April 10th—April 16th: The Final Transfer begins

Hello! 

First things first. It's transfers and I am leaving! I am going to Shrewsbury, which is quite a ways down south. I will be serving with Elder Masekoameng (don't ask how to say it, I will be practicing all week).  He is from down south and has been out for about 3 months.  I will be his second companion as he has just finished being trained. 

Righty-o. In other news, we were able to see Jennifer again (the lady that I told you about last week who was excited about prophets) and we had a good chat with her. We talked about the Restoration a bit more and were able to mostly just listen to her.  It was the 1st anniversary of her mother's passing that day and so her heart was a bit tender, so we just mostly listened to her and it was good.  She has a great testimony of Jesus Christ and so we were able to build a bit on that. 

We taught another person this week named Kailee who was taught by the last companionship that was here. There were some serious misunderstandings but she was nice enough to let us come visit her.  We had a really good lesson where we just tried to set things straight but then taught her about the Restoration (she had been taught before but she had no clue who Joseph smith was or anything). When we finished she was quite happy to have us come back and she was glad that she was better able to understand where the Book of Mormon comes from. This week we also saw Sky and she is doing well. She had been on holiday and when she came back she found out that she was getting the new job that she wanted and so she was on cloud 9. It was fun. Oh and let us not forget about Chrissie. She had her baptismal interview and passed this week and then she also had an interview with bishop (no clue what for or what about) and they both seemed quite happy about that. Bishop is a great man and I will miss working with him. I will also miss a lot of other people here in this ward. There are good people here in Burnley and they have taken good care of me.

I think that that is about the excitement of the week on my end. I was still feeling the after effects of the flu the first part of the week, so we were a bit slower this week. But I am all better now, so I can hit the ground running in Shrewsbury.  Ready or not here I come.

Love you alls!

Elder Tarbet

Caelitus Mihi Vires

My Strength is from Heaven

April 3rd—April 9th: Exchanges and a Miracle

I'm sick...again. Its ok I actually am getting better this time.

Anyway.

This week we had exchanges and I got to go with Elder Oswald who is from Toronto, Canada.  He has been infield for 3 weeks now so bless his heart he is doing pretty well. Better than I was at that point, I think. We managed only to get lost a couple of times when the plans changed that we had originally planned, but he is great. We had interviews with president on Thursday.  It was good—we talked about some different things that I need to do to make this last time successful.  It was funny because Sister Ulrich didn't realize that I went home before them but then president as soon as I walk in is like YOU'VE MADE IT!   You only have 50 days left!! You have made it! It was funny.

Miracle of the week: After the interview with president, we went to dinner with a part member family who gave us a lift to our next appointment. With the lift we had a little extra time, not much, but we went to try to find someone. The hard thing is that this family lives in the country a little so there aren't many track-table houses (most of them are huge and have gates) so we were walking along trying to find a house and we are running out of time. We find one and so we knock. The lady looks through the window and she did not look so happy. So I brace myself for the onslaught. She was actually quite pleasant—we find out that she loves Jesus Christ but is nondenominational. We share with her about a modern prophet, she was fascinated. We share with her the Book of Mormon, once again she is very intrigued with why she has never heard that there is a prophet on the earth today telling people to read a book she has never heard of. So we left her with a copy of the book and a return appointment for Thursday. This time we were smart enough to give her Mormon.org and LDS.org so she didn't find the dodgy stuff of youtube and google.

So yeah, that's my week. Saturday and Sunday, I was pretty dead. I made the first half of church and even managed to walk there by myself, but we then got taken home by the ward mission leaders because I looked so unwell. I felt pretty unwell so I was just grateful for the lift. I just had the nasty flu/cold thing that is going around but for some reason it really effected my balance and just motor senses. Oh well, I'm feeling better now so no worries for me.

Love you all!

Elder Tarbet

Caelitus Mihi Vires

My Strength is from Heaven

Pictures from the Mission Historical Tour and Pendle Hill

March 20th—April 2nd: Mission Historical Tour and a Conference Surprise!

Right so these last two weeks. I guess it's catch up time. The only problem is that it has been pretty unexciting and I have no idea what to write. 

So this week we had the mission historical tour, hence why I didn't email, and that was a lot of fun. It was the third one that I went too.  It made me feel really old since we were the most senior missionaries there. It was a good experience though. It was fun because two of the major stops in the tour are Downham and Chatburn, which are both in our area. The previous day we had also hiked Pendle hill which was good fun. Pendle hill is the place where George Fox had his vision that started the Quakers. It is also famous for witches (see picture). It's very pretty from the top but the pictures didn't turn out because it was in a cloud and mega windy so you can't really see much of them. We went up a path called the steps (made me think of Lord of the Rings) and it is literally just stone steps up the side of this hill (mini mountain).

Other things of interest this week are we had a couple of good lessons with Chrissy but we have to postpone her baptism for the 29th of April because she is in France the week before and so her date got messed up.

We didn't have many come to conference, just the Sunday afternoon session (Saturday afternoon on tape delay) got about 6 people besides us that came to watch it. The big shocker was that 2 of them were a less active couple of 30+ years. First time in the church in all that time. Really neat. They were really glad to be there and very warm with the other members and us. She said that she wants to come back to church if her husband is willing. Hopefully that all works out [the home teachers were a huge influence here—a story worthy of a general conference talk].

So general conference was great. I loved Elder Eyring and Elder Uchtdorf's talks from Priesthood (I think)—they were so great. I got to see all of the sessions except Sunday afternoon. I will be reading that when it comes available. 

Yeah so that's about my week. I got my phone call from the office just now asking about my departure plans so I am officially going on the 31st. 

That's all folks.

Love ya

Elder Tarbet

Caelitus Mihi Vires 

My Strength is from Heaven