Monday, May 15, 2017

No Mormons! Happy Mother's Day (Week 39, 9 Months, Wilde Green, England)

Family and Friends,

What is on the up and up? It was so weird getting to Skype home again yesterday (shoutout to the fam ft Ben and josh)! To all those who weren't on the Skype call, you can ask my dad to see the video of it if you're interested, but it went well other than some technical difficulties! I really took family for granted back home but I hope you guys all know I really do love you!

This week was popping, we had a good time despite most of our investigators being so flaky. This upcoming week we are gonna work more with members and seeking refferals and working with formers and cool stuff like that. Speaking of refferals, we went to visit an online refferal and when we got there, a sign that said "No Mormons!" was on the door, we knocked but they weren't in haha. We had to drop Axxlex from our teaching pool, it was really sad actually, his doubts overcame his desire to continue his journey. One of the hardest things for me is dropping investigators from our teaching pool because I grow to love them so much and it breaks my heart when they choose to stop progressing towards Jesus Christ. Our friends never showed up to church yesterday which was kinda rough, I wish people would just be honest with us and tell us if they are interested or not. But...we did have some amazing lessons this past week. One was with a guy named Clive, we were teaching him the restoration on his door step and he seemed pretty hesitant to keep listening to us, until we told him we have a modern prophet on the earth today, his eyes lit up like a little kid seeing the ice cream man, it was such a cool experience. We also met with a couple, Kxxeith and Dyyianne, they are in their late 40s/early 50s, and they are some of my favourite people I've met out here so far, they are so cool and genuine. Them and their daughter said they are gonna try to make it out to church this coming Sunday so keep them in your prayers!

Most people we run into here don't like America a ton but last week we met a guy named Rxxeece, with a stage name of Nikkyi Freece, he's a rapper and he was way cool, he loves the states, and didn't even ask us about the T-word, or in other words Trump. 

For those following my health extravaganza, I went to the doctor this past week and I'll be on omeprasole for the next 2 weeks to 2 months and if I don't feel better on it I'm in for lots of blood tests, but I just keep reminding myself that I need to trust in God's timetable. We ate at a place in the city centre called Mission Burrito, such good Mexican food! 

We went to Sutton Park, one of the biggest parks in the U.K., to talk to people and it was such a sick park! As we were walking to our bikes through this middle of nowhere part of the park, a car pulled up to us, there was three Islamic guys in there smoking weed and they told us to come over and talk to them. If that wasn't a red flag enough to get the fetch out of there, then them trying to convert us to Islam should have been, I must've thought I was in a different world because I gave them our number and didn't realise how stupid I was until we walked away.

Also we got to do exchanges with the zone leaders this past week, I went with elder o'peikens from Utah. We spent most of our time in Wolverhampton, boy I miss city centres for talking to people, it was so nice. When all four of us were walking into the city centre one night, I randomly stopped this young chav, someone who I usually wouldn't think of stopping, and he actually was receptive and said he'd be interested in reading the Book of Mormon. Goes to show that you never know who is receptive to hearing the gospel so don't hold it back!

I know this email is already long enough but I wanna end again with this quote: "Therefore, my dear brothers and sisters--my dear friends--please, first doubt your doubts before you doubt your faith. We must never allow doubt to hold us prisoner and keep us from the divine love, peace, and gifts that come through faith in the Lord Jesus Christ." When we have doubts, we can't feed those doubts by wasting our time looking into material that will destroy our faith. If a plant was dying, you'd water it, not put poison on it. It's the same principle for having doubts in the gospel, don't stop trying to grow your faith through scripture study and prayer. If you feel your faith is already gone, it's not too late to regrow that faith you once had, Christ is always there with open arms.

I fetching love you all. Look unto Christ in every thought, doubt not, fear not ðŸ˜˜

Elder Varner

pics 1-2: skype is HYPE!
pic 3: prayer time!
pics 4-5: zone for life
pics 6-7: wolverhampton with the homie opeikens
pic 8: sutton park!
pic 9: nikkyi freece
pic 10: danny boy
pic 11: nick and alicia
pic 12: robertson fam
pic 13: birmingham love
pic 14: not welcome

vid 1: game of 21

















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