Elder in England: Week 4: Wrong Side of the Road!

Heeeellllloooooooooo!!!!

This week's been really great! Of course I still have a lot I could do better and improve on, but I've already learned so much and had so many great experiences here in the mission field, and I can already tell that the next two years are going to be amazing!

I knocked on my first door this week! It was on my first exchange with another elder in our district, Elder Fullmore. I'm really grateful that I had him for my first real finding experience because he's on his last transfer right now, which means he's had a lot of experience finding. We went tracting down the street next to the chapel, and after a few times of demonstrating how to do it, he told me that it was my turn. I thought for a few seconds, and then I rang the doorbell. I hadn't even taken my finger off the doorbell when someone opened the door, so I was a little surprised. I stumbled over my words, but I managed to introduce ourselves as missionaries and asked if he'd ever seen us before. He quickly told us that he wasn't interested but that he respected what we were doing. He politely shook our hands and closed the door. A lot of the doors we knocked on were like that - they were almost always kind and polite, but most of them didn't have any interest in talking to us. There were one or two people that we were nice and talked to us for a while, and we even were able to get some contact information from one of them, but most of them didn't want to talk to us for too long.

We also went finding at Town Center, where we just walked around in a big circle for a few hours and stopped as many people as we could. I was afraid to talk to anyone at first, but then Elder Fullmore really helped me become more confident talking to people about the Gospel. We started making goals about how many people we'd stop and talk to, and we were able to do pretty well for a while. When we got down to our last half hour, Elder Fullmore thought it would be a good idea to sit down, talk about what we were doing well and what we could improve on, and pray for help. I was still pretty nervous after we'd done this, but it made an immediate difference. The next person we stopped had a mother who was a member, and he said that he'd met with the missionaries before. He said that he'd never taken it seriously before and hadn't ever prayed to know if The Book of Mormon was true, so we challenged him to go home and do that. We also gave him our number and asked him to call us or text us to let us know about how it went. Even though we didn't hear from him after that, I could imagine how that must've been an answer to the prayers of his family for him, and I'm so glad that we followed the prompting to talk to him. We stopped a lot of other people after that, including one really good person that I stopped, and it just really strengthened my testimony that God answers prayers and that He really does prepare people to receive the Gospel.

Well, that's all the time I have this week! Love you all and can't wait to hear from you! Write me letters!

Elder McOmber

P.S. I haven't been able to pick up any mail from the mission office yet, so please don't think I'm ignoring you if you sent me mail. I'll be picking it up Thursday, and it sounds like it takes around a week for mail to get to England from the US. It'd probably be better to send written mail to my apartment in England:

Elder Spencer McOmber

36b Orchard Street

Chelmsford

Essex
England, CM2 0HD
United Kingdom

Funnies of the Week:

I survived driving with one of the craziest drivers I've ever known. We were probably going somewhere between 20 mph over the speed limit on tiny, winding, bumpy country roads. He drove what would've normally been about an hour trip in less than 20 minutes. He literally drifted around corners and on the motorway (freeway) entrance. The best part was that while he was driving, we started smelling the brake fluid burning, and he told us that meant the brakes he installed on the car had lost about 65% of their effectiveness. And then he proudly told us how he'd ridden off (totaled) 7 cars already.

When we were doing a survey for my 12-Week Missionary Training, I noticed my companion put a check next to "overstressed companion".

Nick! Remember that three-wheeled car we saw on Top Gear? I passed one of those while we were heading to an appointment the other day! I've also seen a lot of really nice Jaguars, BMWs, Mercedes, a Lotus Elise, and even a Ferrari (I think).

George, a 94-year-old member in our ward, was driving us back to his house so we could help around his garden. While we were driving, somewhere in the conversation, he said, "You only live once."

(Finally able to send us more pictures from his first few weeks in England)