Sheffield... The Promised Land and a hot tub baptism!

April 18 2016

Hello there one in all. It’s good to be back here again writing to you all and telling you all of the adventures of the England Leeds mission! I am loving the city of Sheffield hence the title of this letter, but I want to tell you guys of what happened this week and it was a great week.

Truest quote ever! 

So first things first - T....! (our investigator!) 

Now T...... is our really old Jamaican Brotha who we have been teaching and he is soooooooo close to baptism people! He has come to church, he listens to the book of Mormon in his car, and he loves to talk about the gospel! He has stopped drinking tea and coffee, and now the only thing we have to deal with is every once and a while he has a small drink right before bed, which I guess helps him sleep. The best thing is the major improvement he has had with all of his smoking!  He used to smoke a ton, but now listen to what he just told us! -  He said that he used to only smoke 1 a day, then he ran out of the pack and said why go buy another one when I can just stop now! And he did! People he just stopped after like 3 days of being taught the word of Wisdom-  the guy quite smoking!  well kinda. We met with him on Friday and asked him about his smoking and he said the only time that he smoked was when he was at his brothers house and he gave him one, and he smoked 1/2 of it. Now we just got to get him to stop seeing his brother, jk!  but he is soo close and we are hoping that he can be baptized by the end of the month, which would just be the greatest thing ever!! I love that guy, I will be taking a picture with him this week so you can see who my Jamaican Brotha is!!

Next

S...... and S......!

So I think that I have told you guys about them. But they are a lovely little engaged couple who love to have us over, they said that they want us over like every night, but we just can’t do that as missionaries we got to visit other people as well. Anyways they are looking to be baptized but first they've got to get married, so right now we are in the process of helping them get licensed and all for marriage, and it makes me kind of weirded out because I feel like I am planning a wedding right now! Thankfully not my own yet! But that will be fun to maybe get a marriage out here on a mission that would be really cool and then we could get them DUNKED! That will be really exciting but I love working with them and I will attach of picture of them so you can see who they are! It’s the best! I love these people, I now know what it’s like to love the people you serve! I really truly want the best for them and hope that I can be a part of bringing them closer to each other and their Heavenly Father.

And a bus ride full of Chinese people! So fun! 

On Friday the Chinese sisters had a baptism this week and we were able to take T..... our investigator to it. It was really awesome to see all the Chinese people there to support him too, and he even got up and shared his testimony and it was the best thing ever. I miss being able to work with the Chinese people but I know that the Lord has put me here for a reason! But it was fun to have two baptisms in one weekend which made it a really special weekend which means........

C.... & co-worker who introduced her to the church(and the baptizer), and the Elders!

BAPTISM!!!!!!!!!!!

This week we had the Baptism of our Investigator C.........! And it was full of everything, from stressful, to nerve-racking, to exciting, to everything that you can possibly imagine. The baptism was on Sunday evening and we had set everything up after church and we started to fill the font for the baptism later that night, and then we went out and did some lessons with members and some finding for the day and then we came back an hour before the baptism to check the font and to finalize everything. Well everything was set up, the relief society went overboard with food, so that was awesome!! Our programs that we had printed were perfect (members commented more on the programs than anything else!) then we went and we checked the font, and guess what?????

It didn't work!!!  JK!

The font was filled up fine and it looked good. Until we sat there and realized something! Me and Elder Cottrell were standing there next to the font and we realized just how much steam was in this room so we both thought, "Man how warm is this water?" So I stuck my hand in the water and people no joke, This thing was hotter than a hot tub!!! It was almost boiling I swear! The water temperature was crazy high and we got so worried because we were about to boil our investigator! Overall panic came over us and we started to drain while filling up the font with ice cold water to see if we could cool it down in time! That's why in the picture my face is so red, is because I was running around trying to cool down the font, while people were coming into the chapel!! Luckily everything turned out great! The baptism went smoothly, lots of members showed up, and everything worked out great! It made for a wonderful Sunday!

People the gospel is the greatest blessing we have in our lives. This past week I have been reading all the talks from this last conference and I know that this church is the true church! I love it so much and hope that you all can grow a deep love for the gospel as well. Pray for opportunities to be a missionary, pray to help those in need! Pray how you can do more now, than what you are currently doing, and I know the Lord will reach out in his infinite goodness and bless your life for it!

I love you all and hope that you all can have some missionary experiences of your own!

Love Elder Hanks!