Monday, July 14, 2014

"...walked with my arm around his shoulder, his around mine. He smelled quite bad of alcohol."

Hello family!
So this has been an interesting week.
The things that stand out to me are the drunk people we met. The first one was outside of Tesco, the UK-wide grocery store.
We had to grab a quick something during the week that we forgot on p-day. As we left, a lady called out to us. So we went over. She asked if we help people with alcohol problems.
She wasn't super drunk, but we could tell her husband was, about 10 feet away talking to another guy. We said yes, and she agreed for us to come over the next day to teach her and her husband about the Church, and also about the Addiction Recovery Program.
Then as we walked to our destination, just two minutes later, a very very drunk guy called us over to where he was sitting on a bench. He asked if we could help him walk over to the other side of the street, where there was a fence he could hold onto as he walked home. So I walked with my arm around his shoulder, his around mine. He smelled quite bad of alcohol. But it was a good experience I guess. Then yesterday as we came out of an apartment complex after visiting a less-active member, a drunk lady kinda stumbled through the front door, looked at us, and asked if she could take a picture with us. We obliged. Her friend took the picture, and then they left. Interesting.
We had four appointments with either current investigators or seemingly good potentials; but they all cancelled or just didn't answer the door. Sad. One of them was with the alcoholic lady outside Tesco.
We had a zone meeting where I was re-united with Elder Dewsbery and a few other missionaries that I like. It was fun.
We were in Drumchapel visiting a less-active lady, and apparently there is an old LDS church that used to be a ward, but people moved away from the area and they had to close it down.
They sold it to some other church or organization, who shut down as well. So it's just an abandoned former LDS church. interesting sight.
I could kind of tell it was one, although the buyers painted some parts of it blue which looked a bit weird. It's on Kinfauns Drive; maybe you can find it on google street view!
We were doing a bunch of street contacting in the City Centre on Saturday.
As we did so, some organization called Free Palestine was setting up a tent/canopy/booth thing. As time went on, we saw more and more people gathering, with Palestine flags, shirts, etc. By the time we left, they were basically having a rally or demonstration of some sort, so it was probably not good for us to be there anyway.
So I guess in a way it wasn't too eventful of a week as far as missionary work goes; everything seemed to fall through. But I always enjoy interesting/weird experiences, like drunk people, "GQing" near a Palestinian rally, etc.
Thanks to everyone who writes and emails! I always look forward to reading your emails, definitely more so than I enjoy writing them.
Have a great week!
Elder Burt

Photos:
The Mascot of the Glasgow Commonwealth games: A thistle.

My new planner cover, taken from a water-damaged Book of Mormon. Also my american flag and my tartan-covered scriptures.