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