April 18, 2016

Here we are in Coleraine!

Hello again but this time from Coleraine in the Beautiful Belfast Zone!  I am so happy to be back in the Belfast Zone! I enjoy my time here so much! Belfast makes me so happy! Anyway, this week was super crazy so I will just get right down to it…

MONDAY- was PACK DAY since we move on Tuesdays now.  We emailed and then I spent the evening just packing up.  I hadn't quite settled down in Bray yet, so I wasn't too rooted.  My stuff was still relatively packed, haha! We were told that we would need to catch the 5:40am train to get to Dublin so I could be on the 7:00am bus to Belfast.  That will be great! Then, we hit the hay.

TUESDAY- MOVES DAY!  We got up at 4:00am something and got ready then I made some final preparations and away we went to Dublin.  Lemme tell you, the train ride to Dublin at 5:30 in the morning is super dead.  Nothing is really on the train and Dublin is still asleep.  We arrived at the train station and all of the missionaries that were moving got on the bus and away we went! I arrived in Belfast at about 9:30ish and then we just waited for other missionaries to arrive and did some finding in the meantime.  Oh how I missed finding in Belfast!  It is so much fun! We also went shopping with the Zone Leaders and picked up the new missionaries and their trainers who just arrived from Edinburgh.  Then we finished the day with some more finding and some Boojums, an eating establishment, which is awesome! We then spent the night at the Zone Leaders flat.

WEDNESDAY- We dropped my new companion, Elder Richards, off at the airport to go to Edinburgh since he has to attend the New Leadership Training meeting with the Mission President.  Elder Richards is the new District Leader here in Coleraine.  Afterwards, I spent the day finding with the Zone Leaders and helping them teach a few lessons.  We had Boojums again today, as well.  Boojums is dang good, people! I highly recommend it.  We also ate dinner with some relatives of Elder McCappin, our Zone Leader, and they took us to this BBQ place that was fantastic.  I had an incredible chicken sandwich that was to die for.  I also indulged in a brownie sundae that was called "The Chocolate Skyscraper".  It was class.  Then that night, we picked up Elder Richards from the airport after his meeting in Edinburgh.  We then went to spend the night in the Newtonabbey Elder's flat since they were going to drive us to Coleraine in the morning.

THURSDAY-We woke up, had our studies and then we went to the Antrim flat to pick up Elder Richards' luggage.  We then headed to our new home in Coleraine, which is about 2 hours north of Belfast.  It is a beautiful drive.  We arrived in Coleraine at about 2:00pm.  We unpacked and went grocery shopping.  Then we did a bit of finding to finish off the day.  After we arrived home, we sat down and chilled by the river, which is in our back yard.  Yep, our flat is right on the river, like, it doesn't get much closer than where we are.  It is great! It was a beautiful day!

FRIDAY-We did our weekly planning and spent a good chunk of time looking through the area book.  We are basically whitewashing Coleraine, which means we are two new missionaries in the area and starting over from where the last set of missionaries left off, and it is so awesome.  We were able to get a few appointments set up as well as finding a few potentials.

SATURDAY- We went chapping and just offered service to people.  It was a really grand time.  We got our names out there and really tried to introduce ourselves to as many people as we can.  I am having so much fun here!!

SUNDAY-We had church but we were late since our shower is a little nuts and you can turn it on with every light switch in the flat.  It is pretty funny.  Here's the catch: The shower only stays on for about .00000000001 seconds and then it turns off again.  So, we were in the bathroom trying to figure it out for three hours! We then realized that we were gonna be a few minutes late to church and we just decided to bag the shower.  The landlord is definitely getting a call on Monday, though.

We finally made it to church and had a great Sacrament meeting, but we spent the entire hour of Sunday School talking to a less active lady who only believes in Joseph and Emma Smith. She even prays to them! She repeated the same 4 things to us over and over and then she left.  It was a good welcome to Coleraine! Haha!

Priesthood was good.  We talked about building the Kingdom of God from the teachings of President Howard W. Hunter.  After church, we did some finding, had lunch, continued finding and then we ate dinner.

Well, that was this week all summed up! The Lord has great blessings in store for all of us! All we have to do is ASK, SEEK and KNOCK! 

Love you all!!

Till the Work is Done

-Elder Mickelen