This week was just great!
But before I forget, a few things:
This is "moves week", which means people move on Wednesday to their areas. We got a call on Saturday saying that we are both still in Omagh for the next six weeks, but Elder Holm is the new district leader! That means the district is the Omagh district now. Pretty cool. He has to fly out to Edinburgh on Thursday for district leader training, so I will either hang out with other missionaries somewhere or if no one else is flying from Belfast that day, I might have to (get to?) go with.
I wore my glasses all last week. Everyone said they suited me well and they liked them. So that was nice. Some said they make me look smarter. I'm gonna keep wearing them so I don't look dumb again.
"All the best" is a common saying when saying goodbye. Basically like "take it easy" or something like that. At first I thought it was just Tom Henry, but then I've heard lots of people saying it lately.
Now this week:
Highlight was setting a baptismal date for Gertie! Not sure if I've told yous about her yet. Elder Holm and Elder Neilson met her a few weeks ago while on an exchange. She said she'd be willing to get baptized right on the spot! So we taught her a second time last Tuesday and she accepted a specific date (March 24th) for baptism! She will have a hard time getting to church; she lives in Dromore and no buses run there on Sundays. So hopefully a member can give her a lift.
She is amazing though, absolutely "prepared" for us to find her. When we gave her a Book of Mormon she was delighted and said, "I will treasure this!" It was amazing.
Brendan, the man who came to church last week, turned out to be a bit of a disappointment. When we taught him last Monday he had tons of Catholic paintings of Jesus and Mary and such. And he read us this super long article about a lady communicating with Jesus through Mary...? It was weird. He said he wanted us to teach him about our faith, and him to teach us about his. Then he invited us to lunch on Wednesday. When we met him, he tried to trick us into going to a Mass.
I would have been down, but there was a funeral going on too so it would have been looong. So when we went to lunch with him, he told us the same thing: that he wants us to teach him, and him to teach us. I kind of wanted to bust out a quote from Jesus in Matthew, and tell him that we came to Omagh "not to be ministered unto, but to minister." But that might have not been taken too well.
Basically we think he just wants a friend. He gave us a little pamphlet with the Catholic prayers on it, and a little "matrix medallion". He said that if we don't want them, to give them back to him instead of throw them away since they are holy to his church. So we'll give it a while before we return them.
Or maybe I'll just keep them just because they're interesting. Eventually we might tell him bluntly that we believe that our church is the only one with the authority to receive revelation and perform ordinances, but we'll see.
On Friday we taught Brian Johnston again. He is recovering from a knee surgery. We took Tom with us, and they got along pretty well. We need more Toms in the branch. But anyway, Brian again told us he was Methodist and didn't plan on changing, but we told him that if he prayed he would get an answer, and told him what that answer would feel like. He said he'd pray. So we'll see where that goes.
On Friday we had a birthday party for Tommy Reilly! He's 92 this Wednesday. He played his fiddle for a bit. I got a few videos. Yous will have to see them later because the limit for attachments is too small for the videos my camera takes.
But anyway, it was a great party. Brother McKenna, the counselor in the branch presidency did the haka for us too. He served in New Zealand. It was intense! Usually he's a fairly quiet, laid back guy, but his haka was crazy loud.
Those are the highlights for the week.
Thank you guys for your love and support and what not!
All the best,
Spencer
Pictures and a video:
Tommy, Iris, Iris' sister, Elder Burt, Elder Holm
The elders with Iris Mc Farland
Tommy with his cake
Tommy with his fiddle
I hope this one is good. I can't listen to how it sounds because we're in the library, but it was the smallest video I had. Enjoy!
