The General Epistle of Samuel (gift of tongues?)

Hello!

Well once again it is that time of the week that I look so much forward to. It has been wonderful to hear from all of you and the many events of your lives in the past week(s). Thank you all for your love and support. It is received with gratitude. 

This week has been one of not great notability but still of great importance in the grand scheme of the work of the Lord. We have been working tirelessly to find those of Heavenly Father's children that have been prepared to receive the restored gospel. Along with our finding efforts we have been doing all we can to help strengthen the Basildon ward. 

Recently, we have met with a family that have been long standing members of the ward here in Basildon. What is so unique about them is that they are deaf. The husband can speak somewhat because I don't think he has been deaf his entire life.Anyway, a few weeks back they had invited us to dinner which was surprising because they never invite the Elders over. They would invite the Sisters occasionally but never the Elders. We were informed that they don't enjoy having the Elders over because they never try to communicate with them or share a message. When they invited us over we treated it as a sacred opportunity. We borrowed a church book on how to sign gospel words and practiced signing our testimonies. Unfortunately they don't understand American Sign Language so any of the stuff I learned back home didn't really help. After the meal they were surprised when we offered to share our testimonies in sign language. Fast forward to this past week and today and they now have the missionaries over regularly and are so happy to have us. We were able to do some service for them today and have lunch. They are an amazing family. They have been coming to church regularly for over 20 years many times not able to understand what was being said. They have been teaching us how to sign "our purpose" as missionaries (Preach My Gospel pg. 1). We will be doing it at our Zone Conference this month. They are a wonderful family and a great example of enduring to the end despite any set back. 

The rest of our week was pretty much that same as usual. We have been doing a lot of finding. We need more people to teach. We have some wonderful people referred to us we just need to make our schedules correlate in a way that we can meet with them regularly. 

Summer seemed to be coming to an end but today has proved to be a bit different. The sun is shining and it is quite warm. Hopefully it stays that way for the rest of the month. As well next week is my birthday and to celebrate Elder Kopischke and I have received permission from our mission president to go see the musical Wicked in London. We have had to change our P-day next week to Wednesday the 17th so don't freak out when I don't email until then. Other than that my birthday plans are just doing work and maybe a bbq with an investigator. 

Thank you all for your love and support! I look forward to hearing from you all next week and I'll try and get some pictures sent then as well. I love you all!

Love,

Elder Dalton

Mission Office:

England London Mission

64-68 Princess Gate 

Exhibition Road

South Kensington

SW7 2PA

London

England

Basildon flat:

9 Walnut Close

Steeple View 

Basildon

Essex

SS15 4DS

England

(don't send things to this address after the 30 of September  )

Samuel

Barry

Dalton

You're welcome