#LightTheWorld

Assistants of the ELSM

What a week it has been in the England London South Mission! Can't believe we have once again welcomed December into our lives... crazy how fast the time is flying and how quickly this year has flown by...

We have come to another close to a transfer and another successful moves has taken place leading into the Christmas season. We spent Thanksgiving very well and also had a super good week of training with the missionaries again. Elder Tunnicliffe headed out into the field to train this time around and we welcomed in Elder Wright to the companionship along with Elder Cloward and myself. Crazy thing is... these two were best friends(I mean like... best friends back home in Heber City, Utah) and they are like the Statler, Ty, and Zach combo but in two haha. Super crazy that they get to serve together on their missions but also as assistants... pretty good blessing from the Lord but I guess that is why we have revelation. We had a super good week though and we capped it off with two baptismal dates for New Year's Eve so we are super excited to be back in working business again as we don't have to worry about Specialized Zone Trainings this time around!

Thursday: November 24th, 2016

Thanksgiving 2016!

One of the most successful days of my mission and it was truly a day of Thanksgiving! Nearly forgot it was a holiday until dinner time which was pretty weird... Elder Green and I got to work together again and did we see fruit??? Yes we did! We have the Christmas Initiative that is taking place now so we started to to use that in our contacts and because everyone loves talking about Christmas and the holiday season, we had some amazing conversations with people and had 5 new investigators that we picked up to teach. We also have a Christmas party coming up on the 17th so we have been inviting people to that as well. Just a wonderful day of good talks and good fun together on the
mission! Later that evening... well, Elder Cloward and I had a fun drive to Bristol... well partially to Bristol. We left at about 8:30 and it would have gotten us there at about 10:15 but I failed to grab my suit coat and so we needed to turn back after about 30 minutes of driving... that was fun. Then we continued our journey again and we got stuck in mad traffic on the M3 and the motorway went down to a single lane and we were stuck for about 45 minutes there. Our GPS then told us we would get there at about 12:30am... and that was definitely not happening... we called President to see what he wanted us to do and he told us to try and get off at the next exit and sleep at the nearest elders' flat. We tried to get to Reading because that would cut the travel in half but the exit we needed was completely blocked off due to road maintenance and that butchered those plans. We then had to continue to the only open road which then took us to Staines and we ended up by the chapel and still had quite the journey to go there. We called again for guidance to our president and we took some counsel from him to just take the other route to get to Reading and stay there for the night. We gave him some other options on staying at the chapel parking lot and sleeping in the car or making the journey back to our flat or just continue to Bristol but yeah... he said Reading haha. Fun trip and we finally made it safely after a good journey.

The Fab 5...

Friday: November 25th, 2016
Today wasn't much of a day... We ended up leaving the Bristol Specialized Zone Training early due to me feeling poorly... kind of sucked. So we went home and I just slept... good fun.(not really)

Saturday: November 26th, 2016
Today was rough... stayed in the flat all day and just slept. Worst thing on the mission.

Sunday: November 27th, 2016
Elder Tunnicliffe had his last Sunday today and bore his final testimony to the Crawley ward. He is quite the missionary and he was a huge example to me. I had the privilege of being his longest companion in the mission(we'll go home together in May so it'll be fun to have a final catchup at the temple)

Monday: November 28th, 2016
We had an awesome baptismal dinner again at presidents again and we good time. I lost my voice which is horrible... first time in like 4 years but yeah, it was a good night.

Baptismal Dinner!

Tuesday: November 29th, 2016
Today was moves and training the trainers again. Had a good meeting with President to covering some things we need to work on before Christmas comes! Super excited for our Christmas Conferences. 

Wednesday November 30th, 2016
We welcomed in the 6 new missionaries and got them assigned fairly quickly and did our final Trainings and got them on the way to their area to begin working! Another fun experience but my voice still wasn't back fully yet so it was hard to do things but I endured through it.

I can't say enough about this one...
17 month wait, worth it!

Thursday: December 1st, 2016
Today, we picked up a gift for President and Sister Gubler and ventured into Taco Bell...! Hidden miracle of the trip! A Taco Bell in our mission now haha! The best thing ever!

Verse of the Week:
Mosiah 15:28
"And now I say unto you that the time shall come that the salvation of the Lord shall be declared to every nation, kindred, tongue, and people."

Things are going super well! Hope you are all doing well! Love you!

Love,
-Elder Rivera