Guns and Gifts

Monday, April 29th 2013


Sam has a target of 20 lessons per week, this includes investigators, less actives part member families and member families. This week he taught 5 lessons to investigators with a member present, 3 other lessons with investigators, 4 lessons to less actives and 4 member lessons for a total of 16 lessons, that is the most he has taught so far! The attendance for his ward is 250 members a week and the support from the members is amazing! They help him out so much with meals and member missionary work, Sam loves getting to know the members in the area.

Sam loves the view from his apartment because you can see for miles, at a night time it looks amazing because there is a hotel/casino which fires a beam of light up into the sky which you can see from miles around.

He was excited to hear that his sister was on a big TV screen in London at Charing Cross for the Mormon video, he had met a girl who was in one of the Mormon Message videos that will be coming out soon! He also met Elder Christianson from 'The District 2'.

Also, some of his British terminology is rubbing off on his companion Elder Blanco, he called the vacuum cleaner a hoover the other day, so he was happy about that! Sam confirmed to us that he is NOT becoming American, he is still using a knife when he eats!

The temperature is in the 90's now so its really hot but he has found that if he wears long sleeve shirts it works better than short sleeves since he doesn't burn. It doesn't matter how much sun block he uses, the sun still burns him!

Sam has a short meeting every week with his companion, Elder Weekes and Elder Harper (the other 2 missionaries who stay with them) and the meeting is called 'Gratitude and Compliments' this is where each person says something they are grateful for and give each person a compliment, Sam finds it pretty funny but Elder Harper is the only person who gets his sense of humour.

Elder Blanco said its great to see how happy Sam is on his mission and that it rubs off on him and keeps him going as well, because he said he really struggled for the first week of his mission and he was depressed but he is happy to see how Sam has adjusted really well to mission life. Sam is really loving it out there and it already in his 4th week, he will be in the same area for 12 weeks in total but probably 18 weeks before he is transferred.

Sam was teaching a recently reactivated person called Austin, he is a prison guard and was telling Sam that there was a fight in the prison, people had razor blades, mops, dust pans, whatever they could get their hands on. He told him that is not part of his job to risk his life, so if somebody is going to get killed there is nothing he can do, that is part of the price they pay for being an inmate! He then asked Sam if he wanted to see the guns he had, Sam told him he had never held a real gun before, so he handed him a revolver and showed him how you get the barrel to come out. He then handed him two 9mm pistols so he could have a photo taken, its funny how casual people are about guns!

They also visited the Kalina family, their daughter who is about 6 or 7 gave Sam and Elder Blanco a copy of the Book of Mormon as a gift, Sam didn't realise until he got home that she had written inside an experience she had. Sam said he will give it to her Dad to keep since its something he probably wants to keep a hold of!

Overall, it was a fantastic week!