Oct 25th, 2014

Family!!

I will say sorry before hand, we have basically no time today but I will try to fit in as much as I can for this week. 

First off, I loved seeing pics of everyone, especially in Boise! I'm so looking forward to visiting the family soon after I finish my mission.  Seeing Spence and Mike golfing made me a little excited for the future.. WAY EXCITED. 

This week was a humbling week in a lot of ways, but we still saw some miracles. Sonia is definitely going to be baptised a week from today, which is absolutely nuts! She is great. One of the most lovely people I've met in my whole life, and she's just really sweet.  It rained this week.. A LOT. well, it rains every week, but this week it rained HARD. it rained so hard yesterday that on some of the streets, the roads were flooded so the water was halfway up the car when driving! it was like driving with faith haha because we couldn't see the lines, we just had to trust that we were in our lanes. it was good fun though and we got some good videos.  I'm so tired of the rain, but I can imagine that upon my return home each time it rains I will happily go and embrace it. 

We spent LOADS of time finding this week. We got loads and loads of return appointments, close to 30, but only a few of them stuck, which was really frustrating, but we are pushing through it. Besides Sonia and Matte, are teaching pool is struggling quite a bit.  One pretty fantastic thing that happened this week was the finding of 3 new investigators, PHillipus, Yanis, and danight. They are from Eritrea (add that to the list of people I've met on my mission from different countries) They are humble and love Jesus, so there is definitely some cool potential there.  

Today we're going golfing... AGAIN :) I love that my companion is a golfer. It's amazing to be able to relax for a couple of hours despite how frustrating it is that I can't chip or putt haha. 

Life is good, time is going by a little too fast for my liking, but it's all good. 

Enjoy having Marsh home on the 3rd of November! that should be fun. he's a good kid and I miss him like heck. 

Love you all, thanks for being awesome! 

Love,

Elder Sam Harris

Oct 18, 2014

Hey family!! 

Last week, Sue was baptised and confirmed, I'll send the pictures in another email to you.  It was a really great service! we had about 30 of the members come out to support her, and the spirit was really strong, as always. She is still doing awesome, she's working towards going to the temple in November, and it is always such a delight to spend time sharing the gospel with her! 

On Sunday we had Sonia come to church, she is doing AMAZING! We saw her on sunday night with the same senior couple I mentioned earlier called the Jolley's, and she has been reading and praying every day, she hasn't missed church since the first time we met her, and when we asked her how she was feeling about Nov. 1st, she said that she knows she needs to do it. We finished teaching her the commandments this week, and now all we have to share with her is about the temple and family history.  She is one of the sweetest ladies I've met on my mission, and she is going to be an outstanding member of the church! she was so prepared by the lord to receive this gospel, and it's amazing to look back from finding her a few weeks back, to how much progress she has made in such a short amount of time because she has been diligent in reading the Book of Mormon daily, and praying sincerely to know if it's true. 

Golfing was way fun! we're going to the putting green again today. I shot a 38, not bad for not playing in 18 months, but always room for improvement :)  

On Tuesday we taught a new investigator, Shauna, and we put her on a date to be baptised on the 15th of November! She has heard of the church in the past from a friend in college, and when I contacted her on the street she was pretty excited to meet with us. Please keep Sonia, Shauna, and Matte in your prayers!

Matte is the Hungarian kid we mentioned earlier. He's a great kid, but we're not sure how much desire he has at the moment. 

To answer a few of dad's questions, I got pictures of me and my previous companions at mission leadership council, and we'll have plenty more where they'll all be there, we give training at the mission leadership council and at zone conferences, and at zone conferences I'll get to go to Wales, in Cardiff, and Swansea for the first times as well. 

A miracle we had was on Thursday, I street contacted a man who, with a giant smile on his face, asked, "Are you a mormon missionary?" turns out that this man, Nigel, investigated the gospel 30 years ago when he was in his teens. He just found his faith in Jesus Christ 10 years ago, and he asked if we could sit down right then and have a discussion about the book of mormon, because he thought it might make more sense to him now that he has a faith. As we sat down together and discussed the restoration and the Book of Mormon, he was so excited to read it. He promised me that he would read the whole book in the next 3 weeks, and we can't wait to follow up with him and see how he's feeling about the gospel. We're also excited because he is a lawyer, and has a family, and he's incredibly bright. He's a kingdom builder!-- not sure what's happned with the font style. 

love and miss you! let me know of any other questions you have for me! 

Oct 11, 2014

Good morning family!

This week was brilliant!

On Monday, we once again, spent all day in the office preparing for mission leadership council, and printing out the key indicators for the mission, as well as finalizaing the monthly report for convert baptisms that gets sent to the church headquarters. 

On Tuesday, Mission Leadership Council was great. I always enjoy seeing my good friends from the mission, each of my companions still on the mission were at the meeting. It was great to see Elder's Debeikes, Costigan, Pogue, and Unice.  After MLC I got to go back to COVENTRY! It was probably in my top 3 favorite exchanges of my mission so far.  First, we went and visited Sam and Sarah Bowles, and then, we got to go and visit Gifty! she is soooo sweet. I walked into the door, and she was expecting the missionaries that are currently there. When she realized it was me her face just lit up it was a priceless moment.  "HHHAAARRRRIIISSS!!!!!!" Sam and Sarah also made us breakfast, and then we went street contacting at the university there for a few hours, in the pouring rain. after an hour and half of being completely soaked, I was basically numb in most of my body so the pain was gone and we had more energy to keep going until we had to exchange back :) as much as it is cold and wet, while talking to these random strangers, every so often I realize how much I love being a missionary, and how much I will miss this when it's over. 

Wednesday we did a lot of finding actually which was a great change of pace from being in the office. 

On thursday we had zone meeting, and then sue's baptism interview. Sue will be baptised in about 5 hours, we're really looking forward to it, and so is she! we'll send pictures next week.  On Thursday we had an opportunity to teach in a members home. As we were waiting for an investigator to come to the appointment, we decided to street contact an old woman. Her name is Trish and she's a miracle. She is SO SWEET. She's extremely roman catholic. As we had the first lesson with her yesterday, she said before we said anything, "I'm not ever going to be a mormon." As we talked about the restoration, and especially the great apostacy, everything made sense to her, and by the end of the lesson she was so excited to read the book of mormon, to find out if God really does call prophets today.  It was a testimony to me that god puts people in our paths that are looking for the truth, even if we only have 3 mintues of finding time. 

Oh yeah, I was sick all week as well, every morning I woke up and felt like I couldn't move, but every day I was able to make it just to the end with strength sufficient to finish out the day before I would fall asleep regardless of what we were doing. I'm feeling much better now and have been using OnGuard on my chest and throat, I think it's helped heaps! 

After were finished emailing, we're going to pipe-hayes golf course to play 9!! woo! I'm stoked, even if I shoot in the 50's, it's going to be a blast to go out there and play. the deal is, 10 pounds for unlimited golf after 2, and because it's pretty cold and windy, I reckon hardly anyone is there! so, we might even get more than 9 holes in :) 

Know that each of you are in my prayers and I'm excited each time I hear from you. I'm glad that you're all happy, and I pray that you will be able to achieve the righteous desires of your hearts! 

Love and miss you!

Elder Samuel Harris.