Elder Britton Holyoak : Elder Holly Oaks

A few things that I've learned this week are: I am now referred to as Elder Holly Oaks and there are Anti-Americans here in York, England.

We've done about 10 hours of service this week for 3 different families. On Tuesday, we helped a lady named Emma clean out all of her "rubbish" in her spider infested garage. There are so many spiders here in England! Elder Barney says that none of them are poisonous, but I'm still sketched out. Emma helped volunteer with the church during a huge flood relief project in York last December. You can probably look up the pictures of the flood online. It was a pretty crazy. Emma isn't an investigator, but she likes what the church does with service and helping other people. She thinks that there could be a God and I hope that we can prove that to her.

The other 2 people that we did service for were members. We helped Sister Brown, a less active, knock down a brick wall in her backyard and we've been watering the Barton's flowers too. The Barton's are on Holliday in Scotland. Brother Barton is awesome! Elder Barney says that Brother Barton is one of the only English people that he's seen that owns weapons.

At church yesterday a lot of the ward members got back into town from holiday. I was able to meet quite a bit more people. Most of the ward members that read my name tag said, "Hmmm... Elder Holly Oaks!" Hollyoaks is TV show here and everyone pronounces my name wrong haha. The whole confusion is ok though because it's a good conversation starter, especially on the street.

There are so many stinking agnostic and atheist people here! There's been a lot people we've talked to at doors and they say, "I'm a devout atheist and you can't change me mind." British people are very stubborn sometimes.

I met my first Anti-American too! We were knocking in a neighborhood and Elder Barney and I saw a man walking across the street yelling at us. He was telling us, "Go back to America nobody wants you here!" Then a few English curse words later he was gone

haha.

James our investigator is still scheduled to get baptized on October 8th, exciting! And we've been teaching another investigator, D.... . I couldn't get a picture with him, but he's a man in his 50's that is really into animals and physics. He lives by himself. Elder Barney has taught him the past couple months and they could never get him to go to church. At our last lesson with him, we committed him to go to church the following week! I really hope that he follows through. That's about all that I can think about to write this week.

Cheers, until next week!

- Elder Holyoak (Holly Oak)