Hubert is my hero

[unedited version]

ok So first off the baptism of Sanjay Kurmar went awesome! no body really showed up except for some random overly flirty muslim girls who thought it was a part but that was ok just Sanjay just wanted to be baptised. right before the baptism we had a bit of drama. Sanjay got a call from his sister and was very upset and crying forever then him and i went into the chapel and prayed. His faith is so powerful it is amazing. His testimony of the Book of Mormon is so strong i cannot wait to use him to teach with us. we had zone conference this week which was exciteing. President Patch is on the ball as usuall and melted everyones face. there was only two dissappointing things abou that day. first i was fasting and they always have amazing lunches for zone conference and second i was expecting some mail and packages from christmas and all i got was a unexpected but totally for-see-able engagement anouncement (congrats Jamie Kottcamp-soon-to-be-Morris).

Us and the Ilford sisters have become quite competititive about how hard we are working both trying to teach more lessons and do more finding. for the first time in like forever they beat us last week and the first thing President Patch did was rub it in our face at zone conference. that was really funny and gave the sisters a nice boost. Unfortunatly our teaching pool is shrinking again becasue we have baptised four people and some just dropped off of the face of the earth so unfortunatly we are only teaching about 24 lessons a week instead of 30-35. but that is totally good cause now we get to go find new people to baptise! yea.

k Brigg i dont care what anyone else may say, you're alright in my book. its a wonderful thing that we are let into the kingdom of God by the grace of Christ which is obtained through repentence and obedence. it an awesome plan. now you have all the time in the world to focus on other things.... like preparing for a mission :) i dont know what it is like to win sectionals or even to be on a state champion team or even go to state but i can tell you this. There is nothing like the feeling of administering the saving ordinance of baptism to a humbled, determined follower of Christ. It truly is a humbling honor. Preston will tell you this (he had a bit more practice at it). No greater satisfaction can come to any man on earth then being a worthy priesthood holder and being called to use that priesthood in a righteous way. start now. share the gospel with someone that you normaly wouldnt. pray to know who to speak to, who has been prepared to accept the message then resolutly follow the prompting. experience it for yourself so that i dont have to try to explain it.

ok let me tell you about the time i almost ripped my face off in gospel principles. Hubert Borges Da Silva was one of my first baptisms in the middle of January right. well our ward mission leader is not a very good teacher so we suggested that he include Hubert in teaching the class. Hubert has had tons of experience with teaching so it seemed like a good idea and Brother Stevenson agreed. so Hubert prepared to teach the first lesson in the gospel principles book. we visited him and looked over his out line and he had perfect solid doctrine. He was good to go. then right before church the sisters invited a random older oriental man off the street to attend church. he did. He must have been very uncomfortable because half way through the lesson he started to bash and get really angry. he did not agree with our views on the nature of God, i believe he was buhdist. so Hurbert stood at the front of the class being reviled against ridiculed and persecuted. the air was as think as a chocolate cake from the Cheese Cake Factory. Elder Scruggs and I almost lost it multiple times but were restrained. it was amazing to see the gift of the Holy Ghost at work. Hubert withstood all the mans comments insults and accusations of being brainwashed. in the end he bore a powerful testimony of the love of God. at the end of the lesson i took a moment to allow my adreniline to cool down, the man left dissatisfied and angry and Hubert came off a better man. When i told him he was my hero he said he was going to go take a nap.. haha i dont blame him. i love the Lords promise that as we follow the Spirit we will not be confounded by men. it is so true.

i love you alll and truly honestly feel and appriciate all of the support and prayers offered in my behalf.

Elder Solomon

The golden 30%

February 7,2011

I hate computers! I have been on this one for 45 minutes and it keeps not working! Too bad I only have 15 more minutes to tell you about my week. 30% seems to be Elder Scruggs and my lucky number. This week at church only 2 of 6 expected showed up and again about 30% of all our appointments stood us up this week. The best day of this week was Wednesday. That day we had 12 different teaching appointments scheduled and half way through the day we had only seen two people. We spent the first five hours of the day walking around town center looking for people to teach cause we got hosed. That day I was on a work-over. Our district leader Elder Allsop came and spent the day with me in Ilford. Elder Allsop was Elder Rallison’s favorite companion because they both are very similar. He leaned against a pole while I did all the finding. So, after five hours of finding we went back to the chapel and ended up teaching lessons for the rest of the day. It seemed like people just started pouring into the church to be taught it was so cool. It turned out weird though cause my companion decided to ditch me and I taught most of the lessons on my own. He was helping the sister missionaries teach English or something like that (waster). Second highlight was Sunday evening. Sister Andersen and Sister Larsson were teaching Sanjay while I was in a different lesson. They interrupted me and asked me to give Sanjay a blessing. It was an amazing experience. The Lord has some pretty big plans for him when he goes back to India. I felt strongly impressed that Sanjay was lead here to receive the gospel then he will go home and bring it to his family. He is going to be baptized this weekend and I think they are going to ask me to do it. Needless to say I'm excited! Then, we were also teaching Sekar who is a Tamol from Sri Lanka. He came here to escape the fighting between the Tamol and the Singoese which fighting took both his father and sister. He came with £270 and is down to £140 and he sells jewelry that he makes. Mom don’t be surprised if I send you some. But he is Hindi and the first time he read the Book of Mormon he opened to Alma 32 and read about being compelled to be humbled. He bore a powerful testimony about the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. The only thing we have to do now is teach him about Jesus Christ and everything else. It will be hard cause he hardly knows any English. But we are in luck because another man we are teaching, Sushell from India, has become his friend through our teaching and helps him out. Susheel is another miracle he was taught everything in India and then he moved here to be baptized. Ha-ha and he thought he came here to study.

So in case none of you knew. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is the Lord’s kingdom once again restored on the earth. Joseph Smith was the prophet that the Lord used to do this, and by reading and praying about the Book of Mormon we can get a spiritual witness from our Loving Heavenly Father that it is true.

Love you all and hope that you are all doing well,

Elder Solomon

Back to High School

Kimallee Roxy Ramsee

It is so good to hear from you all!! I'm sure you are all extremely busy... but every one thinks mom will write the email and it slipped her mind. No worries. I'm not as upset, as you probably hope I'm not. Lucky for me I got some mail today:) I got a letter from Meagan, mom, and I think guy named Jeff, who sent me a cd about the New World Order that all the leaders of the world are a part of supposedly, to usurp power and make us all his slaves.

Here is my paragraph dedicated to Meagan Hoopes. “Thank you so much for your letter! I felt like I child at Christmas I know that you start writing me all the time but a stamp does not always find its way onto your letters before they get shipped to the dark corner of the room or under the bed, so when one actually makes it to England I'm sure that there are many angels in heaven that join in songs of praise and hosannas. It’s like a light shines down from a break in the clouds and I dramatically look up with my mouth wide open as divine voices sing 'hallelujah!!' :)”

K, so my week has been absolutely crazy and my fingers are numb, so please excuse my rubbish grammar. Week started off slow and stayed consistent but we stayed busy. The crowning event was this weekend. So we were looking at the numbers this week and found that about 31 percent of our appointments actually came and out of 20+ first appointments, only 4 came. So is the life of a missionary. We spent some good time finding, as we do, when appointments don’t go through. Funny story I had a gay man try to entice me to go clubbing with him and also move to Paris then New York or Berlin. He kept trying to hint in a round about way and I kept telling him I had no idea what he was talking about. It was hilarious to watch him squirm as he was trying to get the courage to get to the point, then right before he did I introduced the gospel and the book of Mormon and within thirty seconds he was gone. The worst part of it all was that he interrupted one of my conversations with someone else to waste my time.

Ok so this weekend we baptized Kimallee Ramsee from Grenada (if anyone remembers that in Anger Management). She meet the missionaries the week before I came here and had a “Preach My Gospel”[the missionary manual] perfect conversion. She kept all of her commitments came to church and gained a testimony...it was awesome! I got to confirm her on Sunday. The coolest part about it all is that we think she will be hooking up with Gift Medi who we baptized at the beginning of the transfer!

I hate drama. I thought that I graduated high school a while ago but I guess I was wrong. Many of our converts are going through their testing period to see if their testimony is strong enough to get them through the hard times. And some are failing. It is hard when you are looking after 11 or so babies in the gospel who have given up almost everything for the church. One bad comment has started a wildfire, which has spread all though our teaching pool and is driving the Spirit away. It all escalated to a point when one called the other fat. She flipped a switch and pulled out a knife.... I love being a missionary.

So God lives and loves each and everyone of us... bottom line if you don’t believe me, just ask Him and He will tell you He is there.

Love,

Elder Solomon

ps I did get your package today with cds... and watch catalog. Cheers for that!

boo ya

[unedited version]

Hello Family!

im so glad to hear that you are all so busy out of your mind. remember an empty mind is the devils play ground, but a crowded mind is his cover. we had our 'teaching for the times' this week on presdient uchtdorfs talk about slowing down. i liked it. ok i have to admit i have been a doubting Thomas and have not had enough faith. miracles happen al the time let me tell you about some. for instance, if you have one or two investigators at church it is something to get excited about three or four is a really good week. this week between the sister missionaries and ourselves we had about 17!!! and a good handful of them just walked in from the street! it was amazing it was like herding cattle from one room to the next between the classes. mark these words the church is going to explode in India and Pakistan. the Gathering of Isreal is happening in London. people might think they are coming to England to get a job or do a studies but really they are being sent here to except the gospel and then they will go home and prepare their countires and people for the church. that is from a general authority. it is so cool to be a part of that work! i have given away handfuls of Urdo (most prominant Arabic language) copies of the Book of Mormon to honest seekers of Christ. the best moment was when two students from Pakistan named Naeem and Muhammad just walked into the church and told me that they want to become Christian. the i can not begin to tell you how exciting the work is to see the difference that it makes in peoples lives. i think some times we take it for granted that we know the plan of happiness that was created for us by a loving Heavenly Father. Even the simple fact that we can pray and be heard yet less have those prays answered. ok let me tell you the story of Sanjay. he actually is sitting a couple of computers away just now. he is a student from Dheli in India. he is 20 years old. he is currently being taught by the sister missionaries here in Ilford. Last night at a 'fireside' activity i had the chance to sit down and chat with him. of course his English isnt great but im becoming an expert at understanding half English. He told me about his conversion story. He came to England just a few months ago and since he got here has had a burning desire to learn more about Jesus Christ. on day last week he went to the library to look up more about Christ. Sister Anderson sat down next to him and noticed what he was looking at and offered to teach him which he readily excepted. He got the Book of Mormon and has studied and read it ever since. he says that it feels really good when he reads the Book of Mormon because it gives him a calm and peaceful feeling and loves learning about Christ because it gives him and new energy of soul. he has now begun sharing these things with his sister in india and even has the sisters teach her over the phone. his faith is so strong. where he lives six other men live who like to drink. often they persecute him and ridicule him for reading the Book of Mormon. so he comes to church because he just wants somewhere to go and to study about Christ. He is amazing i have never had my heart reach out for someone as mine has for him. that is just one of the stories from this week and there are so many just like it. I had an interview with president patch this morning and he told me that it was over a year before this area even had one baptism when he opened it a year and a half ago. in half a year they had twenty five baptism and are the second highest baptising area in the uk. why is it. because the goepel is for EVERYONE. we stand in front of the chapel and just invite everyone that comes by to come in and learn more. you would not believe the kind of people that actually come in. from suicidal gangsters to exmilitary kickboxers to burka covers arabians. one of my favorite quotes i dont remember where i heard it but it goes. it is not up to use to pick and choose who gets to hear about the gospel. It just comes with taking the name of Christ upon us which all of us did at baptism. To stand as witnesses in all times in all things and in all places. in adittude action and word. what a wonderful blessing that is! and Amazing resposiblity. i love it!!

Mother thank you fo the suggestion. i know that Chirst grace is sufficent for all man but I think that right about now i could use a witness that of it. to be quite honest i feel horrible and accountable for the time that was wasted last transfer in Bedford. i could us the ressurence.

I pray that the preparations for londons run is all goin well. i know that it can get a bit crazy just remember that it is not met that man should run faster then he has strength but at the same time as we are obedient to the commands of the Lord we will 'run and not be weary, walk and not faint' you know i have always wonderded about that phrase and let me tell you about what i feel it means. i have been learning alot about dilligence lately and as i was praying one night this phrase and these thoughts pressed firmly in my mind. k so run and not be weary walk and not faint. running is more strenuous then walking but the more dramatic faint is attached to walking. why is that? well look at it this way as we are running we stop because we are weary the promise is that we will be sustained to mantain the prescribed pace. same with walking think of a wonderer lost in a hot desert that falls (faints) on the sand dunes. the promise is that as we are faithful to obedience that we will be sustained at the prescribed pace to be diligent to the end. but we have to remember to go at the speed limit. i dont know if you remember dad but my junior year when we were playing at Seton high i was on kick off and for some reason on one particular kick off and ran down the field and did not come in contact with at single person. i was usless to the team because i fell three times. for some reason i just keep falling over my self untouch i just went down. that is how i see it being when we run faster then it is 'met' we just tipp and fall. go at the prescribed pace and you will be sustained.

I know that Jesus Christ lives. I know that we have a Loving Heavenly Father that hears AND answers our prayers. I know that as we humble ourselves He will lead and guide us and make more out of us the we ever could with out Him. I know that He is the one true God and the best Source of healing.

i love you all

Elder Solomon

Smell the chicken; come get baptized~

Gift (African), Hubert (older African), and Moses (Pakistan with the bowl hair cut).

Me and Elder Scruggs

Elder Tangilonu and Elder Rallison at KFC

a Lambo in London

A three wheeled car.

So my new flat address is 138 Tomswood Hill Essex. There are other mailing details to that but I have forgotten them. For our zone pday we played basketball and capture the flag for like three hours so I am dog tired right now.

Ok Ilford is absolutely amazing! I taught more in two days then I did the whole of last transfer. The chapel is almost right next to the town center (Ilford Lane right next to the Sansbury’s) and that is were we do almost all of our teaching. So whenever we have spare time we just stand in front of the doors and invite people in for a chapel tour. We show them around the chapel and explain about the sacrament then take them to the baptistery and teach them about the gospel of Jesus Christ and if the spirit is strong we invite them to be baptized and people have gotten really excited about it!! The area is mostly Indian and Pakistani with a couple of Africans mixed in every now and then. Most of them are here as students and have never heard of Christianity and when they find out they love it! It is so cool. One guy named Sanka came in to see if we could help him find a flat and to help him get on a local cricket club and then we taught him and now he is a proper progressing investigator he even came to church this week. Honestly so much has happened in this last four days I could tell you about it for ten hours... if I could remember it all. It is a shame that I don’t really even have time to write all of it in my journal:/

Elder Scruggs is amazing. He is not one of those exceptional missionaries that just blow everyone away with his testimony or even his knowledge of the gospel. What make is the difference in him is that he is diligent and obedient. I love D&C 130: 20-21 that all blessings are predicated on obedience. It is so true! It is like a mathematical equation. Input=output. Obedience=blessings. Elder Scruggs’ dad was the mission president of grandmas mission in Australia and he left from there when he was 18 to come here. Funny thing I'm actually older then him. But he said that he remembered Grandma!! How freakin cool is that? He is the perfect person to work with. It is like I'm getting retrained all over again. Good thing too cause I was really needing it!

Yes, we did have baptisms this week. Three of them. I got my information wrong we are to have five baptisms in January and we have a goal to have at least three in February... with this area it is totally possible. How cool is this. The ward council has limited us to only having baptisms every other week because all the baptisms were draining on the ward! This area is so blessed. My faith has totally been restored in missionary work! I was so happy to get the chance to speak at the baptism on the Holy Ghost. It was a simple talk but it was so good for me to reaffirm my testimony and bear it again. That has become my favorite thing to do now. The confirmations were a bit hilarious how they played out. Our bishop is from Africa Bishop Onulopu and the Africans are known for being bold and blunt. Like for instance a recent convert was complaining about a missionary getting moved out of the area and said that President Patch should have known better. A Ghanaian member the told him that because he was rejecting and not sustaining the revelation given to a presiding priesthood holder he was 'engaging in personal apostasy' HA that has become one of my most favorite phrases. So only one of the recently baptized members showed up to church on time so we confirmed him during the ward business... that was amazing then after the sacrament another one walked in and we confirmed him almost before he sat down. Then the last one showed up during the talks and we confirmed him before the closing song. It was so funny cause Bishop Onulopu called them out and rebuked them in a very African way for being late... from the stand! It was Awesome.

You want to know the secret to missionary work? Well here it is Diligence and Obedience. Simple as that when you show the Lord that you want to work He will give you things to do. I remembered just now, that when I was in Bedford while I was just sitting upbraiding myself for being a useless missionary while my companion slept and my brothers and sisters perished spiritually out sid,e I would pray for a way to get out of the house and do something. Almost every time shortly thereafter, we would get a phone call that a member needed help with something or they had too much pizza and wanted to give us some. If we are faithful with obedience we will be blessed.

Pdays are supposed to be a missionary’s day of rest but that is not the case. We have so much to do we don’t have an idea where to start. I have not had breakfast in four days. We haven’t had time to shop and I don’t have any money to do any shopping. Because of transportation issues I have already used all of my money for the month so I have been eating 'cheap chicken' every day for lunch then nothing for the rest of the day. It is so crazy the whole flat just smells like southern fried chicken. The church also... that is probably why people like to come in.

One of the best experiences this week happened yesterday after church. Normally we grab two of the investigators who were at church and teach them a quick lesson with a member before they leave. I grabbed Abraham (investigator from Cyprus) and Gift (baptized this weekend) and taught the Restoration. It was so good to hear Gift’s testimony of how he learned about the restored gospel. Yea, so Abraham wants to be baptized now. Love it!

Quick notes about Africans they have the best names. I have heard Gift, Heaven, Queen, Prince, Sunshine and many other cool names like it.

Brigg, I was so happy to get your letter my reply is in the mail.... if I finish it today.

Love you all,

Elder Solomon

PS. good luck boys with your wrestling matches please give me and update on you record:)

BACK TO LONDON!!!!!!!

Ok, let me clear my name. We only went to Toys R Us on p-day and got one board game. Anyhow, this week was great. I spent three days with Elder Tangilanu on a work over then I spent three days in Bletchley on another work over with Elder Paramilgam (Swiss). It was a funny situation. Elder Rallison went down to London with Elder Paramilgam's companion for a baptism of an old investigator. We were supposed to switch back after the day, but because of transportation issues we did not switch back until yesterday. So I was out of my area for three days and missed my own church! It was crazy but really fun. They have bikes in Bletchely and I was quickly reminded that it has been like ten years since I legitimately rode a bicycle. So let’s just say I am a little bit saddle sore. Suit trousers are not the same as bike shorts.

Anyhow, we had dinner at the Pratt’s again last night. It was amazing we had buffalo meat burgers and chili cheese dip. The funny thing was I was by my self. We were helping a different family move and we all got locked outside the house so because of lack of seats my companion decided that we go on splits so they could go pick someone up that could get them in. It was terribly weird. We got our moves calls last night at about 1100. Crazy things. They are moving both Elder Rallison and myself out of Bedford and will replace us with sisters. We have to be ready to go by ten o'clock this morning. Crazy crazy. I'm so excited though for them they are going to have a great time here. I can tell that they will have success.

So now for the big news. I'm going to Ilford in London with the famous Elder Scruggs (my now 6th companion). Although he is two days younger then me he has been on his mission for 18 months now. Probably the one of the hardest working missionaries in the mission and one of the most successful. I'm going from one extreme to the next. Supposedly I will be walking into five. That’s 5 baptisms this Saturday! Ilford is also famous for being the busiest area in the mission with almost weekly baptisms. I'm so excited!!!

I'm glad that all is going well with London’s Run. It’s a good thing to do. Hopefully it is worth all the stress it causes. Oh, so since I'm moving from Bedford I’m not sure if you want to still send a package via Brother Pratt’s parents. It can happen they would just give the package to the sisters and then they would give it to the zone leaders who would give it to my zone leaders who then would give it to me. If that is what you want to do just let me know and I will give you the Senior Pratt’s address and phone number. I would give it to you now but it is in my bag, which I left in Bletchley and am hoping to get tomorrow.

Sheldon- I cannot believe that you are dating.... LOOK OUT!!!! Brigg- I'm happy that you are just Brigg cause that is the best person Brigg can be. So I got that other package. Thank you for the thermals that are amazing. Actually I'm wearing a pair of them right now...mmmm nice and warm. But the cds did not work :( but that is ok. Here is the deal, now I don’t have a cd player or the ipod thing but Elder Gallagher did give me a digital picture frame which plays mp3 songs so on one of my memory cards I have saved conference talks and the few songs that I could get a hold of on lds.org so I was wondering if when you send me another memory card you could just put some church songs (mo-tab and such) on it then in can just transfer the songs to my picture frame and listen to it while I look at your beautiful faces? That would be awesome. I'm sure that my next email will be much more full with cool stories and strong testimony but to be honesty I'm a bit stressed with the moves now so cant really think about it all.

How cool is that?

Hey real quick note. You email was awesome!

So I remembered that my emails get sent to the blog so I decided to give everyone an update on my Christmas... It was freakin awesome!! We stayed with the Pratt family who are an American family working for the military. I had a great time being a kid again opening the packages that I got from home. I think the best present I got was a highlighter actually used by Zack [my cousin Zack Manis, is serving a mission in Brazil]! I could not believe my luck. Between the package from work and the package from home I think I have like 12 lost and found golf balls! I laughed so hard when I tipped over my stocking and a bunch went bouncing across the floor. We had a great time all day watching movies and making ginger bread (graham cracker) houses and eating a wonderful Christmas dinner. Best part was talking to my family on Skype as seeing that they all were doing so well. I love the mission and know it is right where I need to be!

It was so good to get to talk to you all. It really helped me get energized for the work and help lessen the homesickness. I'm so glad that all of you are doing so well and looking so good! It was so good for me to get to bear my testimony. I really felt the spirit testify that what I was saying was true. I really have needed that for a while. Mom, the BYU bookstore package has arrived and I will be getting it from my district leader latter tonight I haven’t heard about any of the other packages though. I should be going into London on the eighth so I will have to check then. So I need a huge favor for you guys... I need to know the collar size for Brigg and Sheldon. The January sales are coming right quick so I need to get them there new Sunday shirts:) Brigg I will be sending home some notes but I’m going to look for the best ones copy them and then send them home. Oh, yea mom Brother Pratt's dad will be coming to Bedford in February. He lives in Buckeye and he (Bro. Pratt’s dad) said that if you would like to send anything to me to let him know and he will take it. So if you want to take him up on that offer just let me or Brother Pratt know and we will pass the message along and we will be able to figure something out. I will be sending stuff home with him... its brown and sweet if that gives you a hint:). So, I have decided to change our focus and we will be working on visiting every one in the ward, so I’m hoping to find some new people to teach that way! I got a call from Elder Tangulanu last night. Remember that training that I gave like four days into the mission field? The one that I was all nervous for cause it was the whole zone including the A.P’s? Well, at the time he was one of the district leaders and he remembered it this whole time and asked that I give the same training in our next coming district meeting. How cool it that?! I’m really glad that I kept those notes for it! I was reading 3 Nephi 27 today. That is such a good chapter. The Saviour teaches so many pure doctrine points. He even talks about record keeping.

Love,

Elder Solomon