Fellow BYU fans! What the heck is up?! Thanks for tuning into
another episode across the pond! This last week has been a weird one to say the
least! There were some high highs and some lower lows, it is so hard to leave
an area. Honestly I thought it was hard leaving Swansea, but leaving Wylde
Green was even harder, I'm so grateful for everyone in that ward, it really did
become home to me and I made some amazing friends there, but I'm sure I'll grow
to love this ward as well! Wales can't get enough of me I guess! And I've been
out for ten months now! The time is flying!
Boy am I happy to have been transferred to Wales at least! The
people here are so nice, even when they reject us they are nice. One guy
yesterday opened the door and said he wasn't interested but he'd be more than
happy to give us an ice cream bar. The people are just pleasant here.
I managed to work my way over from Birmingham and switch
platforms twice with two suitcases AND a bike, I definitely won a medal for
that. Nah, only reason I was able to do that were some super helpful people
that God sent my way to help me, I have no doubt about it that He sent angels
my way to help me! I was greeted by elder Mason and we got straight to
business! This area is so clutch! We have a university on the border of our
area that we are gonna start using and the people are so friendly. The sun has
been shining like crazy this week as well! It's been a warm welcome back to
Wales indeed, literally it's like burning.
We've had a lot of success for this first week of the transfer!
We are currently building up a pool of people to work with, one of which
accepted a baptismal invitation for the 29th of July! His name is Txxommy! We
have a lot of work to do with him and the others so stay tuned. Every Friday is
football Friday out here so we played some fútbol last Friday, I am still
straight garbage at it, but it's all good cuz I redeemed myself at basketball,
which we play every Saturday night. We got a nice 4v4 going, I only had church
shoes to wear to it (semi-long/boring story) but I still balled out with some
nice mid range drainage. We are like a 2 minute walk from the chapel so we are
gonna start going a few mornings every week to ball out for an hour!
Just one other cool experience: so we went to visit the Gould
family the day after I got here. They are members in the ward, and their 33
year old son passed away from cancer two weeks ago, leaving behind a wife and
three kids. We were talking with brother and sister gould and as they asked
about my family, I got to share a bit of my experience with my mom passing
away. They asked me questions about how I dealt with it, if it ever gets
better, and we just had a real heart to heart convo. Tears were shed as we
shared testimonies. I shared with them D&C 130:2 which is all about eternal
families. At the end of our visit, he asked me with tears in his eyes "do
you think you were sent here to help us through this?" I've got such a
strong testimony that Jesus Christ leads not only his church, but his
missionaries, I know that he inspired President Leppard to send me here and
that the Gould family is one of the reasons I'm here. We attended their son's
funeral, which had over 600 people present, on Saturday and brother Gould told me
that he was so grateful that I'm here to help them through this. I've had some
of my most spiritual and emotional experiences in the last week.
This week for my personal studies featured chapter 2 of the ARP
Manuel which is all about hope. Having hope that Jesus Christ can really heal
us and cleanse us from sin and hope that we can live with our families and god
again. In it, it used a scripture I loved! It's alma 32:27, which says "But
behold, if ye will awake and arouse your faculties, even to an experiment upon
my words, and exercise a particle of faith, yea, even if ye can no more than
desire to believe, let this desire work in you, even until ye believe in a
manner that ye can give place for a portion of my words." Gaining a
testimony and strong faith can come from even simply a desire. I know that my
testimony came simply from a hope that my family could live together forever,
and that hope grew into what now is my testimony. Alma 32 is such a beast
chapter as well!
mae'n ddrwg gennym ar gyfer yr hir e-bost! cael da wythnos! Rwyf
wrth fy modd i chi guys! edrych at Grist ym mhob meddwl, amheuaeth beidio, nac
ofna ✌️
Elder Varner
side note: for the last sentence, translation errors may occur
due to google translate
Sent from my iPad
pics 1-3: last pday ft the homie hill and a fam pic
pic 4-7: farewells to the ogradys and pj/sonia, the moreton
fam, and the owens
pic 8: duces kinard!
pic 9: reunion with miner before he flies back to the
promised land!
pic 10: sweet golf course we live near
pic 11: in the front, the homies kinnunen and langi, in the
back we got your boy DV and elder mason
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