hear their stories and testimonies of Joseph Smith and Jesus Christ. Loved it! It was fun to get to go to Leeds and see some friends from the mission too!
-there's a woman in the Wakefield ward named cara who was recently baptised in October. She's amazing! The elders at the time (one who is actually my district leader in Dewsbury rn) were having a hard time finding, and decided to shoot a nerf gun on a map and where it landed they went to that street! They knocked on Cara's door and she said she knew immediately she wanted to have the happiness that they have. And got baptised 3 weeks later. What!!!! Sister Cook and I are going to start visiting her more and read bom with her and reteach her the lessons cause it's easier for the sisters to come more often. She's a young mum and such an inspiration to me!
- on saturday night, there were so many little things that happened and the sequence of events led to a lil miracle. We were supposed to visit our potential friends, Dan and britani, who we had met a week before and they have a tiny lil 13 week old baby. We show up at their flat, no one home. Flogged :( but go on and try by someone else nearby, then ran home cause we had to use the toilet, then started street contacting (that's the basic gist of what happened, too hard to say every detail lol) and then I saw britani and Dan crossing the street! In the completely other side of town! Sister Cook and I ran after them (lol at them if they were trying to avoid us) and ends up they had totally forgotten, Britani's phone wasn't working, and we rescheduled to see them for tonight. I'm glad heavenly father lets little miracles like that happen so we can act and get a second chance!
-i loved having exchanges with sis LigaLiga. She is such an example to me of diligence and forgetting yourself! On Friday when we were on exchanges, it was the first day like all month where it rained, and it poured. But I loved it, made everything so much more dramatic when people rejected us savagely. Haha. Sister ligaliga is so brave, like knocking so loud on people's door, tbh I'm so timid when I do kncok, but after seeing her I want to be more bold like her! We ran after people in the streets, even after they went in their house we knocked on their door, knocking on people's car windows, etc. Before my mission, I never would have dreamed of doing that lol. But we actually got some good responses and it gave me the determination and courage to really talk to everyone, cause everyone deserves the gospel, no excuses! When I didn't worry about myself, what am i going to say or what if I mess up or people think I'm weird, when I completely forgot about myself, is when I felt the best. It's crazy how on missions you do absolutely nothing for yourself, yet you feel so much joy and happiness. It's insane. I love being a missionary!
Sorry this was a long one!! Can you believe today is my 3 month mark in england!!??!?!! This is my last week of being trained, the transfers were kinda different when i first came out so i only have 11 weeks of being trained! Next week are transfers ahh!! But that's all for now, im so happy and loving england! love y'all!!!! Keep me updated on your lives! Give me the deets. Keep on reading the scriptures and praying everyday! Cheers love
Xxx Sister Bascom <3
Pictures-
Saying goodbye to senior couple Burnetts from the Wakefield ward (it was windy)
It's a good book
Shamus bless him
