Week 15 News from Beverley / 1 June

Dear Family,

Give a warm brotherly welcome from me to Kenyon. I'll write him and the rest of the family letters as soon as I find time on a P-Day, yesterday was hectic because there was so much cleaning and organizing to do, I didn't get to do hardly anything at all.

First of all, let me describe what happened since I last wrote an email. Transfer meeting was on Wednesday. I packed all of my worldly belongings into 2 suitcases and headed off with some other missionaries on a bus to Leeds. Saying good-bye to Gateshead was hard, I loved that area. I actually took a really nice picture of some proper chavs walking along the street, and I wanted to send it to you, but the computers at this library won't allow me to work with my camera at all. So it's going to be a picture-less area over here, I'm afraid, unless we can find some other computers to use.

Transfer meeting was fun. It's one of the few times that a lot of missionaries gather together into one place, so it's always a good time to catch up on what other missionaries have been doing. We had 14 missionaries go home and 13 new ones come in; a big transfer. I might have mentioned it before, but Elder Heumos is now training a new missionary, which is the reason I had to leave in the first place. 3 months is the average time a missionary here stays in an area anyway, so it wasn't much of a surprise to those who knew me.

I then took another chartered bus to the Hull zone, along with the other missionaries being transferred there. Beverly was one of the later stops along the way, so I was on the bus for a couple hours. I met my new companion Elder Jacobson at the Hull Chapel, and we drove with a member from there to Beverly.

First, let me tell you about Elder Jacobson. He's from Denver, Colorado and he's only been out 6 weeks longer than me, which was a big surprise. We're both what the ward calls very "fresh" missionaries. He's very soft spoken, which is funny at times because we'll knock on someone's door, and he'll say "hello" so quietly I can barely hear it. The people always have to lean in to hear what he's saying, and then as soon as they realise we're missionaries they usually say, "sorry, not interested" to which all of the sudden Elder Jacobson will get really loud and say "Why not!?", which more often then not shocks the person at the door into listening more. However, I'll just say right now that Beverly is a very, very closed community. It's more in the upper class of society and everyone is pretty comfortable with their lives. You have to be a very precise and obedient missionary if you want to hear the Spirit directing you to an exact house; otherwise, no-one will ever listen to you.

Strangely, we live in a house with a non-member. His name is Steve, he's middle-aged and he's a nice guy, but it's still a little weird to be living in this house with someone not in the Church. We have this little room upstairs which, when I got there, was a right mess. There was also practically no food in our cupboard (we have one cupboard in the kitchen in which to store our food), which to me was very saddening indeed. I ended up mostly eating Bran Flakes until Monday, when we could go shopping. Not a very fun diet, but I feel very carbohydratey.

So the first thing we did was clean the little room in the morning, and also we spent some time on Friday afternoon cleaning out the Area Book, which contains all the information of anyone that's ever been contacted by the missionaries. It was an absolute mess, so we organized it and started going through all the former investigators, which is a way that missionaries can find people to teach. People who have been taught before but have decided to not take any more of the missionary lesson sometimes change their minds and regret discontinuing contact with the missionaries. So we spent a good hour or so calling all the former investigators who had given us their phone numbers, and trying to set up appointments with them. One of them actually said to come by that night, so we did, and he is now a new investigator for us. The Area Book is one of the most ignored things in the missionary field, yet it is critical for so many reasons in missionary work. Maybe that's why I got transferred to Beverly; all the missionaries before me just kind of gave up because of what a tough area Beverly generally is, but there are people in every area that need to be taught, it's just a matter of finding them.

Beverly also happens to be an area where bikes pretty much are required. It's optional right now in all areas; if your area doesn't have a car assigned to it you can choose to use public transportation to get around, or you can use a bike. Since there's basically no public transportation here, bikes are what we use. If you look at a map of the Beverly area you'll see that Beverly itself is a smallish village, in the middle of a lot of country and forest. There are a lot of little villages around where we are, and the area we actually cover is enormous. I'm not sure what the exact boundaries are, but if you get a map and look at some of the places I'm going to mention you'll see what I mean. It goes all the way to the east coast, covering the village of Hornsea. It goes as far north as Driffield, and extends to other villages I don't even know the names of. A few villages are Walkington, Cherry Burton, and Cranswick. Lots of other places too.
There's actually a place right next to Beverly called Westwood, which you can google and find out more about. Basically it's this fielded area where no one can build anything, by law. There's just a couple small roads going through, and a whole lot of cows roaming free throughout this area. Reminds me of Dad telling us about his trip to India.

This is definitely a very scenic area. I'll take some pictures and send them when I can, because there are just so many narrow streets and old buildings. Gateshead actually looked pretty modern compared to Beverly, but to me it seems like it's been lost in time, especially in the city center. Cobblestones, terraced, 2-storied housing is absolutely everywhere.

Well it's another busy day ahead. Mostly just finding and knocking for now, not too many people we're teaching right now. Don't worry, we'll get some.

There seems to be a lot of troubled kids around this area though. Somehow not suprising, I think they're a bit spoiled by their parents. Last night we locked up our bikes to this lamp-post so we could go knocking in the area, and when we came back, our back tires were flat and we could see some chavs looking at us from across this park. It kind of looked like they were laughing. Elder Jacobson got mad and started to yell at them but I reminded him that that's exactly what they wanted to do: get a reaction out of us. Something I learned from my parents, I believe :) but anyway, we just walked home with our bikes (with the chavs starting to yell at us as we walked), and it took a good 30 minutes to do so. Not too bad, considering how big our area is. It could have been a lot worse and we might have needed to call a member to come pick us up.

It was just a learning experience for me though. Time sure flies here. Can't believe it's June, and I don't plan on believing it until next year when it's June again. Not that the weather says its June anyway. It's just one big cloud, as far as I can see, and still pretty cold. Just like Oregon.

Anyway, my time here at the library is far spent. Looking forward to more pictures of everyone of course, and I hope that everyone over there stays safe.

Until next Monday-

Love,

Elder Alsop