"I am Covered in Sunshine"

Hello hello,

            Man, what a week – fast, busy, rainy, cold, and everything in between!

            Well, may I just say Emma, one of our investigators from China, is golden. She is amazing, and our Chinese teaching pool keeps multiplying and replenishing because they keep bringing friends. We may have to rent out a theatre or something soon. Jokes, but yeah, it’s getting pretty crowded. 

            But Emma is so good. She reads the Book of Mormon every day, she prays, she understands things so well, and is very much looking forward to her baptism on the 9th of November. We had dinner with her, her friend Neil, and some members on Saturday and had a good time. At the end we shared the Restoration DVD in Chinese. Afterwards we asked them how they felt. And Neil put it very simply by saying, “I am covered in sunshine” haha. They came to church the next day and it was good.  We are seeing them three times this week – another dinner with more members, I believe. The ward really likes her. So I am over the moon about all of that. 
The only put-off for her was when we showed her the baptismal font at the end of church yesterday and there were like 10 dead spiders in the bottom.  You could tell she was kind of concerned about that haha.  Woops.

            We had a couple exchanges this week. On one of them I went to a place called Lowestoft on the coast – really nice town.  I was with Elder Bright who is in his third transfer. We had some powerful lessons. One was with a lady named Carmen. She has investigated for a few months now, loves the Book of Mormon, but hasn’t been able to stop smoking. We really didn’t know where the lesson was going while we were with her. She got really mad about how she is so stressed and how she doesn’t really want to come to church and all these things. While listening to her I felt really prompted to just tell her to relax, so I did. And I kept going on about how the gospel is there to help us find peace, and that really she doesn’t need to get all worked up about things in her life and that she needs to look at all of the good. Boom! The spirit was there and it was powerful. She looked at us for a second and then I said how she just smokes because she is stressed and if she just relaxes a bit and enjoys life she won’t smoke. Hit the nail on the head. I am so grateful for the spirit. It can literally fill our mouths in the moment we need it. We just need to be worthy and listen.

            Other than that this week was up and down. So much is going on and we are really trying to get this zone to reach its full potential. It is certainly a task but we are working at it.

            Here are a couple pictures of the meals I have had this week. I didn’t know what else to take a picture of.

Elder Purdy

Lighting the World With the Gospel

            Blimey!

            I will start with a very delayed Happy Birthday to my pal Natedog Jessee!

            We worked hard this week, and saw some cool things happen, but we are still trying to build up. Our teaching pool is a bit less than desirable. But we are changing that, talking with errrryybody. That’s all it takes. 

            We had a zone meeting about that actually. No matter where you are just talk to people. It is amazing the situations the Lord puts you in that can lead to something really powerful. By small and simple things, I suppose. I think the missionaries liked it.

            Yes sir, this week went by fast. Tuesday we met a very nice man who had lost his glasses and was looking for them. We offered to help and he was very happy for it. We talked with him as we helped him and he said he was a Christian and wanted to get more into it. He was stoked to find out we were missionaries and invited us to his home later in the week. We never found his glasses, but a couple of days later he phoned up and was screaming at my companion about how we were going to hell, that our works couldn’t save us and that we were nothing but a cult. So needless to say, we never tried to pop by. Yikes!

            But we found a lovely investigator named Emma. She is Chinese, from Beijing in fact, and is studying at the UEA. We talked with her about God, who He is and how we can communicate with him. And as we prayed she asked how she can be baptized. Bingo! She is prepared. She came to church on Sunday and brought two of her friends Neil and Jennifer. They really enjoyed it. We should be teaching all three of them this week. You could tell that the light of Christ was burning in them, especially during the hymns.

            On Saturday we went up north to a place called Mundesley to visit a lovely sister who was feeding us our evening tea. We were tracting around her house beforehand and we found a very nice piece of pavement. We walked down it and right before our eyes there was the North Sea! Really really pretty. And there were actually waves. Oh man … it was magical. It made me want to paddle out. We took a picture and breathed it all in then went back to tracting. It was a tender mercy for sure. There is a place in my area where people surf called Cromer, so I want to go tract around there haha.

            By the way, the food we had was your classy English roast food and for pudding we had some delicious orange chocolate and almond cake. I don’t know how to describe it, but it was out of this world.

            On our way home from that lovely dinner, our GPS got us wayyy off the beaten path and we were cruising through some one-lane road through some forest. We got home somehow but it was an adventure haha.

            Things are really cooling down here – rain  rain rain – but it’s good. We are lighting the world with the gospel. This week will be good. Another week of building the kingdom!

            What an exciting time to be a missionary. The work is hastening, missionaries have been flooding in. Last month our mission had 40+ baptisms, which is really good for us. It is good to be here.

Love you guys.

Take care,

Elder Purdy

Rainy As Usual

It has been rainy rainy rainy here just as usual. My companion asks me five times a day if this is what it’s going to be like his whole mission, and I very patiently reply yes. Don’t know if he is thinking the answer is going to change.