Week 35 A Few Pictures / 25 Oct

Thomas included some photos in his mail a couple of weeks ago. Actually, the mail consisted only of photos and captions, but as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

From Thomas: The really fat cat named Pusskiss we were privileged to have as a housemate in the Beverley flat, where we lived with a nonmember. This cat is the most abused cat in the entire world, missionaries have supposedly been playing mind games with it for years.

It appears that they have armed the cat, I guess it's a rough neighborhood. Maybe missionaries need less free time....


Elder Alsop and Elder Reeves on the day our son was leaving Beverley.


A couple of funny signs. Elder Alsop and I both adore the British sense of humor. We love British TV shows, Jeeves and Wooster being one of our favorites, Mr. Bean a close second. I found the hippy sign hilarious. My husband thought I was crazy!

Week 34 No Fun Being Sick! / 18 Oct

Dear Family,

This week was pretty interesting. Elder DeGraw and I both came down with some sort of chest infection so we had to stay in on Friday and Saturday. My first sick days of my mission so far. I'm still recovering, but I'm not contagious anymore. Those things can really be wildly contagious. A lot of people in our ward have come down with something similar as well, so something is definitely going around. I'll tell you right now though- Those two days stuck in the flat were the two most boring days I've ever had on my mission. To be honest, I've completely forgotten what 'free time' feels like! Now I'm beginning to understand why coming home after your mission is such a harder adjustment than going out on your mission in the first place. When you go on your mission, you stay busy. When you get home, you actually have time that isn't scheduled for a certain thing, and that just seems weird right now.

Well despite our being in sick, Marilyn still came to church on Sunday which was great. We arranged a ride for Debra but she wasn't ready when the ride got there and decided not to attend church, but promised she would next week. However, there was a stake fireside at the Billingham stake center, which she came to, and afterwards she told us it was 'brilliant'. She's really doing well. Hopefully we will be able to set some good teaching appointments with her this week.

Let's see, for the package you're sending I can't think of anything else I haven't mentioned already. Although I am running low on those pens that Mom sent, I only have 3 of the .38 ones left. I seem to go through them super fast. Then again, I am writing things down probably an hour and a half every day, at least. My hand was getting sore all the time at first, but now it's just used to writing all the time.

The mp3 player... let's see. Mom mentioned MoTab and other LDS music and Christmas music. All of those sound really good. Don't be afraid to fill the mp3 player to capacity, there's not many ways I can add music myself. Even if you don't know if I will like something, you can still put it on. I'll just sort through everything when I get it in the mail, like I'll do with my old music collection.

I'm excited for what the house will look like when I get back. So many things are changing already. One thing is for sure though- I'm looking forward to eating some fresh produce from our farm going on there when I get back. No offense to English fruits and vegetables, but it's not the best in the world. Maybe I'll get used to it. I probably miss Israeli foods of all sorts the most. I'm glad the last restaurant I went to in America was Middle Eastern. I wish they had something like that in England. Still no luck in finding falafel here.

I would like to send a letter to James in the MTC but I don't have the address. Maybe you could help me out with that? Pretty please? If you want me to bribe you with crumpets, I will.

Elder DeGraw has a card reader for SD cards that works with these computers! For some reason it won't let me read from my camera directly, but I think that if I can just hook up my SD card to the computer here I can start sending pictures home, which is exciting. Plus the internet here is pretty fast so I might be able to get quite a lot done. We'll see what happens next week.

Love,

Elder Alsop

Week 33 A New Companion / 11 Oct

Dear Family,

It has been another busy week this week. We have been teaching quite a few people and when it gets to that point it's sometimes hard to keep track of them all, when the appointments are, and what commitments we have left them, and so on. It especially doesn't help when they sometimes forget the appointments that we make with them. We have been working for some time now with a lady named Debra Gray. I may have mentioned her before. We committed her to come to church, and I managed to get a ride for her arranged with our new ward mission leader, who just came off his mission earlier this year. His name is Paul Morgan and I believe that he served in the London mission. We went by at 9:30 in the morning. Her fiance, Conrad, was there and he said that Debra was still in bed. I was disappointed because I thought that maybe she wasn't going to come after all, but then we heard her yelling down the stairs that she would be down in 10 minutes. So we waited outside in the car for her, and she came outside with her niece who had spent the night with her. Debra definitely looked like she had just woken up, but she came to church and enjoyed it and already said she's definitely coming next week.

Another miracle happened with our very favorite eternal investigator, Marilyn. She is a Jehovah's Witness but she had been investigating our church for almost 2 years now. She lives a ways away but we make the effort to go and see her every week. Well while I was gone picking up Debrah with our ward mission leader, Elder DeGraw got a call from Marilyn saying she was coming to church and would be there soon. So including Debra, her niece, and Marilyn we had 3 people at church which was astounding for regular church attendance here. We are already expecting more for next week. We are also going to give Debrah a date for baptism this week as well.

It appears that a computer class has begun in this tiny little library that will take place every Monday morning. E-mails are going to be interesting from now on. Don't know when I'll get a chance to do them now, it might have to happen later in the evening.

I discovered that Mike&Ikes are sold in the Tesco stores here. They just recently appeared. They don't really taste the same though. Reeses are also here but they are a bit expensive, and I got one just to try it, and it is definitely not the same. Snickers are also not the same. Why do they have to mess around with the original genius? They do have much better chocolate though.

Love,

-Elder Alsop

Week 32 Killing Off Elder Perkins / 28 Sep

Dear Family,

Well, it's official. I'm staying in Newton Aycliffe. Elder Perkins is going home of course, and my new companion I'm getting is named Elder DeGraw. He was Elder Perkin's companion for 4 1/2 months in Bradford so Elder Perkins knew him fairly well. He was in the military just before his mission, and wasn't even going to go on a mission but one day he was in church and decided that he knew the church was true and that he needed to go serve a mission. Apparently he is very patriotic. He sounds like a very good guy. I'll be meeting him tomorrow so by my next email I will have already served with him for a week.

This last week we had quite a few people confirmed for church, but no one showed up. Elder Perkins was disappointed because it was his last Sunday. Sometimes it's hard to realize that people have agency and just to feel like you're doing something wrong. However, this upcoming week we have General Conference to get people to. And since all the sessions take place at different times, that's a lot of chances that people have to attend church.

We've been working recently with a young lady named Debra. I think she's 23 years old. She has 2 kids. Though she is sometimes a little bit slow to understand, she is very willing to learn. For the last couple times we have seen her, we have gone over the Joseph Smith story and especially where the Book of Mormon came from. She was still struggling to understand where exactly Joseph Smith was coming from, so the last time we visited her, we showed her the Restoration DVD. She loved the movie and asked if she could keep it. We then talked about having a prophet on the earth today and talked about General Conference. She practically invited herself to Conference and asked if she could bring her whole family along, including her mother. That was a pretty amazing experience. Hopefully we should get a lot of people to General Conference.

Also, we just got a Ward Mission Leader. Up until last week we had been working without one. I'm not sure if I ever told you that. But now that we have a Ward Mission Leader things should go a lot more smoothly now.

Well I will be looking forward to getting the SD cards. As soon as I have them I'll go ahead and send the one I have back after copying it to a CD so you can have those pictures.

Oh, and when exactly is Alisa's MTC date? I'm going to send a letter but I was just wondering if she'll be gone already or something.

Love,

Elder Alsop

Week 31 A Journey Back to Gateshead / 20 Sep

Dear Family,

I can't think of anything else to add in the box you're going to send. I'm sure I'll enjoy whatever surprises you decide to throw in. Another SD card for my camera might help. I think they're a lot more expensive over here, from what I've seen. I can burn all the pictures from my current SD card onto a CD and then send the card over, and then you can send it back, and so forth. I've realized the value of taking pictures all the time - I'll really enjoy them later.

Just this last week we had Zone Conference again. I got to see a lot of missionaries that came out with me. It's always fun when missionaries get together because you see so many of your past friends and companions. It's be especially exciting for me because I've already served with so many people, so most of the faces are familiar. Anyway, we had another Area 70 come and talk with us. His name sounded like Elder Piya, but I don't know how to spell it. He's from France, so maybe Mom will know how that's supposed to go. His talk was mostly on what we can do as missionaries to find people and progress them towards baptism by building a relationship of trust with them. It was a really good talk, and afterwards at lunch, they served a lot of American foods which everyone was excited about. The Zone Conference was in Harrogate, which is right nex to an American military base, so they went and bought a lot of things like Lays potato chips and some Doritos and A&W root beer which we all went crazy over because you can't get root beer here.

Today Elder Perkins and I are being taken by some members back to Gateshead to go the Metrocentre there. So I'll probably be seeing some familiar places today. It's Elder Perkins' last full working week before going home, so he wants to do a lot of things and see a lot of people before he leaves.

Now that I think about it, next week will be transfer calls and I'll be finding out who's coming into Newton Aycliffe to replace Elder Perkins. So that should be a fun next week. Elder Perkins is always talking about what he's going to do when he gets home, then he always tells me how scared he is to go home right after that. It's pretty funny.

Anyway the members are picking us up in about 5 minutes now. Look forward to hearing from you next week-

Love,

Elder Alsop

Week 30 A Trip to McD's / 13 Sep

Dear Family,

Stake Conference was really good yesterday. Elder Donaldson gave an amazing talk, I wrote down notes in my study journal. A study journal is something I've been focusing on lately. It's really important to write down your thoughts and experiences as you have them, otherwise you tend to forget any spiritual impressions that you have. That's something that a lot of missionaries have not done very well, and regretted it, so I hope I don't make that mistake too much.

Unfortunately we didn't have anyone at church again. They like to skip out at the last minute here, which most of the time is because the holidays have been ending and everyone is traveling around. Hopefully with the school year having started again everything will settle down.

At the end of this week we're having a Zone Conference, which is mostly because Elder Donaldson is traveling around to the all the missions and seeing how they are making progress, and he's also spending some time with our new mission president to help him if he needs anything.

It's been a sunny week somehow, everyone always says the week is going to be rainy but then it turns out to be sunny. No one ever knows what's going on anymore. The wind seems to be more prevalent than ever, blowing storms in and then blowing them out as fast as they came. That's probably most of the reason why. Right now it's raining outside but I can guarantee in ten minutes it will stop and the sun will come out for an hour or two.

I think I'm at the stage in my mission now where I appreciate every little food in America that you can't get in England. Everything from Marie Callendars frozen pot pies to certain cereals, even Top Ramen, believe it or not. I have been wishing I had Top Ramen for the past few days. It's hard to get cheap food like that in England; it's easily the equivalent of a dollar for a pack of Top Ramen-style noodles, and it doesn't taste very good.

At least the chocolate is good here.

Did you know I've been looking around and I can't even find a photo shop here in Newton Aycliffe? It's such a small town they don't even have that. I might have to use a little photo printing booth somewhere in a grocery store, but the quality is not going to be the same. Still, I need to send photos home. Maybe sending an SD card so that I can send mine to you might be a good idea after all. What do you think?

A member wants to take us out to McDonalds today. The closest one is about a 30 minute drive. How funny is that? He must like it or something.

Until next week (hopefully a more exciting email)-

Love,

Elder Alsop

Week 29 Rain?? In England?? / 6 Sep

Dear Family,

Yes, it's starting to get a little colder now. Apparently today is supposed to be the last pretty sunny day, and starting tomorrow it will start raining again. Tomorrow is supposed to be pretty much a downpour, and I'm actually looking forward to it.

Elder Perkins and I have been looking at winter coats. There are basically two places that usually sell the style we both want to get (especially him because he's going home soon). They are called Burton's and Topman. They each only have one style of coat in right now, and neither of them are exactly what we're looking for, but I believe I still have enough money from the personal funds that I came out with to purchase it. If I don't have enough I will let you know.

I was thinking yesterday about a few things I might want in other packages, if people are short for ideas. Firstly, I really miss Nutter Butters. Also, the hot chocolate they sell in England is usually tasteless, and I was thinking that having some of that Deseret Industries hot chocolate mix would be incredible. It's definitely the best hot chocolate I've ever had. Maybe it's not called Deseret Industries, but it's the one that we always have in our food storage, that we get from the cannery. Don't know if they even are selling that right now. More peanut butter is always nice. Reeses are of course amazing. Gardettos are good, but only if you can get them on a sale at Albertsons or Walmart or something, otherwise they are way too expensive.

Sounds like a list of demands I'm making. On a more spiritual side, a big focus of our mission lately has been allowing the Spirit to be felt in the lives of our investigators, by letting them take a lot of crucial steps for themselves. Too often, investigators are 'babied' by missionaries who are afraid of losing them or being dropped. We've been taught that perhaps one of the most critical times of building up themselves can take place right after the first appointment, when we offer to leave with a prayer. We are now encouraged even more to have the investigator say the prayer instead of a missionary, and we are being taught to resolve any concerns they might have about saying a prayer in public. Sometimes that has been quite hard, but it had been worth it to see the people we are teaching make more critical steps for themselves.

I'm giving another talk in sacrament meeting, in 2 weeks time. Next week is Stake Conference, and Elder George Donaldson will be speaking. He is now an Area Seventy, but I knew him back in the MTC when he was one of the presidents there. He actually gave me my exit interview, and the following General Conference he was sustained to the Seventy which really surprised me. So now I get to meet Elder Donaldson again. I'm sure he'll remember me; everyone does. It's the hair.

Let James know I'm really excited for him leaving on a mission. Make sure I can get his mission address as soon as possible. Maybe even the MTC address too, because he'll be in there for a while.

I wish I had more to add about the work going on in Newton Aycliffe. We seem to rotate through investigators pretty frequently. It's a hard area to work in, but those seem to be the areas I'm getting sent to. I can guarantee as soon as the work really starts picking up, I'll be transferred up and away to another suffering area to see what I can make of it. It's enjoyable to me, though, to be switching around companions and areas so fast. I don't know if I could really stay with the same area and companion for very long, it would just get very boring to me.

Still safe and sound, let everyone know I'm doing well. My hair is still very much red, as people on the street feel they should point out every day. A red-haired missionary is a very new concept to them. Too bad they don't feel like paying extra close attention to what I say because of it.

Love,

Elder Alsop