Ward Mission Leader took us for a curry! Oh how I've missed it!
Hello everyone!
How are you doing?
The sun is out in London finally! Me and Elder Farley have been in a tag team match with Wind and his friend Rain these past two weeks. They got us on the mat a few times but we ploughed through and sent them both packing. Probably back to Manchester. Ha! The wind down here is definitely more powerful than back home though and finding people to teach in this concrete metropolis has been difficult but we have still be blessed with miracles!
The Lord still sends people who are prepared to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ to his less than inadequate missionaries. It amazes me how it works and seeing how people’s lives change because of the things that we tell them is something I still can’t comprehend. We had a lesson with Laura last week on the Plan of Salvation. We put her faith and ours to the test and we gave her the reading material for the lesson at the previous lesson we had and challenged her to study it and then teach US the next time. We met in a Baskin Robbins ice cream parlour and used the table we’d taken to place on it cartoon cut outs of each step of the Plan and then let her expound. It was so profound. She understood the whole Spirit of the Plan, she emphasized the need for the Fall of Adam and testified of the essentiality of Christ’s Atonement. She ended her presentation with the conclusion that ‘God is such a good guy’! Indeed he is. This episode illustrates just how active the Spirit of God is within our lives. Whilst me and Elder Farley have taught and testified to Laura of the Truthfulness of Christ’s Gospel, whilst we have been praying and planning for her and whilst we have been busy with all the other things Missionaries do, The Spirit has been carrying the Gospel into the depths of Laura’s Heart and has witnessed to her whole soul that the things she has been learning are True. This is the beauty of missionary work and is another reminder that this truly isn’t out work; it is unquestionably the Lord’s. (Just to add, laura brings with her to each lesson and pen and pad. She uses this to write down everything we tell her and to record and remember all the questions she has after studying herself. You can imagine how long some of our lessons have been. She is great.)
So fun story; Me and Elder Farley went to visit a less active just south of Hampstead heath, he wasn’t in but we talked to his neighbour and left a note on his door saying we called by and to call us when he gets home; to our astonishment he did and we are seeing him this week! Hurrah! Anyway back to the fun story, so when we were walking back from Fernandos (the less active) we found ourselves a heavily populated basketball court. It was filled with teenagers of all backgrounds and we could see that some of them were infact ‘Ballers’ (correct term used for someone who can successfully bounce a ball from left hand to right and not look a fool whilst in the process.) ha So we saw an opportunity. I don’t think Elder Farley saw the same thing as I did, but we found ourselves both walking towards the court. I quickly became the Promoter for my Humble Utahn companion and challenged the slightly confused teens to decide which of them was the best ‘Baller’ within their group. Reason being; I had a ‘skinny white kid from Utah’ who thinks he can ball wanting a one-on-one match with one of you punks. Little did they know that Elder Farley was indeed a ‘Baller’, a very good one. One of them came forth and confidently agreed to the death match. What ensued was like something out of a film. This was the sequel to ‘White Men Can’t Jump’ with the added caption ‘Unless they’re Mormon’ . Elder Farley straight up dunked on this kid and was dropping 3 pointers for fun. The reaction from the teens was priceless. They were freaking out and it brought such huge smiles to their faces! Elder Farley however was sensitive to what was happening and consequently let the 15 year old giant he was facing ultimately win the one on one, he didn’t want his friends to tease him endlessly about being beat by the ‘Skinny white kid from Utah’! ha. After the match Elder Farley preceded to dunk according to the demands of the teens and in the process he gained the respect of them all. So much so that they began to refer to him as ‘Utah!’. Obviously the goal of this was not just to parade the basketball talents of my companion to the world but to make a connection with a group we normally don’t run into on our usual day. We talked a little bit about the Gospel before we left and gave them all pass along cards. They may not be ready for the Gospel now, but in years to come they will remember the experience they had with the missionaries and who knows what could happen.
We had interviews with our mission President this week and it was such a blessed experience. I really know that President Jordan Loves us all and is so invested in helping us progress as missionaries. He gave us such great insights and answered with clarity the questions we all had. He is someone that I would confidently follow into battle and I guess that’s we are essentially doing in the England London Mission.
I love you all
Hugs and Handshakes
Elder Nolan
PS. I turn 21 this week and I am gradually coming to terms with it. 9 years to 30 is all I will be thinking about come Thursday .
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