"Did Jesus Smoke Weed?" - Bina Bo Nina

A whole bunch of stuff has happened since last monday. And transfers came out! I'll get to that in a bit. Right now, i wanna talk about how truly blessed we are up here in lynden. This area has been set up for success. We've got some really elect people up here, and it's all happened within the last week or two. 

I'm currently writing this while our ward mission leader is driving us to a hike in the  everson area. He's a huge metal fan, and he knows that we like the same music. We've been blasting Gloryhammer, Sabaton and now we're on babymetal. Gloryhammer have an album called "Tales from the kingdom of Fife" and you can get to Fife in about 20 mins from my home back in Scotland. He's awesome. If anyone serves in the Everson ward you've got a great ward mission leader

The people that we're teaching up here are awesome. A lot of people that have gone through a lot of pain and in need of comfort. Lucky for them, we know what's best for them.  A little bit of Jesus Christ's love goes a long way, and it's a joy to see how much it can impact people's lives

It's also a great area, and something interesting happens every day. We almost got catfishes yesterday 

So we get this referral from a Bina Bo Nina, and we call her up. She's really down to learn more about Jesus and that kinda stuff. She asks for our social media stuff so she can follow us, which was pretty strange, cos that's never happened to me before as a missionary. So we send them over and then we think to try and look her up. The account looked like a scam account because she was pretty, and didn't really post that much. Which was strange, because she asked us for our socials. Anyway, we're texting trying to set something up and she lives in the middle of nowhere. She cancelled on us for Saturday but we set something up for Sunday, and she was texting like it was a trap almost, saying we could stay for however long we wanted, and telling us that she was relaxing and that kinda stuff. We bring a member and go for it. Turns out, she was really elect, and that's just how she is. She's saw a lot of AI Jesus stuff and asked questions about if Jesus married Mary magdeline, and a whole bunch of stuff from the apocrypha. She also asked if the devil possessed a body and died if he could go to heaven. Aside from the fact that that's exactly what Agent Smith did in the second Matrix film, probably not. She asked if Jesus smoked weed as well

But really elect and open to the Book of Mormon and our religion. 

Transfer news! I'm literally just going twenty minuites down the road, moving down to the laurel ward with the one and only Elder Stoddard! We did an exchange together a few weeks ago, and he's awesome! Heavily looking forward to this transfer. A lot of good missionaries coming up to Bellingham

Spiritaul thought is this quote from Elder Teh's latest talk this conference

"Two years ago we were asked to live in Hong Kong, known for its tall buildings. Our apartment building was dwarfed by much taller buildings around it. So, I was prepared to live in the shadows. Imagine my delight to wake up and see the rays of the morning sun shining through our windows. This simple experience filled my soul with immense joy and gratitude.

When I finally got my bearings, I was so confused. Our windows were not facing east. How did we ever get the morning sun? Upon further investigation, I learned that the sun’s rays were being reflected into our apartment by the tall building in front of us. I was reminded that when we strive to follow the Savior, He will use us to bless others. Through our example and service to others, they will feel the Savior’s love for them."

Service, Splits, Salvadoran Irn Bru and Teaching The Punisher

Pretty standard week. You know the routine by now. Ups and downs and all that

Here's the photos - https://photos.app.goo.gl/ke7PcXCfxR8azkcG9

Can i just say it's been really nice to have dinner appointments. That's something that's been a blessing, because we never really have food in the flat. It's also not always the most convenient to go back to the flat if we're deep in lynden or everson, so we eat out. Not that I'm complaining of course 😋😋

Speaking of eating out, I got the Super Mario Galaxy Happy Meal at McDonald's. They literally announced the movie a few days after I was ordained a missionary. It's the closest I'm gonna get to the film in a year and a half, so I gotta take what I can get.

Had an exchange with the man, the myth, the legend that is Elder Stottard! This guy is awesome, and he's into songwritng! We spoke about a whole bunch of music stuff throughout the exchange. We got bashed, and had to re-plan our day twice because plans kept changing and service opportunities came up. It was Elder Stottard's first bash, since he's only been out for a while. The guy thought everything in the bible is literal, so when the Lord stopped the sun and the moon in the sky for Joshua, he actually stopped them in their orbit around the earth. 

And that's another problem. Apparently because God divided the waters in heaven from the waters on earth that means that it's flat. 

Whatever. It's not like that was proved wrong hundreds of years ago, but whatever. 

Anyway, it was a great day though, and we even wrote some songs together!  

Also turns out we had the same MTC teacher, Sister Bell! What a coincidence!

Had another exchange, this time with Elder Brackett, one of the ZLs. He started his mission in everson (one of the areas in which I'm serving) and he showed me a few contacts that I wouldn't've thought to go and visit them. We met a very promising investigator who might be interested in learning more about the Book of Mormon! We were telling him that we believed that Jesus Christ visited people all around the world, and he said "Yeah i remember my grandma saying something about that." Huge assist from Ryan's grandma! Get her the Playmaker of the Season award, because she might've just gotten this kid baptised. 

Everyone in Lynden is Christian, which is good. The downside is that they're all very well versed in the bible. The upside is that they all use the same verses, and we give the same responses. You'll get the occasional one that takes a bit of thinking, but if you're testimony is still strong even when you walk away from a bad bash, then you're fine. 

We had our interviews with the mission president as well. Mine was not even two minuites. He was on a tight schedule that day, so we didn't chat for long. Told him what I wanted to say, he gave insights, and we prayed. Boom, in and out. To be fair there wasn't much I wanted to talk about. Everything's just peachy 

We went to english class the other day, and the people who are attending are really friendly with the hermanas. They gave us all these drinks from El Salvador, and one of the was basically the same as Irn Bru, but a little creamy-er. Really good, and the photo is down below 

On the ZL exchange we taught one of our friends, Paul. He's Russian, and he's built like one as well. The lesson was originally going well. We were teaching about the fall of Adam and Eve, and the need for opposing forces in life. Then we asked him about what he thought, and i could've swore that I'd heard movie villains give the exact same monologue that he gave. He said we needed to wipe out anyone who commits serious crimes, and that not enough Christians are going and making a change. It was a mix between a revolutionary speech, someting The Punisher would say, and what justified the crusades back in the day. Really interesting lesson, and I feel it went well. We didn't see him at church, which sucks, but what can ye do. 

We had a member dinner yesterday. It was since really nice lasagne and they gave us dessert to go! Then, all of a sudden, I start getting a nosebleed as soon as we start leaving. The food must've been that good that it triggered my nose to bleed. 

It cleared up after a while, but it was certainly a strange experience!

Spiritual thought comes from a President Nelson quote from his talk "Revelation for the Church, Revelation for Our Lives." This part in particular has been quoted so many times and is so important that president Oaks further emphasised it and added a warning with it as well. 

"Our Savior and Redeemer, Jesus Christ, will perform some of His mightiest works between now and when He comes again. We will see miraculous indications that God the Father and His Son, Jesus Christ, preside over this Church in majesty and glory. But in coming days, it will not be possible to survive spiritually without the guiding, directing, comforting, and constant influence of the Holy Ghost."

This is a really powerful statment, and a lot to unpack. Give it a few reads, ponder on it, ponder on it again because you didn't actually do it well enough, then apply it into your life. Never take the spirit for granted. He is your eternal companion after baptism. He is the guide we have in life that directly testifies of God to you. 

The Scots Are Invading

This has been a good week. The days up here are no where near as exciting as the ones in seattle, but I'm enjoying the quite life. The driving up here is nice and the scenery is beautiful. 

We drove down to mt vernon twice. One was for a pday. We needed to practice a musical item with some missionaries from Oak Harbour, and Mt vernon is in the middle, so we met there. We basically spent the whole pday there. Got panda express, went to some courts and played tennis. I tried to channel my inner Andy Murray, but it didn't quite work out. 

There's another missionary from Scotland in the Washington Everett Mission! Her name is Sister Davies, and is serving as a senior missionary. She goes to the Liff ward, so if anyone knows her let me know! We got a call from Sister sherman during pday telling me that there was a new missionary from my neck of the woods, and oh boy does Sister Davies have a Dundonian accent. Just like America, Scotland has different accents based on where you live. We were chatting about mince and tatties, irn bru, and about Scotland. She knows folk in the Falkirk branch as well. 

Honestly it was so good to talk to someone from Scotland. This makes two people. One was back in the seattle ysa, he was an exchange student from Edinburgh Uni, and wasn't interested, but for some miracle we got his number. Sister sherman also gave me more irn bru, like the legend that she is. 

I also got a bunch of reports from missionaries who went to the Lamb of God Symphony last week that they ran into another missionary from Scotland, Sister Williams! I feel like the Lord is just sending Scottish folk to Washington, because three missionaries all from Scotland in Washington is too much of a coincidence to be one

Guys, I think I'm starting to like Chipotle. It mightve just been the ones in seattle, or maybe it was the things I was getting, but it's not as bad as it once was. Chipotle is also pretty cheap depending on what you get, so that's a bonus as well, but that's enough about that 

The ward had a baptism and they asked us to fill up the font. We gave it an hour and a half to fill, but by the hour mark it wasn't making great progress. So we grabbed some water containers like the ones we used for the hot chocolate stands and started getting a shiftie on. We filled it up in time, but my forearms were killing me by the end of it. The baptism went smoothly and there were no complaints about cold water

The ward mission leader in everson is great. For ward correlation meeting (the missionaries meet with the ward mission leader and brief him on what's been happening with their friends and stuff) he made us some good food, and he ordered some Irn Bru for us to have. I seem to be fulfilling my secondary missionary purpose, go expose as many people to Scottish culture as possible, and make it seem appealing to live there

Also, not that I'm complaining, but why does everyone up here have a dog? We've knocked so many doors where I swear Cerberus himself lives there. This one member's house had about five dogs, all varying in shapes and sizes. One was no bigger than a toaster, the other was as tall as my abdomen. I don't know what they're feeding the dogs up here, but it might be infused with steroids

Spiritual thought!

No idea how I found these scriptures, but I found them and I like them.

2 Timothy 2:10-12

"Therefore I endure all things for the elect’s sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus with eternal glory.

It is a faithful saying: For if we be dead with him, we shall also live with him:

If we suffer, we shall also reign with him: if we deny him, he also will deny us"

Paul is writing to Timothy in these verses. I like to think of it as an older missionary writing an email to a newer one who is struggling. Paul is writing to Timothy to give him confidence. And by extension, I feel like he's writing to all the missionaries who are struggling. 

See you next week!

Resurrection, Exhaustion and Urination

Well it's been a few days. They've perhaps been some of the best days I've had on the mission so far. Mostly because there was a lot of stuff that we were doing

We stopped by the seattle ysa on the way back from the temple on Thursday, and I got to see Mason again. Elder durrant and I baptised him back in January, and it was really nice to see him again. It's two hours to the temple from where we live, which is nothing comapred to how long the journey was from where i lived to the nearest temple back in Scotland. But it was a really pretty drive

We also had a member have us round for a passover meal on Thursday, which was really interesting. It helped me understand the importance of everything that it stood for and how much it meant to the Jews. I was tempted to mention that there's a Metallica song about the passover (Creeping Death) but I felt it would ruin the moment

We also had General conference! If you don't know, general conference is where the prophets and apostles speak to us, and give talks on subjects that can help us focus on Christ. There were a lot of easter messages, since two of the sessions were on Sunday. There are four two-hour sessions of conference, and I only fell asleep during three of them. New PB!

I really liked the remember remember talk. Basically, there are five verses in the Book of Mormon where the words "remember remember" are found. They give great truths about the gospel and God. I don't remember what they are for the life of me, because I was trying to not fall asleep lol, but it's a great talk

We'd been getting worked to the bone the previous days, and had some really great lessons. We put someone on date for baptism yesterday! His name is Francisco, and he's open to the idea of baptism! He is very shy and might take a while for him to gain the fundamentals of a testimony, but we put him on date for the 23rd of May! He's great and it's very easy and hard to teach him. He has a habit of havering while we teach him, and he goes on long tangents, but we managed to have a good lesson with him yesterday. 

The other friend we have on date, George, is also awesome. We went round to his to watch conference, after it had happened already. After that, he offered me to have a shot at one of the two guitars he had lying around. Momentarily forgetting that we're only supposed to play instruments on pday, we started tearing it up on the guitars and having a great time. Elders in my previous area found an acoustic guitar that no one was using, so I offered to take it. But yeah playing with George was fun

We went to visit a member a few days ago. She was out in the field playing with her grandson, and we joined in. We played football and got to know the grandma really well. I was mostly playing football (the real football) with the grandson, and it was a lot of fun. He then all of a sudden wanted to start wrestling me, but given that i was more than double his height he found it a little bit difficult. He had another idea though. He then demonstrated perhaps the prime example of why the minimun age for baptism is eight in the church. Baptism requires accountability over your actions, and since children aren't really accountable for their actions because they're still growing, they don't get baptised until they're eight. Anyway, so this kid takes off his trousers and starts peeing on me. Just randomly, out of nowhere. No warnings or anything, he just starts laughing and I feel something on my shoes. Perhaps what my companion found to be the funniest moment of our time together so far. To be fair, we all laughed, and I wasn't annoyed. It could've been a lot worse

Spiritual thought!

When the Israelites were commanded to sacrifice the lamb and paint their doorframes with the blood of the lamb, it was a lot more symbolic of the Atonement of Christ than you think. This is what i was told by the member, so don't know how accurate it is but whatever

Anyway, people found the ruins of the houses that the irsaelites lived in in Egypt, and they had their names on the doorframes outside, so when they were painting the blood of the lamb on the frames, they were literally covering their names with the blood of the lamb, which is symbolic of how the blood of the Lamb of God (Christ) covers our names. He bled and died for us that we can be saved from sin and death. 

Have a great day!!

"Do Scottish People Celebrate 4th of July?" Feat. Si Bueno!

It's been a long week and a half without a pday. It's been rough, but we're going to the temple, so that's exciting. Not exciting that we had to wake up at 5am to head down. Probably gonna take a nap after I'm done this email. It's a long one, so brace yersel. 

Every day these past weeks has always had something exciting happen, so no matter how boring the day was, there was always a good thing that occurred, which was really good because some of these days are really boring. Just driving not even five minuites to contacts and lessons is alright, but it gets really repeptitive after a while. Maybe this is what the next year and a half is gonna look like, but we just keep going. Look at the little wins and all that 

There's some great Mexican food around here, and it makes sense, because the population is probably about somewhere between 20-30%, so we run into a lot of Hispanic folk. We were out knocking and one guy claimed to be the devil. Really funny conversation through his door about the legitimacy of his statement. I doubt it though. 

We went to the English Class to help out the hermanas teach. I simultaneously understand and had no clue what they were talking about. It was fun though, because i just talked about football with one of the guys for the whole lesson. 

The everson ward did a pinewood derby last week. I would add a photo of my car, but I forgot to take one. We're heading down to the temple, bright and early. I woke up at 5am today. But, however, on the way back from the temple we're gonna be driving through my roots, Seattle! Stopping by a nice food spot in the U district, because they have some of the best food there. Anyway, the pinewood derby was fun. I didn't win any of the races, but i still had a blast 

I would say that the everson ward is probably around the same size as my home ward, but the lynden ward (I'm covering both of them) is huuuuuge. Probably bigger than the Edinburgh stake. I'm measuring it based of how many deacons pass the sacrament, which is six in this ward. We also went to the youth night, and I kid you not there were probably more youth there than when I went to stake youth activities. 

I finally have dinner appointments, and it's glorious. It's also really good that they feed us, because we've been more skint than when I was living in seattle. I dunno where all the money goes, but I'm thankful for the members who feed us. It's good food as well, and their families are great to get along with

We taught seminary one morning. It went alright. I had great seminary teachers back home, and I'm not saying that just because they're on the mailing list. I did not do as well, but it was alright. I'm not a classroom teacher at all, so it was a little harder for me than my companion, but we still did a good enough job

Moving into the new ward I'm basically starting fresh again, getting asked all the same questions about my scottish heritage, and everyone is shocked by my un-americanness. I basically say the same things every time:

"It's not a skirt, it's a kilt"

"No, I don't have a kilt"

"Nope, that's Irish"

"Yes, I love haggis. It's a very unique taste"

"Yes, Nessie is real"

"That's cool! London is on the other side of the UK from me"

*then i have to explain what the UK is*

"That's cool that you're great-great-great grandma was scottish. Probably don't know her, but that's cool"

"I don't know much about UK politics to answer that correctly"

"We're not supposed to talk about local politics, so I can't answer that"

"The weather is pretty similar to here, honestly. Little colder, but similar"

"It's pronounced Edin-bruh"

"Yeah I dunno why it's spelt that way if it's said that way, but that's how you say it"

Every. Single. Interaction.

I've been asked many things as well. Some things are really stupid

"Do they celebrate ________ in Scotland?"

- Halloween

- Thanksgiving

- Christmas

- 4th of July (really)

- Valentine's day

- Veteran's day

"Do they have _______ in Scotland?"

- Coke

- Subway (the food place)

- Subways (the transport)

- Good food

- Mountains

- Guns (no)

- Water Guns

- Good music (yes)

- Culture (more than you big man)

- Drake

- Speeding

- Temples (almost)

- People

- Earrings

- Trucks

It's so repetitive, and it's gonna be what the next year and a half looks like. People just have a lot of questions, because I'm the first european missionary who's been in the mission for a while. I heard about a missionary who was from England, but she left way before my time. I would love to have a European companion. We would baptise our whole area

Spiritual thought is Mormon 9:12, and it says

"Behold, he created Adam, and by Adam came the fall of man. And because of the fall of man came Jesus Christ, even the Father and the Son; and because of Jesus Christ came the redemption of man."

I love this because it's one of my favourite topics how the creation, the fall and the atonment of Christ all link to each other. This scripture sums it up really well and ties it all together. Because the plan is all tied together, and we should show thanks for everything that God has given us, including his son

See you in a few days!