December 19th, 2011 {butter crumpets and how they relate to time travel}

dear people who aren't in the best british country on earth,

i would just like to start this letter with an experience i had earlier this week.

i was sitting in my flat at my desk studying a little before i went to bed that night when all of a sudden it hit me. i looked down at my hand and saw that i was drinking tea, i looked down at the plate i had sitting on my desk and what did i see. (no annie squirrels were not involved whatsoever so stop guessing that!) i saw a buttered crumpet! i looked again at the tea, then i looked again at the crumpet, then back to the tea, then back to the crumpet and then (pause for effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ) it hit me!

i was having tea and crumpets!  my world was rocked! i sat there in stunned silence for the space of at least a sixtieth of an hour just taking in the fact that i was enjoying tea and crumpets before bed in a very very english city south of london and for some reason that i do not fully comprehend i felt like i was tubing (disclaimer: only some of you will understand the comment about tubing if you read this sentence and do not immediately smile, laugh, or show some other form of amusement then you need to get out more, and by get out more i mean you need to come to lake powel with my family more often, yes i know that i probably haven’t invited you to come to lake powel so it's a little bit unfair for me to throw in a lake powel reference and blame you for not understanding it but i don't really care because i'm in england and therefore you have no method of stopping me!).



so in other news i've also been on a mission doing missionary stuff. we had a bit of a rough week because we weren't able to get out and teach that often due to elder peach's driving tests down in worthing and the mission wide christmas conference, which i very much enjoyed but it did eat up a whole day of mission work. but in the seemingly small amount of time we've had to teach we did manage to find a new investigator named mohammed. as you probably inferred mohammed is a muslim so we have a bit of an issue in that we won't be able to teach him much until we find out whether or not teaching him christianity could endanger his life. you see we have a lot of muslims in this country and if they are ever to return to a muslim country as a christian their life would very much be in jeopardy so were a little bit restricted in what we can and can't do concerning muslim investigators. he was very interested in what we taught though and wanted a book of mormon. we couldn't give it to him then though because we had to teach him at a train station, because his roommates are muslim and don't like christians, and he was going to meet them right after he met us so he couldn't have a book that had jesus christ on its cover. so it is a little bit dodgey but we will do whatever we can to bring this man closer to christ without killing him in the process (ps. dodgey is the english word for sketchy and sketchy, for all you old people out there, is the hip and new way of saying troublesome)

in less great news kim dropped us earlier in the week quite suddenly and wouldn't explain why she didn't want to be taught anymore so were back down to one baptismal date for david. it's hard to lose an investigator who was so excited about baptism when we first met her and especially hard because she won't even let us know why but me and elder peach aren't letting it get us down. we’re exited to go out and find more people and we'll do whatever is required of us to help those we meet come unto christ.

i love you all and just want to let you know that crumpets are about a billion times better than cream puffs, that i tried the spell "sunshine yellow butter mellow turn this stupid fat rat yellow" and it did not work, unless the intended effect was to offend my companion by implying that he was fat (i don't get how he came to that conclusion).

i also want to let you all know that i love this work and that i feel the lords help each day and have gained a strong testimony of prayer

please pray as often as you can and when you can't pray just keep yourself focused toward the lord and you will begin to see miracles wrought in your life (:> (that’s a backwards smiley with a hat in case you were wondering)



take luck

sincerely

elder Michael Jarman