More Mission News

The time is flying by. Can't believe we have been here almost four months already. November flew by. We had Zone Conference, which was great. President and Sister Ogden are great examples and teachers. We are still visiting quite a few people regularly.

Beryl Eden has finally got an appt to get her Patriarchal blessing. She is so excited. She says she is "over the moon" about it. She is 80 years old and can't wait to see what life has in store for her!!! She is a really cool lady and calls us her favorite people, which makes us feel really good. We have really come to love her.

We have another visit with Matthew Gregory tomorrow. He is the only member in his family and quit going to church when he got worried that he might not be with his family in the next life because he doesn't think they will ever join the church. We are trying to help him understand about their opportunity to accept it in the spirit world and that he needs to keep coming to church so he can do all he can to help them.

Betty Walraven is another 80 year old sister who we are visiting. She is very active, but has a lot of worries in her life. She grew up never knowing her mother and none of her family even knew that she existed. With the help of a couple in the ward doing some family research she was able to find some of her family and they have met and have become close. She is going to the temple next week to do the work for her mother. She is so excited. She also has had an insurance guy who has been blackmailing her for the last 16 years into paying him 400lbs per month. Threatening her etc. When her family found out about it they hit the roof and called the police. Come to find out he has been doing the same thing to several other women. He is now in prison (the mental ward) and Betty is having a hard time dealing with it. We have been asked to stay close to her and visit as often as we can to help her deal with it. She will probably be able to recover a lot of the money she paid him. She feel very embarrassed to have been taken in by him.

We are trying to visit with more of the active members so we can get them involved in helping with the inactives. It is amazing how little home teaching and visit teaching they do in this ward. They just don't seem to stay in touch with those that don't come all the time. It is something that the Mission Pres. really stressed at zone conference. Get the members involved.

We had a great Thanksgiving Dinner with a family in the ward. The husband is from the States so they always celebrate Thanksgiving. they had around 25 people for dinner. I made pecan pies, banana cream pie, and sweet potatoes w/marshmallows. They don't really eat that here, so some of them wouldn't even try it. the hostest loved it, however, and ate about 6 helpings. They did have turkey, ham and all the other trimmings. They set tables up outside in their big shed and it was freezing, but we managed to stay out long enough to eat way too much!

The weather has turned pretty cold. We wear sweaters "all the time" and are still cold. And the real cold weather hasn't even come yet. We actually had a little snow this week.

The Mission got 2 brand new cars a couple of weeks ago and the Mission Pres. gave one of them to us. Wow, we are so blessed. It runs so much better than the one we had. It is diesel and has the suicide doors. All the elders were quite envious at dist. mtg last week. They all had to take turns sitting in it and drooling.

We will be going to Birmingham next week for a Farewell Party for two of the senior couple that are going home. And Dec. 24 we are having a Christmas Party for the whole mission. Pres. Ogden says this is the first time they have ever done this, so everyone is very excited. They are working really hard to coordinate getting all the missionaries to Birmingham at one time. Should be really fun.

We had our first YSA Family Home Evening last night. Not a good turnout, but it was a start. We are also starting a weekly scripture study class the 1st of January. We are excited about that and have several people who want to come.

We love and miss you all. Love, Sister Henry

P.S. Heard the funniest thing in SS Class yesterday. The teacher said she was coming home from Wales Saturday and realized that the water in her "wishy washer" was frozen. It took us a minute to realize that she was talking about her "windshield wipers". They talk real funny over here!!!

It has been a busy yet uneventful week. That is if you don't consider our Christmas present from the Mission President. Monday we finnished up the Flat Inspections for the transfer period and since we were half way to Birmingham we decided to go on in and go to Costco and to the Mission Office to pick up some supplies. On our way to Birmingham we get a call from Elder Long who is in charge of the cars. He told us that they had just got two new cars and President Ogden told him to give us one. The problem was that they would not get there until Tuesday. We went on and took care of our business and then drove home. We then made another trip in on Wednesday to pick up our car. It is very nice. It is the same Vauxhall Mervina that we had before but it is an up graded model. It is a diesel, a really good stereo system, a much better transmission and suicide doors. We drove it to Zone meeting on thursday and all the other missionaries drooled all over it.

We are starting a scripture study group. It will be a mixture of newly activated and long time members. So far all of the ones interested are sisters. We will use a Institute manual for a study guide. We are also working with the YSA Rep. from the ward and will start holding FHE for them starting next Sunday. There are 6 or 8 YSA who are active. The other thing we are doing is going to the active member's home and challenging them to set up visits with inactives. They are to make the first contact. We will then go visit them and begin the process of fellowshipping them back to activity. We are still meeting with 4 who we have hopes of getting to come to church. Time will tell.

I had a busy day today. I gave the lesson in Priesthood meeting, gave prayers in two other meetings and then was the main speaker in Sacrament meeting. I used Jacob 5 as the basis of my talk. I re-interpreted it to refer to the activation process. I think it came out pretty good.
We then drove 25 miles to a members house for dinner.

More mission travels and experiences

Gateway to Duke of Beaufort Estate. Stone wall Tree tunnel going into

surrounding the estate and covered with moss. Alice's rabbit hole. These r

beautiful and everywhere

Bigfoot at Ward Bonfire celebrating

Guy Faux Day.

This has been one of the most frustrating blog posts ever. I started out with more pictures but ended up deleting them because I couldn't figure out how to get the descriptions in the right places. I will post more pictures next time when I get it figured out better!!!

We have seen more beautiful countryside in our travels. There are old churches and graveyards everywhere. Every little village has at least one.

We are working with some good people. Ann Cheshire, who hasnt' been to church in 4 years, came to the Ward bonfire with us this week. It is kind of like our July 4th. They celebrate Guy Faux Day. He is the guy who tried to burn down Parliament 100's of years ago and they celebrate his failure to do so. Anyway, we were thrilled that she went with us. We continue to visit with her but she expressed that she does not want to be pressured. So we are being patient.

We also are visit Marian Jones, who hasn't been to church in several years. She gets very emotional when she talks about the Book of Mormon and her testimony of it and the church. But she has anxiety attacks and says it keeps her from going to church. We have really grown to love her and continue to visit regularly.

We are meeting with Matthew Gregory tomorrow to discuss some of his questions. He was baptised a couple of years ago and was very active for some time. Then he started wondering about the Celestial Kingdom and being there without his wife and sons. They are not members. It scared him to think that they wouldn't be with him, so he quit coming. He wants to discuss this and other concerns with us. Hopefully we can help him work these things out. Keep him in your prayers for us.

We visited Raymond Brewer when we first got here. He had just lost his wife and asked us to come back after a while. When we went back last week he was so friendly and we had a great visit. He was baptised when he was 18 and is now 63. He was active for only a couple of years and then married and his wife was against the church so he quit coming. He wants us to come back any time. He writes the most beautiful poetry also and shared some of his poem with us. We have high hopes that the timing is right for him to want to return to church.

We are going to Cardiff tomorrow for Zone Conference and really looking forward to seeing all the missionaries and being taught by President and Sister Ogden. We hope to be able to go to COSTCO after the conference and pick up some AMERICAN food items! Richard was able to get some marshmallow cream (fluff) this week so he can make his annual fudge. The bishop's daughter found it in a store where she goes to university.

There is a family in the ward who's dad is from Sandy, Utah and the mother is from here. They always have a big Thanksgiving Dinner and invite all the missionaries and several other families (around 30 people). She brings Libby's pumpkin pie mix from the USA when they go so she can make pumpkin pies. I will make pecan and cherry pies and yams.

Better go. I hear bedtime calling. We love all of you and hope you are all healthy and happy. Take care until next time.

Love, Elder and Sister Henry (Jo Anne)

P.S. Figuring out the captions for these pictures is a test!!!! Hopefully I will get better at figuring out how to do this so that you can tell what is what!!!

Sister Jo