Be Happy!

Hello friends and family!

It has been another wonderful week! They just seem to pass by faster and faster! Soooo let me try my best to recount what has been going on across the pond.

On Thursday this week we had to go shopping for a sister in our ward because she has been super sick. We went over there expecting her to need one or two items, but then she hands us a whole long list of things she needs. So we start making our way to the grocery store and we are walking. And then we keep walking. And then we walk some more, and FINALLY reach the store. Since neither Sister Bader or I are from England, we have no idea what half the stuff on her list is, and the grocery stores here just have less order altogether. So it took us more than an hour to find all of these items, and of course the last item on the list was kitty litter. Let me tell you folks, kitty litter is NOT light. So on top of the 5 million other items, we had to lug this huge thing of litter back to her house and the walk felt like an eternity. I can imagine we were quite the sight for sore eyes as we had to stop every 2 seconds to readjust how we were holding the bags. When we finally made it back, both of our arms were noodles. I could barely open the door handle as we were leaving. On top of that, it ended up taking us like 3 hours. But I survived! And it was super great to make the sister in our ward happy!

On Friday we had our zone meeting! I am no longer the baby of the group, woohooooooo! Practically every companionship has a brand new Elder and it is really funny to see how worried and unsure they look and to think how I was in that exact same situation 6 weeks ago. I am truly convinced that you never learn as fast as you do on a mission! It's been really cool to see that change in myself, and I am looking forward to improving more and more every single day!

 The new Watford Zone!

The lovely Sistassss

That night we had an FHE with a family from our ward and it was super fun! Since they are from America-the-Beautiful, they gave us root beer floats for dessert, which is super unusual here because you can't find rooter ANYWHERE since all the English folks think it tastes like medicine. But that was great. I don't know why I always feel that it's necessary to write about food haha, but yeah... OK, moving on.

Sunday was fast Sunday, which is always a favourite of mine! There's not much that's more powerful than hearing others bear their testimonies about the gospel. Being here in Hayes is super cool because everyone comes from very different backgrounds and different cultures. To give you an idea of what it's like, we heard from a few Brazilians, a Chinese sister, a Bulgarian, a couple of Americans, and of course the English natives. For real, it is so cool. I love it here so much.

On Monday we had a mission wide conference! It was so fun to meet soooooo many missionaries! I do not remember 90% of their names, but ahhhh they are all so nice and fun! We had the pleasure of hearing from Brother Clayton Christensen and Sister Christensen. They are both so amazing, wow! He attended BYU, then Oxford, then Harvard... talk about accomplished. He had a stroke which caused him to lose his ability to speak and has relearned completely. He also went through chemotherapy for cancer, which made him lose all feeling in his feet, and he still teaches and works so hard! Truly inspiring. The conference was focused on member missionary work and helped us as missionaries come up with ideas to work with our members more effectively. The spirit was so strong throughout the whole meeting and I truly loved it. We took a whole mission picture out in the city and I can only imagine that seeing a whole herd of missionaries shuffling through London was quite a site haha. (I don't have the whole mission pic yet! I will get it to you as soon as they post it to us!)

At the beginning of this week Sister Bader and I were kind of at a stand-still. We weren't able to find any new people and no one wanted to listen to us and we were just working so hard. Our district leader called us one night and it looked like it was the case for the whole district. At the end of the phone call he said, "Alright, Sisters, I want you to get your planners out and write something for tomorrow. Alright, are you ready? BE HAPPY!" It was a great reminder that even when times are a little rough and things aren't progressing as quickly as we would like them to, we just need to keep working hard and BE HAPPY! So that is my invitation to all of you. Write that down somewhere you will see it and simply try your hardest to be happy :)

Hmmmmmmm, now for some random business:

I have stepped on two snails recently and the sound haunts me. When it rains here, rather than a bunch of worms all over the place, there are tons and tons of snails, and so stepping on them is sometimes just unavoidable, unfortunately.

Since no one here knows anything about American football, they are all quite impressed and under the impression that I am sooooo sporty when I tell them about like the 3 things I know about the game lol. I'm going to see how long I can carry on this impression that I know my stuff about sports.

All of the missionaries that are from somewhere other than the United States just think that Subway is the bees knees because it is just SO GOOD. It makes me chuckle because that is where people want to go eat. Well, either that or McDonald's. Ahhhhh the luxury hahaha.

Well... that's all for this week, I suppose! I hope that you all have a wonderful week!

Love,
Sister Syddall