Nov. 24, 2008

Hello!

When things are crazy or just all over the place, one of my Zone Leaders calls it a 'yard sale'. This Week has been a yard sale!! haha Things are going really well, we are really busy with everything, that is why I only had a half hour to email last week, well Thursday. I don’t remember everything I talked about last time, but ill try to pick out the highlights of the last two weeks.

Of course the biggest highlight was the Baptism of Mary Folusho Olatunbosun. She has been an amazing investigator and has a strong testimony. I know she will be an amazing asset to the Lord as a member of the church. Everything went well and the day was focused on her (I can’t remember if I told you already, but Sujana wasn’t baptized. Her husband didn’t like the idea of tithing and got upset with her. He even wanted her to move back to Nepal. She is still in London, but we haven’t seen her. She is a strong woman and wants to be baptized still, so I know she will find a way eventually.) She didn’t know too many people in the ward, but we still had a couple speakers and a full program. I felt really honored to be the one to baptize her. It was cool to have it right before church too, because she got Confirmed by Elder Christensen right after, in sacrament meeting. All and all it was a great day. I am trying to send pictures of it right now.

On Wednesday this last week we had a dinner appointment with a lady that actually ended up being at a care center (rest home). I don’t think all the guests were staying there, but they were all pretty old. She had intended it to be a thanksgiving dinner, and it was pretty close. I really enjoyed it. We wanted to try and teach some of them, as none of them were members, but they were pretty set in their ways, plus once they started with the wine, there was no chance. It was pretty entertaining though, to say the least. One of the men was Jewish, and long story short, he ate pork without realizing it! I know that’s bad, but it was kind of funny too! haha. An older lady asked him if he had ever had pork before and he said ''no... wait I thought this was chicken!!! I was thinking wow this chicken is really good.'' He stopped eating it, but said that it tasted good.

We had a couple other DA's recently. One was Monday night. We took Mary for her first FHE at a member’s house. That went well. We had another one Saturday night at Elizabeth’s again. She is in her mid seventies, but is the best member missionary I know. She had her son's fiance’ and three of her grand children over so we could teach them. They all live out of our area, but we still enjoyed it.

It seems like we have been teaching a lot of people that haven't become investigators because we don’t have a return appointment, or they are out of our area. We have had an excellent week though and have two more baptismal dates planned right now, a kid named Ricardo Graham (16) and a lady named Shade (late 50's pronounced Sha-Day). Their date is on the 7th of December right now, but might be moved back a week.

It is so good to hear from everyone and hear about the old ward. I miss everyone, but I am loving the work. Elder Christensen and I get along great and work well together I love him and look up to him as a missionary.

That is such exciting news about Kyle and Jenny's engagement! I am excited for them and look forward to having a new sister-in-law. I really have appreciated all of her letters and look forward to them :) She has been a big support to me. Let her know that and also tell Harmony I said hi back.

I love you all and hope you have an amazing week!

Love Elder Kade Karges

The first pic was of my district last moves. The only thing that has changed since then is Elder Coombes on the far left is gone and Elder Call is here. Oh and we have a new Zone Leader form Scottland named Elder King!! He is really cool

Me, Elder Gasperado (From Italy), Mary, Elder Lee (From Gilbert, AZ), and Elder Christensen (From Delta, UT) right before Mary's baptism. The other two missionaries are from Peckham and are the ones who found her and refered her to us.

Christensen, Mery, and I right before her baptism

November 20, 2008

You were right. When we have moves, pday will be on Thursday instead of Monday. I am still in Catford with Elder Christensen, but we had to go with Elder Sorbonne to get his new companion, so we had to wait till now to email. Pday still ends at six our time and that only left of 30 minutes to email, soo this will probably be a short email. Its funny how i have even more days to write about than normal, but less time!

On the bright side, not too much happened during the week last week. We had several teaches, and did a lot of finding each day. We are constantly cycling through investigators. We actually started teaching a few old ones again which is cool. We saw Mary all week long and the Bishop and his wife actually took her to see the Temple and the new visitor’s center on Saturday! She had an amazing week that led to an amazing baptism on Sunday! She is officially a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Later Day Saints! It went soo well and it was a really special day for her as well as for me, it being my first baptism. It was by far the best day of my mission so far. I can’t wait to hear how she progresses in the gospel. She is only living here for another couple weeks though. She is moving back to Nigeria for a while (she was actually here an holiday for a month or two). I am completely out of time now. I love you all and will talk to you Monday.

Love Elder Karges

November 10, 2008

HELLO!!

Things are going great here, still working away. Our two investigators with the baptism dates are doing amazing. They have learned so much and will have a joint baptism on the morning of Sunday November 16th! I am so excited for them. They are so cool. Mary is from Nigeria and Sujana is from Nepal. They didn’t know each other, but they have met a few times now. We just had stake conference and it was great! Both of them came.

I’m glad the family enjoys the letters. That’s why I try so hard. I don’t know how long I’ll be able to keep it up though haha. I’ll just keep telling about each week as it happens. They are pretty repetitious, so I might just start telling the highlights. As for this week...

Monday (PDAY!) went by really fast. I talked about it last email. We had it cut short on both ends. We have been really blessed for giving up some of our Pday time to teach, but today we made sure to have the whole day open haha.

Tuesday I went on exchange to Crystal Palace with Elder Poulsen. He is a cool guy. He was my District Leader (DL) last moves, but now he is training Elder McLacklan. Elder Christensen (my comp) is DL now so he needed to have an exchange with the new guy. Elder Poulsen and I just got to do it for fun. I liked it a lot. I’m used to Catford though and like it a little better. Crystal palace is kind of slow, while Catford is crazy busy.

Wednesday, we switched back halfway through they day. I was happy to be back. We had a few teaches and helped one of our new investigators pick up a large amount of groceries for a big family event coming up. I’ll talk more about that later.

Thursday was a really good day. We taught both Mary and Sujana one right after the other. Earlier in the day we got an unexpected phone call from the other Catford Edlers. Apparently they had found $70 on the ground! That’s like 140 bucks! They decided to share their little miracle with us and took us out to eat at Nandos. Nandos is a really good Portuguese restaurant that is famous among the missionaries. Everyone goes to Nando's and tries to see how hot of chicken they can handle. I am proud to say I worked my way up to "Extra Hot". I have a little sticker on the back of my badge to prove it. Ill have to send a picture to explain.

Friday we went on exchanges with the other Catford elders for about half the day. Elder Coombs and I had fun. We work in the same are so it was pretty normal. Mary and Sujana had their Baptismal interviews and passed with flying colors!

Saturday we had a dinner appointment with Elizabeth again. I have been over there a few times now. She is from Nigeria and is an amazing cook! I love Nigerian food. The rest of the day went well. We did a lot of finding (as well as the rest of the week).

Sunday was great! Like I said we had Stake conference. We took a train there, but were able to get a ride back with the bishop which was nice. We found the rest of the day except for one visit to an investigator named Felix. He is the one we helped get groceries. He said we could come over and when we got there, they were having a big party! They recently had a baby girl and they were celebrating with a lot of friends and family. We stayed for a while and they fed us some more amazing African food. We talked to their friends a lot and were trying to learn how to say things in their tribal languages. It was fun, We were the only two white guys at an African party haha!

Today was Pday again and we had a really full day. I think I did more today than any other Pday. We went and saw Tower Bridge as well as The London Eye and Big Ben. While by the Eye we did bumper cars and bowling. I have a lot more pictures that I will send later (I’ve already made a CD or two. I was going to surprise you and send them home). To answer your question about the weather ITS WAY RAINY! Yahoo said there is a flood warning over a lot of England. We got soaked sight seeing and I’m still wet.

I love you guys and hope things are still going well. Take care. You are always in my prayers.

Love Elder Karges

Nov. 2, 2008

Nov. 2^, 2008

Hey, I am running late with my emails today, I’m almost out of time so ill tell you how my week went first and try to answer questions.

Monday was good, but busy last week. P-day got cut short by appointments, but Ihave seen the blessing because of it. Theteaches we had went great! It was a good day.

Tuesday and Wednesday were pretty normal and everything went well. We taught an older guy that is a new member. It was kind of hard to teach him because he likes to tell stories and his wife isn’t a member but she is nice. She made us some kind of weird Sandwiches... They had some kind of meat balls, sauce, and what I think were chunks of butter. They were cold because we taught before we ate, but its all good. We scarfed them down. During correlation on Tuesday we had banana bread! It was good. I told Alex (18 year old ward mission leader) That I always email home telling what his mom makes us haha. I love their family.

Thursday went by fast. We had Zone Meetings in Wansworth. It went really well and I learned loads. That took all day, but it was good. We have a huge zone now because they combined WW (Wansworth) east and WW West. The missionaries are really cool, I love working with them.

Friday and Saturday were very similar. Both days most of our teaches cancelled except for one. Friday we taught Mary and Saturday we taught Sujana. They are both amazing and the teaches went great. They have strong Testimonies and are looking forward to their combined baptism on the 15th (maybe 16th). I am so excited for them and can’t wait for the baptism.

Sunday was just the icing on the cake with our baptismal dates. It was Mary's first time to church and she bore her testimony!! She is so cool and has a really strong testimony. When we taught her the word of Wisdom she said she was excited to go home and teach her family haha. We ended up being late to our first teach after church, but it still went amazing, and although it was our first time at their house and basically our first time talking to them, they fed us some amazing African food. The lesson went good as well :) We also got fed by a member right after that haha. We didn’t know it was going to work out that way. We were wayyy too full. I guess that’s what we get. We haven’t been getting dinner appointments lately so we have been trying to work that out. I think our Heavenly Father has a sense of humor and decided if we wanted food, He'd give it to us.

Today is another hectic P-Day. We had a meeting this morning and a teach that cuts our day short again, but after seeing the blessings that came from it last week, it’s not a problem at all. I love missionary work and know that it is the Lord’s. He has His hand in everything that we do. I am so grateful for a living prophet and the Book of Mormon.

Well that was my week. I hope yours went well, it sounds like it did. I love you and hope you all have a good week.

Love Elder Karges

(Sorry for the delay in getting this posted. I thought it went up Monday night, but I guess I forgot to push the publish botton. - Katie)