May 22 Email

Dear wonderful people!

This week was pretty fun. All the details are inside. Enjoy!

Tuesday - Well, today was pretty fun. We had interviews in the afternoon, so we spent the morning making our training for district meeting. Then we drove over to Ipswich and had our interviews. It was a lot of fun. It's always nice to get together with the Zone. While we were all together, the Zone Leaders and the sister training leaders gave trainings. The most important training, for me, was about planning. Honestly, planning is one of the most important skills that one can learn. Hopefully I'll be able to have that mastered before the end of my mission. Then we had the actual interviews. Those were awesome. I love meeting with president and sister Stevens. They have so much love in them. They are like temporary parents for all of us missionaries. It's great to get to see them. After interviews, we drove home and had dinner with the Goughs. I love the Goughs. They always help us out, and they're just so nice! We had this chicken curry stuff on pasta. It was really nice. Then, we went home for a bit of companionship study. Then we got ready for bed. 

Wednesday - Well, today was an experience. So most of the day was finding and stopping by members, less actives, former investigators, and potential investigators. We met lots of people, but nothing really came of it. Then, after a long day of that normal stuff, we stopped by sister hall and her son, Richard. So last time we were there, Richard gave us the challenge to try this mega spicy pepper extract. So, since we came back, we decided we would do it. I took a whole teaspoon. At first it was just the normal pepper challenge. Then my stomach started to hurt really bad, so I went into the bathroom and just really suffered. Then after about twenty minutes of that, I composed myself and went back into the room. We had a lovely message, talked about Richard and his trip to a theme park, and went left. On the way home, round two of pain started, so I pulled over and basically cried for five minutes. Then we drove the rest of the way home. We made a super milky milkshake to help suppress the effects of it. Later on, round three started, and I threw up half of the milkshake as well as half of the chili oil. So now, I'm on the bathroom floor, stomach churning and heaving, as well as having the chili oil back in my throat. So after a few minutes, that calmed down. I went in to bed and laid down for a while. Then I woke up, maybe 45 minutes later and, you guessed it, Round four! My stomach felt like someone had grabbed my intestines and twisted them into a knot. So I threw up the rest of the shake, lunch, last week's dinner, and an unnaturally large amount of water. After all of that, I laid down on the bathroom floor and just cried (not really, but pretty much). It was a great experience. Now, here I am, white as a ghost, writing this journal entry, not sure if it will start up again. Hopefully it's all over. We'll see what happens. Moral of the story, don't ever eat more than a couple drops of that chili sauce, EVER. Good night! :)

Thursday - Well, I didn't have any more projectile vomit or crazy intestinal twists, so I would say the challenge was a success. We started off the morning with doing some contacting of investigators. Then we had lunch. We made ribs. Yum. Then we went finding in town. We found two cool people named Abi and David. They're pretty cool. We'll be seeing them on Tuesday. Then we talked to a few other people, but nothing else really came from it, except we helped this lady to become more Christian, so I guess that that is good. Then we stopped by Tabitha and Simon. They're members in the ward. They usually have some form of service for us to help them with, but none today. We did get to play with their awesome dog, storm. He's so cute! Then we went to have dinner with Bobbie, but she wasn't home, so we made our own dinner. Then we went up to Witham to go to Bowles club. Right after getting there and helping to set up, Bobbie called wondering where we were. So, instead of Bowles club, we went back to Braintree and taught a really good lesson about the importance of prayer. I felt the spirit, so it must have been a good lesson.

(This sign is across the street from Tabi and Si's house.)

Friday - Well, today was a fairly normal day. We bought a couple of food items that we had run out of, then we did our weekly planning. That took the whole morning. After that, we had lunch, did some calls, then headed out to find. We didn't find any new investigators, but we did meet a few cool people. Hopefully they'll get back to us so we can start to teach them. You know, I was just thinking, people don't really want to be taught, they just want to teach. I wish people in the world were a bit more humble. Sorry for the tangent. After finding, we did our companionship study. It seems like every companionship study we've had so far has been for a specific investigator that we've been working with a lot. So that's what we did during our studies. We studied for her. Then we went out finding a bit more, because our appointment with an investigator fell through. Then we picked up a few pairs of trousers that Elder Meier left on Monday. Then we went home to drop them off. Then we immediately went out to visit a part member family. The parents weren't home, so we went into the garden and talked with the children about weapons and what not, because they have a bunch of swords and airsoft guns and such. Their son Bradley is really cool. He's someone we've been trying to work with a lot, because he's awesome and I want him to get baptised. That would make my day. Then we went home for dinner. I made rollercoaster pancakes. They were delicious. 

Saturday - Today was a good day. We did a bit of stuff in the morning. Bought some laundry detergent. Then we had lunch and called a bunch of people. Then we went to Witham. We started off with finding. We isn't find anybody, but hey ho. It was good anyways. Then we did some online proselyting. Added some members on Facebook. Contacted a few people as well. Then we did some stop bys. We stopped by quite a few different people, but nothing really came from it. While we were out we stopped by a woman in the ward. Her name is Valerie. Her husband isn't a member, so we wanted to meet him, but he wasn't home. She did give us 10�� for dinner. We were very grateful for that. So, After a few hours of stop bys, we went back to Braintree for an appointment with a lady named mrs Everett. I think she was home, but she wouldn't answer the door. Oh well, Her loss. Then we went and stopped by a less active man named Fredrick walls. He was pretty nice, but I don't feel that he wanted to talk about church or anything like that. It was a very brief visit. So we decided to go find again. We didn't find anyone again, but we got a few suggestions on where to eat dinner. In the end, though, we decided to buy the stuff to make hamburgers. So we made hamburgers, and we also bought ice cream and a drink, so our dinner was awesome. We each got three giant hamburgers, ice cream, and a 3 liter of soda to share for 11��! Way better than any restaurant. Then we had companionship study. We watched the Elder Holland and President Eyring face to face. It was really good. Then I went to bed. After about an hour, I was woken to some fighting outside. So I looked out the window after the matter, and I guess one of the people in the complex was mad at this guy for trying to get his motorbike to work. He was hammering it pretty loudly, so I guess he got annoyed. So, yeah. Today was great. P.S. Today was my 21 month mark.

Sunday - Today was good. We had ward council first thing in the morning. That was good. We basically spent the entire time talking about the less active member's we stopped by in the past few weeks. Then we had church. We helped pass the sacrament, as always. The reason that is is because we don't have any young men in the ward. Then we had an interesting lesson in Sunday school about temples. Then in Elder's quorum, we had a really awesome lesson about the talk, "walk with me", by president eyring in the April 2017 conference. It was actually a really good lesson. Probably one of the best ones I've had on my mission. I would encourage you to read and study it again. Then after church, we had lunch. Then we went finding for a while. After that, we had a lesson with a less active lady named Leona. We brought the bishop with us as well. She's really nice. We read from Enos. We focused on prayer and how enos received forgiveness of his sins. It was really good. After that, we had our correlation meeting with the bishop and Melissa, one of the ward missionaries. We got a few suggestions on people to meet with and visit. Then we went home and had dinner. 

Well, that was my week! All in all, not too bad. I love you all!

Love,

Elder Warburton