May 26th 2014

hey family!! 

This week was great! I do not have a lot of time so this will probably be quite short! It was another great week for Elder Costigan and I. The zone is really doing so well! we have been blessed so much to have the missionaries that are in Leicester at the moment! We are pretty sure that we set a mission record for most new investigators in a month! so we are buzzin' about that.  This week there were some sweet miracles. We decided to go to Leicester for the day of transfers to help the teams with their luggage and belongings and seeing them off on their trains and buses to their new areas. This left us with 2 hours where we had no plans, and it would have been a waste of time to drive back to Loughborough, so we decided we were going to street contact at the Leicester city center.  Elder Costigan and I split up and in 2 hours we were able to find 28 potential investigators! none of them will be for us because Leicester itself isn't our area, but it was fun to able to find for the other teams in the zone and go to a place where neither of us had been before.  

one of the potentials that Elder Costigan found actually is a uni-student from Loughborough and we were able to teach her and she is now on a baptismal date for the 21st of June! on the 21st we have 4 baptisms scheduled, and on the 7th we have a chinese investigator named David who is looking really solid! he came to church yesterday and loved it! received answers to his questions and he is really feeling the spirit in his life.  

tomorrow I take my drivers test again, and I would like to ask each of you to pray for me! the driving is soooo different here and it's much harder and I really need to be able to pass this test so that we will be able to go on more exchanges to help our zone, so please pray for me to be able to be relaxed and to pass the test which I will take tomorrow morning!

I love all of you so much! I also know that the church is true! Elder De Feo, an Area 70 (from Italy) came to our stake conference and he was INCREDIBLE. it's amazing to see how carefully he listened for what the spirit was trying to teach him, and during both the saturday and sunday sessions, he looked for patterns in the meeting, and free-styled 2 different talks based on how he was feeling the spirit. His Sunday session talk was one of the best I've heard in my life, out of any that have been in general conference or anywhere. He told the stories of Christ raising people from the dead in the New Testamanent.  No one in the world is spiritually dead. we may think that people have no chance of accepting the gospel, or of finding happiness, or improving their lives, but when the Savior lays his hands on them, they will awake. No one is spiritually dead, they are only sleeping!  my challenge to each of you is find those of your loved ones you feel are dead, and wake them up!  love them and serve them and have faith that the Savior can do anything! 

Have an amazing week! talk to you soon! 

May 5, 2014

Oh my gosh we've MAY'd it! heheh This week was great! our zone is doing excellent and it is fun to be a missionary in Leicester right now!  I am really getting used to Loughborough as I think I have said last week, the ward, the people, my companion, my district, and my zone, they are all great!  

Last P-day we just played volleyball with the sisters in  Loughborough, and then we were able to teach Virginia and Jill!

Elder Costigan and I have been trying something new with our university student investigators, when we first GQ them, we let them know that our lesson will only be 10 minutes, and then when we meet with them we stick to our ward, share the restoration or plan of salvation or whatever we feel prompted to, in less than 10 minutes! many of our investigators have wanted to have return appointments because they know it's not taking a lot out of their busy schedules and it's finals right now!  

On Wednesday morning I was having a really good personal study and feeling the spirit really strong, I felt prompted to study patterns. God works in patterns in our lives, and he wants us to be able to pay attention to what has been effective for each of us in our lives and to continuous evaluate and improve our efforts in whatever we choose to be important in our individual lives.  I was looking at the people that I have been able to teach and baptize and I realized that these were all people that were way more an actual friend than an investigator-missionary relationship.  Love breeds conversion!  obvious statement but it hit me over the head and I felt silly for not thinking about this earlier on.  We prayed loads about what we needed to start doing in companionship study to bring more people into the gospel, and we thought that we should try visiting loads of less actives!  We spent probably 15 or so hours visiting less actives this week, and only got in with 2 of them.. but we saw SO many miracles on the way!! 

On the way to a less active, we have found some incredible people, and have gotten to meet a really cool part-member family that we are going to start working with. If we can't retain the people that are already in the church, why would Heavenly Father give us more people?? 

We committed 5 people to come to church, and the morning of, we received 5 text messages of why they couldn't come any more, and we were a little bit discouraged, we prayed that we would be able to see a miracle and have someone show up to church. 10 minutes before the meeting started we got a phone call from our chinese recent convert, hannah. She was so exited to tell us that she was bringing a friend to church and that we needed to fellowship her! her friends name is legitimately meow-meow. chinese people rock! haha she is really great and we will now be teaching her! 

Jill is really progressing!! she is so exited for her baptism on saturday and in her own words, "nothing is going to stop me from being baptized. If I have to wait in the font until someone comes in to baptize me for a couple of weeks I'll do it!" she is incredible and we are so blessed to be able to teach her. it's about time is all I can say though haha. 

So.. Sister Kear in Loughborough ward said she'll be swimming in our pool sometime in June?? tell me more about that! I told them that mom would be able to give their daughter a great deal on real estate, so mom, hook it up for some people that are taking great care of me on my mission! they are 2 incredible people, with the most adorable grandchildren in the world! I'm exited for you to meet them. I could see dad and brother kear becoming great friends!  

I Will be skyping on Sunday at around 4 o clock! so... 9 o clock your time?? I am looking forward to seeing you all! I can't believe it's been a year since I have skyped you on last mothers day. absolutely mad.  

Well, I sure love you all so much! I'm so grateful for this experience of coming on a mission and the difference that it has made in my life and the lives of others, I cannot say thank you enough mom and dad for letting me come out here and share The saviors gospel!! 

Talk to you soon! :) 

Elder Sam Harris.