Hello everybody! 

I hope you all are happy and healthy! I'm doing well over here across the pond! 

This past week was a good one! We had interviews with President Hughes as well as zone conference all over Zoom. It was great! I learned a lot and really enjoyed it! We also taught a few lessons this past week, worked on family history, and tried to find people to teach through Facebook. Elder Anderson will be leaving next week. Transfers are also next week, so it should be interesting to see what happens to our four-man flat. It has been fun though! That's for sure!

President Hughes shared a powerful story with us at zone conference. He talked about how when he was a young lad, he and his young mens group had a lesson with one of their leaders. The leader took them outside and had them look at the beautiful landscape. He then asked them all if they believed that God existed. President Hughes said that he wasn't really sure at the time and that the rest of the boys probably felt the same. The leader then plucked a leaf from a tree and gave it to President Hughes. He asked President Hughes if he could somehow recreate the leaf or have someone else do it. Young President Hughes thought about it for a minute, and then realized that it could not be done. It was an experience that taught him that there is a supreme creator who created everything. One scripture that I really like that reminds me of this story is in Alma 30:44. It says, "But Alma said unto him: Thou hast had signs enough; will ye tempt your God? Will ye say, Show unto me a sign, when ye have the testimony of all these thy brethren, and also all the holy prophets? The scriptures are laid before thee, yea, and all things denote there is a God; yea, even the earth, and all things that are upon the face of it, yea, and its motion, yea, and also all the planets which move in their regular form do witness that there is a Supreme Creator."

Have a great week everyone! Love you all!

Pics:

June 22, 2020

Hiya everyone! I hope you're all doing fantastic!

My new companion, Elder Lewis, arrived this past week. He is Awesome! He is such a humble guy and is so eager to learn and work hard. He is an English boy from the area around Newcastle Under-Lyme. So he is teaching us the English ways. It's going to be an awesome few transfers with him!

One easy meal that I love from England is beans on toast. It sounds really weird, and I had never heard of it before I came to England, but it is actually pretty good. That is usually my "go to" lunch meal these days. We've also been getting pasties for lunch every few days. Pasties are amazing! Elder Anderson has been cooking us a lot of classic American meals. One night we had biscuits and gravy. In England, "cookies" are referred to as "biscuits", so when we told Elder Lewis that that was what we were going to cook for dinner, he looked a bit disgusted because he thought we were making cookies with gravy on top of them. It was pretty funny!

We were able to meet with one of our friends in person outside. We just had to keep social distance. It was really awesome to meet him in person finally! We were able to share some gospel principles with him, and he wants to meet up again, so that's pretty awesome! 

I gave a talk during one of our zone meetings this past week about having faith in Jesus Christ. As I prepared for it, I learned more about the blessings that come from having faith in Christ. When we have faith in Christ, we are able to meet the challenges that life presents us whether it's a loved one passing away or a sickness that we have. We are also able to change. We can turn our bad habits into good ones. And we can be healed both spiritually and physically. It's pretty amazing!

I hope you all have an awesome week! Love you all!

Pics:

1. Here is a weird door that we found while walking down a path.

2. Kynance Cove is one of our favorite places!

3. Lovers' Lane!

4. Kynance Cove!

Hey everybody! 

Not a whole lot has been going on this past week. We have just continued our missionary work online. We were able to teach a few lessons to people which was great!

My new companion, Elder Lewis, just arrived today! He is from England! He was originally called to the Australia Melbourne Mission, but he's been reassigned to our mission. I think it's kind of funny that if you put our names together it makes "Wray Lewis". He seems like he's going to be a sacred missionary. I'm excited to be his companion!

I hope you're all doing well and staying safe! Know that the God is there for you all! Keep trusting in him! 

Love you all!

Elder Wray

Hello everybody! I hope you all had a great week! This past week has been pretty good! I'm grateful to still be out here serving a mission. It is awesome!

We were allowed to meet up with some other missionaries in our district this past week. We just had to remain two meters apart to follow the social distancing laws. It was good to see the other elders though! My companions and I also cut each others hair, and it didn't turn out too bad actually. I was pleasantly surprised! We had mission leadership council on Thursday over Zoom. Mission leadership council always motivates me to do better, so that was nice to have. 

I also found out that I am going to be training a new missionary starting this next week. He is coming straight from online MTC. I am guessing he is from the U.K., so that will be fun! I'm still not sure if I will stay in the same place or not though. 

I have a really funny story to tell... so we were asked to travel to all of the flats in our zone that are currently vacant due to the Coronavirus. The assistants just asked us to make sure that these flats didn't have any rotting food or anything like that since there hasn't been missionaries living in these flats for months now. So we drove to the Plymouth flat first. This is where it got interesting. We had the key for their flat and opened the door. When we opened the door we saw a staircase straight ahead and then another door to the right. We figured that there flat was just straight up the stairs since there wasn't another door or anything, so we just walked up there. As soon as we walked up there, we were disgusted with how nasty the flat was. We didn't think there was any way that the sisters could have been living in this flat before... It was seriously not in living conditions at all. Anyways, as soon as we realized that there was no way that that could be their flat, Elder Hewitt said "Guys, I hear footsteps." The next thing we knew, we saw a guy walk down the stairs in his underwear and he just stopped and staired at us. We froze, and I thought for sure we were either about to be shot or beat up. But then we just told him that we were looking for the missionaries flat and he told us that it was downstairs to the right. We legit just walked into some guys house... it was crazy!

Here is a scripture that I came across this past week. It is in 3 Nephi 14:11. It says "If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to them that ask him?" It's true! We all love to give good gifts! And so does Heavenly Father, because he loves us. He is eager to give us good gifts and blessings in our lives. He gave us his son, Jesus Christ, so that we could experience joy and happiness! I encourage you all to start or continue praying for those good things in your life and others' lives. I hope you all have an amazing week! 

Love you all!

Elder Wray

Pics:

Hey everybody! 

It's been a few weeks since I've sent an email. I hope you all are doing well! Things are going well over here in the British Isles. Quarantine life is starting to become normal which I didn't think would ever happen...

 It's been really fun with my two companions, Elder Anderson and Elder Hewitt! I'm going to miss them when we part ways. We got to celebrate Elder Anderson's birthday last week which was a lot of fun! We got cake and candles! It was great! We've also continued the tradition of "Taco Tuesday". We love Taco Tuesday! We started a Book of Mormon club on Facebook. We had our first zoom meeting for it on Wednesday, and we are looking forward to the next ones! We hope it goes well! Other than that, we are continuing to find other ways to do missionary work online.

I made a goal this last week to study more about charity and love. It was amazing! It is hard to comprehend how much love Jesus showed to others. It can be hard to emulate too! But I have learned for myself that genuinely loving God and others are the two best things we can do! Whenever we go through hard things or question our decisions, we need to have a strong "why" to get us through it. And if we are doing things out of love for God or others, our "why" will be so much stronger! 

I hope you all have an awesome week! Love you all!

Elder Wray