Blake - Birmingham England Mission

August 24

Life for us this week was really good we didn't have a lot of lessons this week but we were able to do a lot of finding and to set up some good stuff for the coming week, but man did we get wet. It has rained for at least 2 hours every day since Monday but we have been lucky to stay out of most of the worst stuff. We were in the worst storm that was on Sunday night and it was thunder and lightning but it was really far away, it was cool and weird the water was cold but the weather was really warm. It reminded me of the rain that we get back home, down pour then nothing but it was cool, we did get in with a guy to tell him about the church and all he wanted to do was bash with us so we went back out into the rain haha.

On Tuesday we went out to Usk, a part of our area that i am not sure missionaries have been to in over a year and it was quite a trek to get out there but fun. I was just praying that I didn't get a flat tire on the way out there. We planned we would go out there and then the next day it was raining and we were thinking maybe not, then we just went for it and it was fun but really wet, I found out what other missionaries were saying that after about a year a water proof jacket isn't very water proof any more. It's like they design them to fail after a year because the one I have was soaked through. Luckily a had another jacket with me one that another missionary left behind and that saved me but man were we wet. but we got to see some ponies on the side of the road and we fed them apples.

We also got mistaken as police twice this week once when we went to knock on a door and they opened it and asked why we were there what had  they done and we said we are the missionaries and they were like no thanks, another we went up to this old man and he asked are you out on patrol and then he realized we weren't police officers. He was nice but not interested.
Things in the way of investigators should be pretty good this week. Love you guys I cant think of anything else to say right now. I am doing good, I love my mission and I love you guys so much and thanks for all your love and support.
Elder Poll

August 31

This week has been one of those week that you work hard and everything looks good and then no one shows up to anything really, Our zone conference was actually a zone meeting but with president. (zone meeting is usually just the zone with the zone leaders doing the teaching that they heard from president in there meeting) (zone conference is with two or three zones together and president gives the training himself) This was kind of in between, it was good but I was really hoping for zone conference.They are more fun and also more spiritual, but what was cool was they opened it up at the end of the meeting for testimonies. I just felt I had to share mine and I don't really remember what I said but it had to do something along the lines of missions are hard but rewarding. When I said bore my testimony E didn't realize how many new missionaries were there. We had about 6 missionaries that had been out less that 4 weeks. All of them said that it helped them so I guess that was cool this week. I'm glad I made a difference for them because the rest of our week was a bit of a bust. Almost all of our lessons canceled or didn't show up. We did get the chance to do a lot of service this week and that was nice. It is good to finish a day and be physically as tired as you are mentally.  I am almost always tired mentally but physically not as much any more because my body has adjusted to missionary life and biking a lot. That was the big thing in this area that I had to adjust to. Now I have pretty much adjusted and now I just don't get as tired.

Something I learned this week is elder D is really good at making things look perfect. We were laying some stones for a base for a shed this week and they got us a level but elder D hardly needed it he would just scrape the ground flat and pat it and stuff then he would lay the block and it would just be level it was cool and crazy.
Well that's all for this week.
Love you guys.
Elder Poll