Week 61: Power Walking

Hey people around the world! It was another crazy week, and yes we may

have chased a few people down to talk to them. Always the best.

We had 2 awesome exchanges! The first one was with Sister Beck in

Lincoln. We had some time to stop by less actives and talk to people

on the way. There was this one girl booking it down the road, speed

walking to class. I do my best to stop her and she says "can't stop,

uni student, gotta keep moving." Naturally the thing to do is to go

with her. We walked with her for a good ten minutes, and in the end

she wanted to meet with us!  She also dated a Mormon at one point in

her life. 2 minutes after we met her, we chased down this other guy

with his son and he also dated a Mormon! He also wanted to learn more.

It was awesome.

Plus we got some nice exercise.

If you remember, about 3 weeks ago Sister Owusu and I were in Lincoln

and met a guy named Ben who was super awesome. Yesterday he got

baptised! While I was there in Lincoln I got to teach him about the

law of tithing. He was just so prepared for everything in the gospel!

We also went on exchange with the sisters in Wylde Green, and I was

there with Sister Lee! She is so awesome. We saw the cutest puppy.

Church on Sunday was pretty amazing, Helena (who we've been teaching

for a few weeks) came for the first time! We took the bus with her.

She wasn't there on time, and the bus to go to church was about to

leave, when she hopped off a different bus and ran to us! It was

amazing. She brought her little boy to church, and he loved primary so

much he told us at the end "we are coming again next week!"

Cool miracle, we met this guy named Valentine a while ago who never

showed up to his appointment. I ran into him on the street again and

he told us he wanted to see us! We saw him on Saturday, and he's one

of those people who asks all the right questions. People are so

prepared to accept the gospel sometimes it's ridiculous.

I love being a missionary. I've been thinking about a quote this week,

Elder Holland said "love in the gospel is not divided, but always

multiplied." All the people we meet are amazing. I've become attached

to the people here, all of them have something to offer, and something

for us to learn. When we love them, everything we do somehow becomes easier.

This week is transfers, and things will be crazy, but I'll let you

all know next week!

Love you all, keep it classy people.

Love,

Sister Slack

Last PDay we had lots of fun!

 Ben and Sister Beck- from Lincoln

Zone picture

Found sister urbani! She was at the mission home when we had a meeting.

Sister Lee Exchange! She made us kimchi, and it was so good!

Week 58: Miracle Bread

Hello everyone! It's me again.

This week is full of miracles. So I'll just start off by telling you about the miracle day because I don't have too much time (surprise).

It was a Thursday, and we had district meeting and so this lady in the ward usually makes a lunch. So we went and picked it up, and it seemed gluten free so we took it with us. After the meeting, we were having lunch and I looked at the package, and there was lots of gluten inside of the meal :( sad day. So, the plan was to pretty much just go hungry until we had a moment where we could stop and get something, or until dinner. Let's be honest, no one likes to go hungry. So it was kinda sad, but I was ready to stick it out. Then, I looked around the kitchen at the church, and there was a bag with a gluten free roll inside! It was seriously a miracle haha. I was so excited that I could eat something, I knew it would be a great day.

Later that day we had a few minutes to go outside and talk to people on the street. We stopped this one Polish lady, and she invited us to her home right then and she took us back and introduced us to her brother and her husband. They sat us down, and we started to talk about the gospel, and the first thing they wanted to talk about was baptism! Wow. Yeah so that was really great, and we set up a time to come back with polish material so we could teach them better. Then we got to meet with a recent convert we had lost contact with, and it was amazing. Then we went and had a few super spiritual lessons with two of our investigators, and then we went by our friend Jermaine. He is a cool kid. He has been meeting with the sisters for a few months, and on that day he prayed for the first time with us. It was incredible. He just really wants to follow what God has planned for him.

We had two exchanges this week, I got to go to Lincoln with Sister Owusu, and it was amazing! We had about 15 minutes to talk to people on the street, and the first guy we stop was super interested so we taught him a lesson and he wants to introduce his family to the church. The sisters reported that he came to church on sunday so it was pretty amazing :) and then we had exchange with Derby. Remember Sister Butler? She was my companion in Swansea. I trained her as a missionary! She is in Derby so we got to go together and have a blast. I love her so much! It was great.

We also met this really cool Slovakian family. That lady from last week who I really felt prompted to stop is amazing. Her name is Helena, and she told us on Monday that she has wanted people like us to come over for a while, but was never able to find them. Miracles people. People are prepared for the gospel of Christ :)

That's about all I have time for this week. Things are going great.  I love being a missionary. I love this work, I love my companion Sister Miller, and it's the best here.

Enjoy the last week of July!!

Love,

Sister Slack

 Riding the tiniest bike ever #exchange

Week 51: nailed it.

Hello people from the outside world.

This week has been jam packed full of fun and action, as you could guess, because being a missionary is the best! We started off our week with a girl named Jessica. Let me tell you a little bit about Jessica:

Sister Urbani and I met her back in sometime like... March. And she was super cool, but nothing really happened with her. Long story short, we ran into her again and she told us she was going to Berlin! But only for a week. So when she got back from her trip (last Sunday) she texted us and we set up a meet. And basically, I've never met anyone more prepared for the gospel in my LIFE.

We started off with the restoration and she immediately went home and started to read the Book of Mormon. Two days later we taught her the Plan of Salvation, and at the end of the lesson she told us "Oh yeah, I already knew about all of this, I watched a video about it yesterday." She had already prayed about it, and feels like it is true. Amazing! She also has had some opposition from her mom, but she talked it over with her mom and told her to do some research, and as her mom did some research (searching for things wrong with the church) the only bad thing she could find out was that she wouldn't be able to drink tea, coffee, or alcohol anymore. We hadn't taught her about it yet, and so we switched our plans then to talk about it at our lesson at 4:30 that day. That night we had organized a sports night (6:30pm) and she wanted to come. Between our lesson with her and the sports night, she went home and poured out her alcohol down the drain, replaced her tea with herbal tea, and bought chocolate milk instead of coffee. She is so excited to be a part of this church, and keeps reminding us that she is ready for this life-long commitment. She is definitely our miracle of the week!

In the middle of the week we had a movie night with investigators and such, and we watched the Prophet of the Restoration. It was awesome, obviously, until we came outside and everyone had left and we come to find a GIGANTOR nail inside of our tire. Great. It was 8:40pm, and we need to be inside at 9pm. Naturally we are perfectly capable of taking off and putting on the other tire by ourselves. We were doing great, we got all the bolts off, except for one. Sadly, it needed some sort of adapter thingy. Eventually, we called the assistants to the president and they drove on down to help us out, because the manual instructions weren't helping out. Long story short we got into our flat by 10:50, and it was fine and dandy and we woke up nice and early the next morning to drive far away down to Leicester to give some excellent (if I do say so myself) training on being unified. Unity = key to happiness everyone. 

We also got to go on exchange with the sisters in Loughborough, and I took my good friend Sister Powley back to Coventry with me. We had a blast, we ate some Ben & Jerry's, we taught Jessica, played sports, and enjoyed life. I love going on exchange with these amazing sisters. They are the best. 

On Sunday, there was a Europe North broadcast with Elder Holland, and he spoke from Scotland. It was amazing, and his testimony is so powerful. It is such an honor to be a missionary of the Lord, and I am so grateful that I get to serve the people here in Coventry. 

Thanks for everything peoples, you are amazing!

Love,

Sister Slack

Me & President Rasmussen (MLC this week)

Professional

I can fit inside the car boot

Ice cream

We cut my hair yesterday.. Just a trim. OH, sister thomson has never cut hair before, but it worked out alright :) 

Week 42: Post Easter Week

Hey everyone!

Wow, wasn't General Conference amazing? It definitely was inspired. One of my favourite lines from it was from Elder Clayton, where he used the phrase "Twas I, but Tis not I." I loved hearing this and remembering that it is ok to change. It is ok to become someone better. Of course, I will always be Sister Lara Slack. I will always love llamas, and water, and mountains, and having fun (doi), but changing to think more of others, to be kinder, and to love people more is never a bad thing. 

So what else happened this week? Well, it was the first of April! Yes, April fools day. No, we didn't really do anything too crazy that day. However, my wonderful family sent me a practical joke kit for my birthday (thank you for that), and on thursday we had lunch with the 10 missionaries in Coventry. Inside this practical joke set there is this very real looking fake plastic poop. Brown? yes. Sticky? you bet. Smelly? No way. Thank goodness. Sister Urbani and I decided that it would be great to stick it inside of the microwave. Here is how it went: "Hey you should look inside the microwave Elder." "Ok!" he then opens it, looks inside and says.. "Wow. That's disgusting." And closes it, and carries on as though nothing had happened. Yup. No one else even opened the microwave.. well we tried our best, but nothing really happened. Such is life.

We also had exchanges with the sisters from Loughborough! I got to go out to their city with Sister Chen. She is from Taiwan, and is pretty amazing. When I first got there I boldly made the claim that "I love biking!". Little did I know that we would be biking everywhere, in the cold rain, with my very out of shape legs, up a small hill for most of the day. And at the end of it, yup. I still love biking. While I got to do that, I loved the feeling of being a missionary. I kept thinking, "this is what I get to do, to be here and bike to someone's home to serve them. This is so awesome!" Everything is more fun when you have a purpose. 

Yesterday, our friend Grace came back from holiday in Spain. She is from China, and is one amazing soul. She came back raving about an experience she had, and so I'll share it with you guys. She arrived to the city in Spain, by herself, knowing zero spanish, and looking for one friend. Her phone had 2% battery left, and she couldn't find where she was supposed to meet her friend. They agreed to meet at the bus station, but since she was in a brand new country she had no idea where that was. She tried talking to several taxi drivers, but they couldn't communicate due to the language barrier. She decided to say a prayer, and tried to talk to another driver to figure out how to get there. At that moment, she heard "Grace!!" being shouted out at her, and she looked up and her friend was just passing on the bus. The bus driver was able to stop, and Grace and her friend were reunited. 

The first time we met her, she was nearly certain that God did not exist. She had gone to church before, but never felt as though he was there.  Now she knows for sure that He is watching out for her. I know that God watches out for all of us, no matter who we are or where we are or what our past has been. He is always there for us. 

Time's up!

Much love,
Sister Slack

Chocolate easter eggs

exchanges

ROYAL MAIL

MORE chocolate eggs

Spring flowers!

Always treasure lunch

 All we do is vote for people to be baptised!

 Exchange with Sister Chen

Week 41: "Please, sister, just give me a kiss..."

Helloooo

Well here we are again! SO this last week.. hmm. Well. Yes, it involved eating chocolate Easter eggs. And yes, it involved seeing everything as Easter themed. We see Easter flowers, easter animals, and easter people! They are waiting for us to feed them the gospel and they don't even know it. 

We had some sweet stuff happen this week. We had more exchanges, and this time I actually got to travel OUT of Coventry! Yeah! I went off to a part of Leicester called Westcotes. It was amazing. We got fed 2ce by 2 different families, and they both made delicious gluten free food for me, and even had extra gluten free brownies ready for us. How awesome is that? I love it when people feed us food. I was there with Sister Leiss, she's from Germany, and she taught me the difference between the two stages of the dandelion because they are different in the German language. We also experienced an interesting drink called dandelion and burdock... gotta say it tasted exactly like cough medicine. 

We actually acquired that drink from an old man named Henry. We visited him for a few minutes and after he gave us this mysterious drink, we were leaving and shaking hands. I happened to be the last one to shake his hand and he proceeds to beg me "Please, sister, just give me a kiss, come on." Uhhhh.. Yup I didn't know how to react so I just nicely said "Sorry, I'm a missionary" and then ran away! But it's ok everyone, he had a cat to keep him company once we left. 

We also had exchanges with Glenfield this week. I got to bring Sister Crowley here to Coventry, and it was great! We had a cool experience together. We set a goal to find 6 people who wanted to learn about the church in the morning, and we also wanted to follow the spirit more completely. Our time to talk to people went by, and we had 5 people so far, and it was time to start heading back. So, I turned to her and told her that we needed to find that one more soul, but we needed to use the spirit to find him/her. So, we stood there in city centre, and started to walk towards a statue, and then we both saw this one guy wearing headphones. We said to each other "Let's talk to him". We did, and we ended up having a really nice conversation and he became our 6th person! It was awesome. 

Sister Crowley and I also decided to do some old school doorbell ditching to the bishop. It was pretty exciting, and we even left their family a little box of cookies. Annnnd yesterday it rained and we got to see an awesome rainbow!! 

Yeah well the time has come to go, but I love all of you! Keep on truckin, and remember to not get too friendly with crazy old men.

Love,

Sister Slack

Email time last week!

 I spilled some soup...

Exchange with Sister Crowley and Sister Alexandroia 

We made some fruit for our friend Uche, he needs vitamins while he studies

Talkin on the phoneee

Driving with sister Urbani

crazy cat (an Easter cat!) 

exchange with Sister Leiss!

Rainbow!

Week 37: Coventry is my Kingdom

Greetings from Coventry. Yes I am still alive and well, yes it is still pretty cold, and yes I ate a lot of chocolate this week. I mean, you are only in England once. #YOEO

This week was crazy and incredible. As usual. So we'll start with last week. We received a text from our investigator friend Grace telling us that she was a little drunk and that she didn't want to learn about the gospel anymore. Naturally, we were devastated. We had become good pals and enjoyed many love shakes together. We waited a while to respond, and when we did we asked if we could meet with her to talk about it. Thankfully, she said yes. We met up with her and were able to talk about what happened, and it turns out she didn't even remember sending the text (she had a little too crazy of a weekend). She felt so horrible about sending that message, that two days before we met with her, she said a prayer hoping we would forgive her. Seeing as she didn't believe in God, this was huge. After she was done praying she just felt so strongly that everything would be ok. She knew things would go alright-and they did! Grace is back on track. We showed her the video called Because of Him, and she loved it and decided to work towards being baptized. She's so awesome. 

Also, every day this week we have been able to see Candy. She is progressing so well! She just takes everything to heart and has felt the truth that this is Jesus Christ's church. In meeting with her this past week, we felt strongly that we should move her baptismal date a week earlier. When we asked her about it, she felt so honored! It was adorable. She will be baptized this Saturday (March 7). We told her she could invite people to church, and she brought two of them to church with her this week. During sacrament meeting she asked me "What's a mission?" and I explained that it is what I'm doing and when people share the gospel. She then asked "So, how do I become a missionary?" WOW she's not even a member of the church yet and she wants to spread the gospel like wildfire. 

On Thursday we had dinner with the Basset family. They have 3 kids- ages 11, 8, and 5. While we were eating, they were all teasing each other about having boyfriends and girlfriends. The youngest boy (5 years old) said to his 8 year old brother "You have lots of girlfriends!" The 8 year old responded with "Well if he (pointing to the 5 year old) has any more girlfriends he'll be known as the next King Henry VIII!" Yup. Pretty smart kids.

We also got to go on exchange this week with the sisters from Demontfort. Sister Monnapula came to Coventry with me, and we had a blast. She is from South Africa, and she has a powerful testimony. While we were outside finding people, we stopped this one lady who told us "Well I would meet with you, but I live in Leicester (the next city over)" And Sister Monnapula told her that's where she lives. The lady asked what part of Leicester, and we told her that Sister Monnapula lives in Demontfort. The lady answered with "Oh, really? That's where I live!" Miracles people. We got her information and they are going to see her this week. 

For those of you that know me well, you know that burping has never been a problem for me - to put it lightly. We had dinner at a members home with Candy. While we were sitting on the couch next to each other, I could feel a burp coming on. I couldn't hold it down, and so a tiny little sound came out of my mouth. Candy was so surprised,and then we both just started to laugh. Then, about 5 minutes later, I hear a tiny little sound come out of her mouth! She just burped! We decided not to tell the other people in the room what happened, so they were pretty confused. But hey, bonding moments. 

That's pretty much it for this last week! Keep crackalackin everyone. 

Much Love,

Sister Slack

 Exchange last week with the Loughborough sisters

Our friend failed his driving test, so we left some gifts

 The marathon on Sunday

 Exchange with demontfort! Left to right- Me, Sister Urbani, Sister Weisner, Sister Monnapula

Crazy half the district pic

 Mustaches on the way to zone conference last week

 More mustaches

Week 35: Bible Bashed

Well well here we are again! This week has definitely been a great one. We've been working hard and I can tell that only good things are headed our way! 

We had the opportunity to go to lunch with one of our investigators this week, and we were talking about his life and he told us that he has gotten into martial arts. We asked if he was training at this place nearby in town, and he said "That place? No way, they couldn't handle me." Sister Urbani and I definitely busted up laughing. Too much to handle haha. 

This week I also got to be on exchange with Sister Rasmusson (From Sweden), who is serving in Peterborough. We came back to Coventry (a 2 hour drive in between)  and got to do some finding. As we were passing this one guy on the street, he stopped us and exclaimed "Sisters! Oh my come here!" He grabbed our arms and saw our name tags, and we saw that he was holding a bible. Then he took his bible and patted us each on the head with it and said "Oh may the Lord bless you and everything.." And a couple of other things we couldn't really understand. Gotta say we were more than a little bit confused. After he went on about how we all must believe in the bible for about 5 minutes and being told to avoid the Book of Mormon, we escaped only to realize that he literally had just Bible bashed us. He had hit us on the heads with a Bible! It was a first for the both of us haha.

I also got to go on Exchange with Sister Orro (from Australia), who is serving in Nuneaton-a town nearby Leicester. We got to go to a lovely dinner appointment with a sister who has traveled to Africa, and she had a didgeridoo in her front room. I had to play it. So, I grabbed it (with permission of course) and I got to play the didgeridoo! It was pretty dang exciting.

For the past two weeks we have been struggling to get people to church for some reason. We decided to really make things happen this week and do everything we could to get people to church. We asked all the members that we saw to pray for certain people to come to church. Specifically Grace and Dianne. Sunday morning comes along, and crossing our fingers and having prayers in our hearts, we made our way to church and both Grace and Dianne were able to come! It was amazing. They both loved it, and I know that especially Dianne felt the spirit. A member asked her if she was going to come again and she responded with "Definitely." It was incredible to see how our prayers were answered 100%. 

I know that the people in Coventry are definitely prepared to accept the gospel. It's amazing to be in a place where there are so many people and so many members and so many missionaries. It's an equation for miracles, and all we have to do is start it off by opening our mouths. 

I love being a missionary!

Keep it real, keep it classy everyone.

Much love,

Sister Slack

 Sunglasses swag

 Family home evening with everyone! Grace is the third one from the left.

Playing the Didgeridoo! 

 Love Shake time with Grace, Dianne, and Sister Orro

We had to ride the bus while the Elders took our car to the mission home.. it was an adventure!

 Exchange with Sister Rasmusson

 Valentines dinner. We put a candle on the table and everything!

Coventry life

Week 34: The life in Coventry

Welcome to Sister Slack's weekly email! Thank you for joining us everyone.

Hmm well I guess at the beginning of the week we had the adventure of driving to Birmingham for a meeting with the mission president, the wonderful President Rasmussen! It was pretty awesome, we got to see how each part of the mission was doing, get training that we would share with our zones, and I got to see a lot of my missionary friends! On the way there, we typed in the address of the mission home into the SatNav (GPS in america) and got pretty close, trying our best to be on time, and we were going to make it! Until we hit about 20 minutes of traffic and it turns out we put the wrong address into the satnav... So after our 30 minute detour we finally got there! Fashionably late, of course. We didn't even miss anything, so I think it was alright. Plus, it was like my 4th day of driving in the UK, so I gave myself a pat on the back. 

On Thursday we had the opportunity to give some awesome training at zone meeting about how our attitudes can be awesome and how it can change everything about being on a mission. Which is 100% true. I really like what President Rasmussen said "Your mission can be the greatest time of your life, or it can just be another experience. You choose." I think this applies to all times of life. Whether we are in school, at home, doing whatever, the time we have now can be the greatest time of our lives if we make it that way. All we have to do is take advantage of what we do have, and focus on the positive. It's kind of crazy to think about how much power a positive attitude has. And it reminded me of President Utchdorf's talk called Grateful in Any Circumstances. You can all go and read it, it's awesome. 

Later Thursday night, we got to go on exchange with the Glenfield sisters! It was so awesome. Why? Because I was on exchange with Sister Powley! Who I went to school with from Kindergarten to 3rd grade, and even had a class with her at BYU. It was awesome to be with her. We saw so many miracles together, and were able to meet some incredible people. One in particular was named Dianne. She didn't seem too interested at first when we talked to her, but she eventually agreed to meet with us on sunday. So, Sunday comes along, and we couldn't get ahold of her to see if she could still meet with us. Eventually, after church she called us back (Miracle) and said she could still come but later in the day at the church. So 3 pm comes along (when we were to meet with her) and she tells us that it will take her an hour to get there, but she was still coming (miracle)! So we went back home and then came back and called her again, and she got a little lost. So we directed her and eventually she got to the church at 4.45pm, it took her nearly two hours to travel there but she wasn't even upset or bothered by it! MIRACLE. Then we proceeded to have a boss lesson with her and she totally wants to learn more. She's pretty awesome, and I'm sure I'll tell you all more about her later on. We should be able to see her a few times this week. 

Anyway, back to the exchange. Friday night we exchanged back and everything, and we're driving home--Sister Urbani and I are reunited-- and then she asks me "Where is the phone?" Oh no. Glenfield is a half hour drive away and we were nearly home. We get all the way back and... YUP. It was left in Glenfield. So the next morning we had to go and retrieve it, but they had no way to let us in the building or know if we were there due to the lack of phone, so I just scaled the gate that surrounded the compound like flat complex and knocked and threw rocks at their window. It was pretty exciting. I don't think any of their neighbors saw us, and hopefully they realized we weren't thieving, just retrieving our beloved lost phone. Long story short we eventually got in and got it back! 

Pretty much it was a great week. I hope you are all doing great, and I'd love to hear from everyone :) 

Much love,

Sister Slack

Mission Leadership council, all the people there from my last zone!

a bit of Coventry

Exchange with Sister Powley!

 Love shakes-- deliciousness in a plastic cup