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it was so good to get you's emails. i really enjoyed hearing about your different trips. honestly i am so jealous of your trip to the river. i really enjoyed those exploring oppurtunities. before i forget mom i think i will just be calling you for mothers day. hopefully everyone that wants to talk to me is round when i call. i dont know my schedual yet for the day so i cant tell you yet when ill have time to call. i cant believe it is time for prom already! incredible. Fancy Lamb huh? good choice you can always beat one of the Lamb girls to excite the evening and make every penny worth it. Brigg im not going to tell you off about missing school. im just going to repeat that i really regret not taking it as seriously as i should have. so for p-day today we went into central london and cooked an 'american' fajita lunch for this guy named kai that elder jacob taught when he was ap. kai is of course from china and is 23 finishing his masters degree and hoping to go to the states to get his phd next year. i think that he and the other chinese students prove that you dont have to be smart to get a phd, just dilligent. if there is one thing that im really glad to have learned on my mission it has been how to study. after a lunch of american food we had rootbeer floats (they did not like those at all) we played ping pong... chinese are SO flippin good at that game. honestly i stopped counting how many times i lost without even scoring a point. i had a great study this morning. i ran out of things to do before it was time to study so i just started studying earlyer. i had a few questions about priesthood responsibilty and a few things about my patriarcal blessing so i decided to read alma13 i read through it once. took side notes on it the second time and then color code marked it the third time i read it. now i did not find anything new that i never knew before but i understood some principles a lot more then i have before. for some reason in this mission you meet missionaries all the time that have crazy connections with general authorities like elder hinckley and elder hales then elder scruggs who has eaten with most of the quromn of the twelve and so on, i get to hear stories about these men all the time. so as i was reading alma 13, which talks about the priesthood i was thinking of these great men and about what they do differently in there lives. i love comparing and contrasting. one thing that really stood out to me was when alma was talking about those who had been called to the holy calling he said 'they choosing to repent and work righteousness rather then parish' i dont know but it really struck me that repentence is a choice that we make that it is upon our shoulders to DO it. this is really hard to explain what i learned. but it was cool.
anyhow we had a great week this week. wednesday was zone conference with Elder Causse from the Area Presidency( he spoke in GC a couple of years ago) they whole time my pen was flying across my paper like mad. he didnt teach anything absolutly profound just went over a few simple things that we over look in Preach My Gospel.
it was a bit different this year(easter) not waking up to a basket full of chocolate and a few ties. instead we left the flat early to go to PEC. PEC is always an interesting experience, the ward feels that they should conrol who and when we baptise because most of the recent converts are not doing so well. (one of them haveing not been confirmed and another having not been to church since her confirmation) so we had to pull some teeth to get a baptism date approved for may. but there is this really old couple who are stake missionaries that always come. he is proper english and is a bit predjudice against immigrates. every time he would open his mouth he would talk about how we should be teaching people who are more stable and grounded here namely english people who have lived in the same house for 20 years. it was funny cause our bishop just kept rolling his eyes then say asomething about the gospel being for everyone of Gods children. but for easter we went tracting which was really good cause i set a record for step-ins in three hours we got two one of which became a new investigator. really excited about that!
the church is ture by the way. let me tell you about the Book of Mormon. i love the scripture in Jacob chapter 2 where he says 'that word of God which healeth the wounded soul.i completly believe it. at the end of long days when i am upset or tired or had to many things running through my mind at once i sit down and just open it while my companion is changing and ever if i just read about how the work of death did commence on both sides, and thousands falling by the sword it still calms me down and i feel the peace of God again. you know why that is? because it is the Word of God which healeth the wounded soul. try it i promise it will work.
well ta for now!
Elder Solomon
