Brendan Pricer Mission Week 2
Date
September 17, 2019
Area
Preston, England (MTC)
Companion
Elder Striklin
Brendan Pricer Mission Week 2
Hello Everyone! I hope you are all doing fantastic because I know I am! I have never witnessed so many undeniable testiments of the truthfulness of this church at such a quickened repetiveness as I recieve here. One account I want to share with all of you is a story from an Elder in my district named Elder Johnson...so he and his family were going to see a seminar given by Elder Bednar a few years ago (for those of you who don't know, Elder Bednar is a modern day Apostle of the church) and his brother was telling his family on the drive up that he didn't know if he believed that the Prophet and Apostles see Christ as they did in the days of the Bible and The Book of Mormon. Anyway, fast forward a little to after the seminar, Elder Bednar insisted on shaking the hands of everyone in the audience. When he got to Elder Johnson's family, he shook his brother's hand and pulled him within whispering distance and said "I am a personal witness of Jesus Christ". How amazing is that?! Elder Johnson told the whole district this account on Saturday and we all got chills and I will go as far as to admit that I and a few others teared up a little.
I've had an amazing week. It has flown by and I can't believe that I leave in a week to go into the field. The food here is really good, they haven't repeated a meal once since I've been here and according to the Elders who have been here for 7 weeks learning Greek, they have only had a meal repeated two or three times. Breakfast here is super good too, they do have baked beans with breakfast a lot which is kind of weird but I still put some on my plate anyway. Missionaries in the MTC are from all over, we have a few from the Congo and Nigeria, some from South America, Germany, France, England, New Zealand, and of course the U.S.A.
On Monday we went to Manchester to practice talking to nonmembers. They loaded us all in a bus and drove us to a park in the middle of the city and told us to go talk to people. I was definetly a little nervous at first but it turned out to be a really amazing experience. We talked to these three university girls by asking them to take our picture with a statue of Queen Victoria, I'm pretty sure they were more interested in us than the gospel, but it was a super cool experience. One of the girls had a cousin that served a mission and her extended family has a history in the church. I wanted to talk with her more about the church but the other girls didn't seem very interested. Because my companion was just standing there not saying anything I set up a conversation between him and the other two girls because I wanted to talk to her about the church. I bought myself about a 45 second interval where I just bore testiment to her of the truthfulness of the gospel and then we joined back into the conversation with the others. Before we left to go talk to more people we gave them pass along cards and testified of the church. After that we talked to two construction workers who asked what we were doing, a few more university girls, and these two men who were sitting on the curb drinking beer. The two men on the curb were probably the most cheerful. One was from Manchester and the other from Dublin. The Irishman was super hard to understand and told us a lot of...huh interesting stories about his life. The man from England was easier to understand because he had lived in Seatle a few years back but got deported for reasons I'm aparently not allowed to talk about on email. But yeah, they were super happy guys and super open to talking about God which was awesome. We left them with a few pass along cards and a breif testimony. So overall the trip into Manchester went very well, whenever we talked to one person there was an immense feeling to just want to talk to someone else.
I have a few pictures I'm going to send aswell, according to my mom I'm supposed to explain them briefly. There is one of me in front of the MTC, one of me with Elder Raby who is from Bath which is in my mission (I forgot that the peace sign turned around like that means something else here so sorry) and a picture of me and my companion Elder Stricklin and then a picture of us with Elder Johnson and Elder Morse. I will admit, the last two pictures I just explained were taken by the people we talked to in Manchester, purely so we could have a conversation starter.
I think that's all for this week. I just want to breifly say, but by no means lightly say, that I know God lives, and that he loves us both collectively and individually. I am not an absent minded person! I would not leave behind everything and everyone I love to throw away 2 years of my life to something that wasn't true!
I love all of you and pray for you every day.
Sincerly,
Elder Pricer
"I am a personal witness of Jesus Christ"
I've had an amazing week. It has flown by and I can't believe that I leave in a week to go into the field. The food here is really good, they haven't repeated a meal once since I've been here and according to the Elders who have been here for 7 weeks learning Greek, they have only had a meal repeated two or three times. Breakfast here is super good too, they do have baked beans with breakfast a lot which is kind of weird but I still put some on my plate anyway. Missionaries in the MTC are from all over, we have a few from the Congo and Nigeria, some from South America, Germany, France, England, New Zealand, and of course the U.S.A.
On Monday we went to Manchester to practice talking to nonmembers. They loaded us all in a bus and drove us to a park in the middle of the city and told us to go talk to people. I was definetly a little nervous at first but it turned out to be a really amazing experience. We talked to these three university girls by asking them to take our picture with a statue of Queen Victoria, I'm pretty sure they were more interested in us than the gospel, but it was a super cool experience. One of the girls had a cousin that served a mission and her extended family has a history in the church. I wanted to talk with her more about the church but the other girls didn't seem very interested. Because my companion was just standing there not saying anything I set up a conversation between him and the other two girls because I wanted to talk to her about the church. I bought myself about a 45 second interval where I just bore testiment to her of the truthfulness of the gospel and then we joined back into the conversation with the others. Before we left to go talk to more people we gave them pass along cards and testified of the church. After that we talked to two construction workers who asked what we were doing, a few more university girls, and these two men who were sitting on the curb drinking beer. The two men on the curb were probably the most cheerful. One was from Manchester and the other from Dublin. The Irishman was super hard to understand and told us a lot of...huh interesting stories about his life. The man from England was easier to understand because he had lived in Seatle a few years back but got deported for reasons I'm aparently not allowed to talk about on email. But yeah, they were super happy guys and super open to talking about God which was awesome. We left them with a few pass along cards and a breif testimony. So overall the trip into Manchester went very well, whenever we talked to one person there was an immense feeling to just want to talk to someone else.
I have a few pictures I'm going to send aswell, according to my mom I'm supposed to explain them briefly. There is one of me in front of the MTC, one of me with Elder Raby who is from Bath which is in my mission (I forgot that the peace sign turned around like that means something else here so sorry) and a picture of me and my companion Elder Stricklin and then a picture of us with Elder Johnson and Elder Morse. I will admit, the last two pictures I just explained were taken by the people we talked to in Manchester, purely so we could have a conversation starter.
I think that's all for this week. I just want to breifly say, but by no means lightly say, that I know God lives, and that he loves us both collectively and individually. I am not an absent minded person! I would not leave behind everything and everyone I love to throw away 2 years of my life to something that wasn't true!
I love all of you and pray for you every day.
Sincerly,
Elder Pricer
"I am a personal witness of Jesus Christ"
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