Week 20 New Mission President / 5 Jul

Dear Family,

This past week has been an interesting one. First off, our new mission president came in this past Wednesday. President Lindley has a very unique background- He served as a personal security guard to general authorities, including President Gordon B. Hinckley! Spending so much one-on-one time with general authorities has really given him some unique insights into life and especially into missionary work. He hasn't made any changes to the mission yet (new mission presidents are discouraged from doing that for a few months) but he told us he plans on changing a few things, and everyone is starting to wonder what that will be like. I guess we'll find out in a few months time.

Anyway, President Lindley was into cars and motorcycles as a hobby before he was called to be a mission president. He showed us a PowerPoint presentation that had a few pictures of his cars and custom motorcycles. My companion Elder Jacobson was excited when he found that out - he likes cars a lot. I still can't see anything different from car to car. He points out different models and years of cars, and what country they were made in and such, and I can't remember any of it, ever. Except that a Jaguar is a nice car, most years.

Sister Lindley is a very soft-spoken person, but you can tell she has a powerful testimony. She is actually a costume designer for quite a few well-known films; she's been designing costumes for 20 years! Look at the credits in the Work and the Glory series, and I think she'll be under there as a costume designer. Also with films like The Testaments, and a few IMAX films and national park films for National Geographic. This is pretty interesting stuff, I wish I could look it up, but of course I can't. You'll have to update me.

Another big thing that happened was transfer calls last night. Elder Jacobson is being transferred up to Sunderland (which is right next to the Gateshead Area, where I served). In his place, Elder Reeves is coming to serve with me in Beverly. Elder Reeves came out with me from the MTC, and I know him quite well. That was really exciting to learn I'll be serving with him, we're going to have so much fun doing missionary work here. We have a lot of investigators (very solid investigators) that Elder Jacobson and I have found and taught over the last week, so Elder Jacobson was very disappointed to go, but he knows that the Lord needs him to be in Sunderland. Elder Reeves is a very musical person though. He sings a very interesting tenor, it's hard to describe unless you've heard it.

Anyway, Elder Jacobson wants to do quite a lot today so we don't have too much time on the email, but I wish everyone back home a safe trip. Let the ward know I'm safe, happy, and excited to be doing missionary work.

Also, Chipo in Gateshead is doing very well. I heard from Elder Heumos that just this last Sunday during fast and testimony meeting that she got up and bore her testimony. The bishop was smiling the entire time. Her family is all being taught, and Jeff, her son, is going to be baptised next transfer. And all from that one moment that Elder Caine and I talked to her on the street. What a miracle that was.

Until next week-

Love,

Elder Alsop

Week 19 Llama Outfits / 28 Jun

Thomas asked me to send him some fine point pens. The smallest he has been able to find in England is .7. I found a .38 and a bunch of .5, so I sent some of them in an envelope with a package of Skittles, some letters, and the Rudolph clothing accessories. Thomas was very excited to get his package and dress up his llama as you will read below.

Now he's asking for some of our famous family recipes. I will have to oblige now that I'm back home and I can get the recipes from my computer.

Dear Family,

I got the smaller package on Tuesday right after our mission preparation day, which was held at an American military base in Harrogate. They had bowling and everything, so that was fun. We got our mail as everyone was getting into the cars to head back to their areas, so I got to look through the package as we were heading back to Hull. I've been trying out the pens, and I'm not sure if your pen is doing the same thing but sometimes the .38 black pen just dries up and I have to scribble a little before it starts working again. It's a really nice pen though, and as I've been using it more it hasn't been drying up as much. I did put the tie on Rudolph straightaway, much to the amusement of Elder Jacobson who wondered if I was taking things too far. But of course, I wasn't.

A very exciting note- As part of the mail we recieved, we all got our copies of the Leeds Leader, and guess who just got baptised in Gateshead last week- Chipo! And her son is still scheduled for baptism. That was an exciting bit of news for me, that's the first person I've found and taught from the very beginning. Sadly I didn't get to stay in Gateshead to see her progress more, but it really lifted my Spirits knowing I was able to be an effective tool in the Lord's hand.

On a really random note, I was wondering if I could get two recipes sent to me next week? The recipe for our very own 'Celestial Cake', as well as the recipe you use for the cornbread. I was telling a member in our ward about the cornbread I grew up on and she wants the recipe so she can try making it if we ever come over to her house for tea. Just think about it - some of the Alsop family recipes are about to become world-famous! Also the recipe for chocolate chip cookies would be nice. And pancakes.

I might have mentioned this before, but President and Sister Stock are leaving this very week. Our new mission president and his wife are coming in this Friday. It's really hard to believe that President and Sister Stock are leaving. They are absolutely amazing. All the missionaries love them and don't want them to leave, and they don't want to leave either... but they have to. A very sad moment in the mission field right now, especially for the missionaries who have been out a long time.

Lately we've been teaching member familes and encouraging them to be more active missionaries in their lives. It's a very delicate thing, asking members to be more effective missionaries, but it's what President Stock has advised us to do and both Elder Jacobson and I feel that it's what needs to be done. This is a side of missionary work that I didn't see coming, but it's helping to polish my teaching skills, which I'm afraid have become quite rusty in Beverly. What an interesting area this is. An hour of teaching a member is probably more productive than 30 hours of finding time here.

I'm looking forward to next week's emails. There will probably be a lot to talk about, since next week is transfers and we will have a new mission president. Look out Change, here comes Elder Alsop.

Love,

Elder Alsop

Week 18 Bike Problems / 21 Jun

Tom won an iPad while on a business trip in California. And.....he won it on his birthday! What a lucky guy!

Dear Family,

First of all, I can't believe that it's the middle of June. For one thing, the weather isn't really acting like it. It's sunny this morning, but for the longest time it's been cloudy and a little bit drizzly- just like the usual Oregon summer! But now the sun is starting to come out a bit more, and everyone is telling us that it's going to be unusually hot this coming summer. I don't know how much I'm looking forward to that. Plenty of sunburns for everyone, I'm sure.

Wow! Dad won an iPad, that is really amazing! Everyone is always talking about the iPad over here but I've never even seen a picture of one before. People describe it looking like a laptop screen, similar to the iPhone but bigger. There are even rumors that you can hook it up to a fully functioning keyboard, and then just use it as a proper computer screen? What in the world is technology coming to? But anyway, congratulations on the win, Dad, I would certainly be excited with something like that.

In just a couple months they should be selling English coats again and I want to make sure I have enough money in there to make the purchase. It's probably (at the very, very most) going to cost about 60 or 70 pounds to buy a nice coat. It's going to last for years and years after my mission, so I think it's well worth the investment there. The 'trio' coat I can just keep with me and then give to Stephen later on.

By the way, I don't know how much my brothers email, but they can email me at this address if they want to. Is my laptop being used for the family or is it just gathering dust? Just let them know, if there's any way for them to email me they can certainly do so. It would be especially wonderful to somehow email Kenyon every week and get to know him a little better. I am his big brother, after all!

Dad told me last week that he gave a talk in sacrament meeting, and that he was attaching the talk, but I think he forgot because nothing was attached. I forgot to mention that last week. The only reason I remembered was because I gave a talk yesterday in sacrament meeting. The topic was "learning how to rely on the Spirit", and it was supposed to be a ten-minute talk. I was supposed to be the second speaker, but due to the first speaker not being there (of course), I was quietly asked to extend my talk a little, if possible. I just talked about being able to recognise the Spirit, and I looked through our missionary flat for a copy of the Ensign with a talk about the Spirit. I found a copy of the May 2004 Ensign with a wonderful talk about "tuning into" the Spirit, given by President James E. Faust.

After the talk the Bishop made a comment about "you know it's a missionary giving the talk when they have the original 2004 General Conference copy of the Ensign on hand." And it's so true. Everyone else just prints the talk off the internet, but missionaries use the actual Ensigns without even giving it a second thought. Anyway, the Bishop was amused at that.

After I talked about recognising the Spirit, I then talked about relying on the Spirit once you know what it's trying to tell you. I then gave the example of me street contacting back in Gateshead, when once I felt this prompting to talk to this enormously muscular man, but I declined at first (wouldn't you?). I then felt the prompting again and this time I listened and cut through the little crowd and started talking to him. Turns out he had been looking for our church for a while, ever since he had missionary contact years ago. He didn't recognise our church as the church he had been looking for until he saw the Restoration booklet I was holding, and that was the one he had read and lost before. He took a Book of Mormon and another Restoration booklet and I hear he's still doing well in Sunderland, an area right next to Gateshead. He had a lot of challenges to overcome but he seemed sincere. The point is, often the Spirit will tell us things that we just plain don't want to do, but as long as we realize the it's the voice of the Lord, we shouldn't be afraid to do those things.

My tracting boots (and 'boots' is the word used in England to describe any kind of shoes) are getting some pretty heavy use out of them. The big problem with Beverly is that it's too small - it's all been knocked again and again by missionaries past, and most of the people here are tired of the missionaries. We've been trying to travel to some of the outlying villages, but Elder Jacobson has been experiencing some bike troubles lately, which culminated in a rather hilarious event yesterday.

Starting at the beginning of last week, the spokes in the back wheel of his bike started snapping off the bike. Too much missionary abuse, it would appear. Once a couple spokes started to give way, that of course just put more pressure on the remaining spokes and the process started accelerating for the rest of the week. By Friday, about 8 spokes were broken, and I made sure to take pictures along the way. On Saturday we were coming back from a small village called Tickton and all of the sudden we heard a succession of snaps, and looked to a see a wonderful total of 12 or 13 spokes now broken and hanging loose. Once again, I took a picture. The problem is, with that many spokes hanging out from the wheel, it started to interfere with the chain itself. We wrapped some of the broken spokes as best we could around the non-broken ones, but they would still come loose sometimes and whip out and hit the chain and cause a lot of noise, but not too much damage. Eventually Elder Jacobson gave up just trying to put them back in and let them clank around.

On Sunday, we decided to ask the members if we could borrow a bike for the next week or so, until we could get the bike repaired or sorted out. One member agreed, and we went out to his house on our bikes. A few minutes before we would have arrived, I told Elder Jacobson we should probably take a video of him riding his bike for memories sake. I took videos with his camera and my camera of the clunky bike, and then we headed off again. Not even 30 seconds later, we heard a big grinding sound and Elder Jacobson's bike wouldn't pedal anymore. We looked the big and saw that the lower part of the gear shifter had somehow torn right off and gotten jammed in the chain, along with a couple spokes. He ended up carrying his bike the rest of the way. Luckily this didn't happen on a busy road, but he bike he's been using is officially dead. So he's using a borrowed bike, and our amazing ward has already started talking about somehow getting us (or at least him) a new bike for missionary work. I wish I could send pictures or videos, you would laugh so hard to see him carrying his bike along with a Book of Mormon in the other hand.

Well, I've got to go now. All the best of luck to everyone. Make sure to send pictures of the tree house and anything else interesting.

Love,

Elder Alsop

Week 17 Learning to Love Beverley / 14 Jun

Dear Family,

What an interesting week this was. A lot of it was spent getting to know the ward a little better, as well as visiting part-member families, less-actives, and even an excommunicated lady who brings her kids to church every week.

One very interesting family are the Stevens bunch. They have two sons living with them named Johnny and Thomas. Both of them have learning disabilities of some sort; Johnny is autistic but Thomas I'm not sure about. Brother Stevens is an amazing man, incredibly active in the church. He's quite large and works at a mental healthcare centre, keeping the patients in check. Think of a bouncer at a night-club, and you've pretty much imagined Brother Stevens. He's got the most British sense of humour I know, he's always making these dry jokes and I'm the only one who gets them right away. He's taken quite a liking to me because of that.

Johnny Stevens, however, is an interesting case. He understands the gospel and gets up every Fast Sunday to bear his testimony, and can speak quite clearly and everything, but his autism seems to prevent him from turning in his mission papers, at least according to the bishop. He wants to go on a mission more than anything in the world but the bishop is worried about him, and recently asked the missionaries to work with him more, and get him out to appointments. Which wouldn't be a problem at all.... if we actually had investigators. So right now we're considering taking him with us to see less-actives and that sort of thing, see how he manages in a teaching environment.

One thing we also have been doing as missionaries is taking some of the young men out with us to go knocking. I just hope it's not breaking their spirits! We do tend to get a lot of rudeness and door slams in Beverly. Everyone is quite comfortable here, I think I mentioned that before. But the young men are amazingly resilient , I think the people of Beverly are impressed by the power the youth of this church seem to carry with them. In a few years there will be many powerful return missionaries in the Beverly Ward, I have no doubt about that.

Not much else happening in the world of Beverly. Wish I could send pictures, then there would be something new. I feel like the whole purpose of having missionaries in the Beverly ward is not to do missionary work, but rather to teach the ward members the importance of missionary work and how important it is to set that open example for all the world to see and to want to follow. The Gospel of Christ truly blesses lives, but the good people of Beverly need to see that emulated in their neighbors and co-workers, not to have it told from two young men knocking on their door. Being a missionary completely reverses your whole perspective on the world. Even more than being a cashier did. It's hard to explain, but I've changed so much already... it's hard to imagine what I'll be like when I get home.

Anyways, we've got to head off now. Plenty of preparation to do. Somehow our cork board fell apart so now we have to go way out somewhere to get a new one. Beverly is a small little town, not a lot of shopping choices. Wish everyone luck, especially Alisa on getting those papers in and done with.

Love,

Elder Alsop

Week 16 Hard Work / 7 Jun

We found out that our son Conner needed to have surgery to remove a large cyst in his mouth. Thomas refers to this when he says he will pray for him.

I knitted some accessories for Thomas' stuffed llama that he took on his mission with him. The llama is named Rudolph. I made him a little scarf and a red tie. I can't wait to see photos of Rudolph with his new outfits!

Dear Family,

This was quite possibly the most exhausting week so far on my mission. We had a neat 40 hours of finding time, with only 2 new investigators, and they were from our former investigator records. Going through the area book is taking a little longer than it should, mostly because its in a right state, with huge gaps between organized missionaries who actually kept the records. There's a set of records from 05-early 06 and then another set in late 08. It makes me wonder what missionaries were doing in between those times? Beverly has been open to missionaries for quite a few years.

We've been recommended to work with members and recent converts a lot more, and Dad's email just cemented that idea in. It's definitely something that needs to be done in this area. The youth in this ward are absolutely amazing, more so than any ward I've ever seen before (not to put down Council Creek Ward youth, of course, but these kids are going out of their way to consistently bring people into church). Right now we're teaching a family of 3 because of a referral from a 13-year old girl in our ward. How amazing is that? Youth in England really struggle because of the constant, blatant immorality that seems to prevail, but these kids are sticking together and somehow pulling through.

I'm so sad that I don't have much to report here. A lot and a lot of knocking on doors and biking around on our broken bicycles. At least we have the members who never let us down. The weird thing is, there are no ward missionaries called right now. I don't think the bishop sees the need for ward missionaries, since the members are doing a considerable amount of missionary work already.

For 3 days this past week, it was burning hot and dry. Thursday, Friday, and Saturday were so hot we shed our jackets and went around in white shirts, and we still felt toasty! Took some pictures just to prove it. Unfortunately, rain and cold set in yesterday again, and so we donned our jackets and coats. Today seems like another cold day. I can't get over the fact that this is basically Oregon weather. It's like I never moved at all, except the people speak funny.

I don't know if I ever mentioned this, or you might have already known for yourself, but our mission president is leaving this transfer. We're meeting the new president at the end of this month. President and Sister Stock have been an amazing mission couple. They are so powerful, it's just incredible how much the missionaries love them. Everyone is very sad to see them go. I have no doubt in my mind that great callings are ahead for President Stock.

Looking forward to letters and llama accessories. Praying for Conner. Going to take up all of dad's suggestions regarding missionary work, I feel it's exactly what we need right now. Until next week-

Love,

Elder Alsop