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

The General Epistle of Samuel (Changing of the guards err... Companions)

Hello everyone!

This week was quite eventful for all of us here in the England London Mission. This week was full of moves, meetings, and best of all baptisms!!! This week was a wonderful way to close the month of August. 

On the topic of moves, Wednesday was our moves day so we had to venture to London once again to exchange companions. I dropped Elder Torres off at the office where his new assignment is. While I was there I met Elder Moura-Netto's family who came to pick him up now that he has finished his mission. Then I traveled to Euston station just a few streets down from Kings Cross station to make sure all the missionaries that were meeting there to move made the appropriate exchanges. I traveled there with Elder Dickey from South Africa. He is my "Grandfather" in the mission since he trained my trainer. He was waiting that day for a flight home because he was finishing his mission. It was great to be around all these wonderful missionaries that were going hard all the way to the end. 

The following day we had MLC which was wonderful as usual. The mission has been doing well this past month and we were able to achieve our goal of 50 baptisms in the month. We closed with 56 so we are all pretty happy. It has been a while since our mission has baptised that many people in a month. Great things are happening. 

On the topic of baptisms we had a baptism this Saturday. It was a great experience for Toni. It was too bad that Elder Torres couldn't be there for it but they traveled to the Britannia YSA ward in London (the ward Elder Torres is assigned to) and visited him there on Sunday. That made him quite happy. We had a great experience at the baptism. Toni has a twin sister Tiffany who came to the service and expressed her interest in learning about the church and being baptised so we set an appointment. Toni's friends the best friend of Tiffany also felt the spirit very strong and asked if she could be taught too. We will be setting an appointment with her this week as well. The mother is also interested but asked for some time while she finishes up her divorce. The only down side was the water was super cold because the boiler wouldn't turn on (anyone heard of the ice bucket challenge?). It was a great experience. 

Now we have a week of hard work ahead of us because we need to get more people on date to be baptised. Elder Kopischke is a great missionary and I am enjoying serving with him. He has a very German sense of humor so I am getting used to that haha. Life here in Bas Vegas is great! Thanks everyone for the love and emails and I look forward to hearing from you all again next week! Love you all!  

Love,

Elder Dalton

The General Epistle of Samuel (Moves week once again!)

Hello Wonderful People!

Well it's that time again. Six weeks have come and gone and now it's time for the mission to churn. Thankfully I wont be churning too much. Hardly at all really due to the fact that, I get to stay in Basildon!!!! Unfortunately for Elder Torres he has to leave my presence for a time. He will be replaced by Elder Kopischke from Germany. Elder Kopischke is from my MTC group so I am excited to be serving with him. Elder Torres on the other hand is a bit weary of his new assignment because he has been assigned as the new assistant to the president. He is freaking out haha. 

We have had a lot of work to do this past week and this week will be just as crazy. It's P-day today as you're all aware and tomorrow is moves day and thursday is MLC and friday is the usual then saturday we have a baptism (I'll share more in a moment) and sunday is the usual sabbath festivities of work work work. This week will fly by. 

On the topic of the baptism. Toni our wonderful investigator will get baptised this saturday. She is very excited and has made a lot of sacrifice in order to make this commitment. We are very excited for her. We have been teaching her for about four weeks and she is great. Great things are happening here in Basildon and we have our work cut out for us until mid october. 

Well that's pretty much my life at the moment. I am happy to hear that you all are well. I pray that everyone's week goes well and I look forward to hearing from you all again. I love you all!!!

Love,

Elder Dalton