"...the members are great, they feed us all the time..."

Hello wonderful family!

Well, this week was interesting. Particularly yesterday. We thought our excommunicated friend who wants to come back had been murdered, but it turns out he just "dropped" us. More on that later.

Last Monday was fun. We went to Broughty Ferry, where there is a beach and an old castle. Unfortunately the castle has been turned into a boring old museum. But the outside is still cool. 

We can't swim, but we kicked a football around on the sand and waded a few feet out into the water. Happy days. 

That night we had dinner at our Ward Mission Leader's house. He has a collection of like 300 pairs of pristine Nike shoes. It was impressive but weird.

The next day was my second district meeting. Decent at best. Exchanged with Elder Donaldson. We went and saw Paul...he's not really keeping the word of wisdom like he promised. He says he's smoking and drinking, but just in smaller amounts now. Oh well. 

Then while walking around we met this really nice taxi driver who is a less-active member in the Montrose branch, but works in Dundee...he says his biggest issue with the church is the Three Nephites. He says he can't believe that they could live 2,000 years. He says he's studied and prayed and talked to a lot of people to resolve his concern, but to no avail. Interesting, I never really thought much of the whole Three Nephite thing, but apparently little things can cause big problems for people.

The first time I wrote Tyler Bird (Latvia) he said to look for Jordan Lynch, a Scottish guy who served in Latvia. I figured there was very little chance of meeting him, seeing as there are lots of different areas in Scotland...but on Wednesday I met him! 

Jordan had actually gone back to Latvia to visit, and said he hung out with Elder Bird for a bit. It probably sounds dumb, but I was super excited to meet someone living in my mission who served in my friend's mission.

On Friday we went and taught Cameron (The 15 year old who was baptized in February). It seems like lately he's been getting bored with our lessons...so we tried an object lesson. 

It's a really good one: you take a bowl of water, put pepper in it, dip your finger in and show how it gets covered in pepper, which represents the evil in the world. But if you rub liquid dish soap on your finger and dip it in, the pepper suddenly shoots to the edge of the bowl, and your finger is totally protected. 

When we did this, Vicky (Cameron's mom) was so amazed! And Cameron seemed to enjoy it a little bit more than usual. So I saw it as a success.

On Wednesday and Saturday we went to the City Centre with the Bingham elders and sisters and did family history finding. President Brown has urged us to use family history to find people to teach, so we basically just went up to people and asked if they were into family history, rather than opening with gospel stuff. 

I honestly think its a waste of time...we had 0 success. One lady said she'd maybe call us to set up a time to go to the Family History Centre. But I guess if President Brown is inspired or whatever, we better keep on trying it. But I dunny like it.

By the way: "Dunny" means "don't"  and "ken" means "know." So people here say "I dunny ken..." or they add "ken" to the end of a sentence, kind of like "ya know." So that's fun.

Jimmy is progressing toward August 4th. The only thing stopping him is his girlfriend's mom. She keeps saying "He's not ready for baptism" and stuff...both on the phone to us and when we're in the same room with him! But he's flipping ready. 

We decided that from here on out, we'll only teach him at his own house, or his girlfriend's gran's house (Heather--a super sweet older lady in the ward).

So yeah, yesterday. Our friend Paul, (ex-member, wants to come back) didn't come to church, which was concerning because he promised he would the night before and he's been coming regularly for several weeks. Didn't think too much of it...until a member came up and asked if Paul was ok, because they heard on the news that there was a murder in Elders' Court (his housing complex). 

We were pretty worried. Called him later that night, no answer, over and over, but finally he called us back. Good news and bad news. 

Good news is that he wasn't dead. Bad news is that he got into some anti-Mormon stuff. (Again.) He said he was reading D&C in the section about plural marriage, and then in Jacob 2 where it says you should only have one wife. Understandable to have a little stumbling block about that, but he said he won't be seeing us anymore and he can't be involved in the church because it's like lying to God or something like that...

He'll be back though, apparently he's done the same thing in the past. Sad though. 

He's real sincere, I think he is just easily swayed because when we teach him, he is super excited about the gospel, saying that he wants to receive the priesthood and be like us someday, wants to get a big portrait of Jesus and Joseph Smith on his wall, then literally the next day he is anti. Oh well.

That's the week for yous. 

Overall it was ok...the members are great, they feed us all the time, our investigators have cancelled on several appointments but for valid reasons, Jimmy's getting baptized in 13 days, some people we are teaching are planning on being off methadone in January, and life is good overall I guess. 

Sounds like Logan Life (and Salt Lake...) is good too. 

Go to the temple a lot! Because you don't have to make a five hour journey (from Dundee) or a two hour drive, a two hour ferry--three hour drive (from Omagh) to get there.

God b with u till we meet again.

Love,

Spencer

  

Photos:
Beach

Castle

The Liff Ward guys hanging out on a cannon (the 3rd guy is Elliot, we met him there along with his friend from Dunfermline)