Baptism of Fire! 🔥

Hello, hello family and friends! This weeks update has a spooky pizza in it, hot peppers, Bon Fire night and CHRIS' BAPTISM!

     

First and foremost the highlight of the week was definitely Chris' baptism. It happened on Saturday and it was so good! The past couple of weeks we've been introducing him to loads of members and teaching him super in depth about the church. We got him doing family history and we'll make sure to get him an account on Familysearch.org once his membership number goes through, so we can help him go to the temple for his family names. Our Bishop baptized Chris, I spoke at his service and Elder Davies did his confirmation. The next step, that's right the temple! The missionaries are now allowed to take recent converts to the temple, which is outside of our mission. The Ashington Elders brought their friend that is learning about the church to the baptism and he's super excited about his baptism next week too!!

     

After the service, Sunday came rolling along and he received the Holy Ghost. It was Fast and Testimony meeting and during the Testimony meeting, guess what happened? Chris asked us if he could go up and speak, and we said of course! He bore a super confident powerful testimony. It was one of the most powerful testimonies that I've heard during my whole mission. And it doesn't stop there. During priesthood, the Bishop asked me if I could give him the Aaronic priesthood and set him apart as a priest. I've never done anything like that before. Speaking of priesthood, my boy Dave over in York emailed me the other day and he is preparing for the Melchizedek priesthood! After Church we gave Chris a basket of surprises with a picture of Christ and a fancy hard bound Book of Mormon oooh! It's the most rewarding feeling seeing people that you've taught make good decisions and progress in the gospel.

     

Now for the funny stuff in this week. Tuesday was Halloween, so we were required as missionaries to be in our flat by 6:00 p.m. The next day was district meetings early in the morning in Gateshead for another day of service. During service, we raked and got rubbish out of the creeks with super fashionable wellies(rain boots). The other lads spent Halloween night in our flat in order to get there on time the next day. So we had a mini Halloween party! I got a spooky gummy pizza from Aldi, it was delectable. After district meeting, Elder Bennett gave Elder Davies and I some chocolate, aw so nice of him. No! It had the Carolina Reaper Pepper inside of it and it burned my mouth...... haha! 

     

Bon fire night was last night. We didn't need to stay inside this time. As we were walking around, we saw loads of fireworks going off.  Nothing like the 4th of July, but it was the most I've seen in England. 

     

I can't believe that I've already been in North Shields for 4 months. Transfer calls are next week and we'll see if I stay a bit longer. Hope you all have a good week, take care cheers!

-Elder Holyoak 

Chris' baptism

Halloween party