October 30, 2017

Woohoo I'm in the field now! My area is the Forest of Dean and it is one of the most beautiful places I've ever been in my life. Like seriously it is incredible. I'll send some pictures. This area is also awesome because I'm living in Wales! A little town called Monmouth and the road signs are really weird because the Welsh word is always above the English word and Welsh is a weeeeeird language. It is a little trippy.

Anyway! We left the MTC Tuesday morning and arrived at the mission home around 11. After that we had lunch and met our trainers! Mine is Elder Staheli (pronounced staylee) and he is awesome! He's from Spanish Fork and has only been out for 5 months so he's pretty new too! He's great though. Another bonus to being in the Forest is that we have a car because it's mainly small towns out here and it takes a while to get anywhere. We bump mad hymns on the road.

It's been a pretty solid week I guess but it's all the same to me because I have nothing to compare it to! Somebody let us in to teach while we were knocking doors on my first day-which never happens-I've handed out like 5 Books of Mormon, and we committed somebody to baptism yesterday! Pretty cool hey? We also have 2 people committed to baptism from before I got here.

Funny story! We had district meeting on Thursday and then we went on splits to go door knocking. I was with Elder Johnson, who went to Alta, and we were talking to this one guy at his door but he was standing like 3 feet back from the door, like awkwardly far away. We asked him if he was religious at all/if he read the bible and then he walked to the door, stuck his head out really close to us, and said, "I read the bible......when I had cancer," in the most quiet voice. He then retreated to his house again. We somehow started talking about dogs so he asked us what dog spelled backwards is. It is of course God and he says, "that's why they watch after us." He then told us a story! One day his wife fell down the stairs and his spoodle (a spaniel/poodle mix) was the first to get to her. He then said, "You know what she did? She gave her the kiss of life!" I have absolutely no idea what that is but when we left Elder Johnson and I were so weirded out I don't even know how to describe it.

To answer some of your questions! Elder Staheli is a good guy and i really like him.  I only serve in one branch but it really should be a ward. We had 129 people there yesterday. I am adjusted to the time, I was after about 1.5 weeks. England is pretty different than America. The whole overall appearance is very old, the roads are tiny with no center lanes, 90% of cars are hatchback, houses are waaay smaller, the people look different, they dress differently, different stores, just about anything you can think of! Despite all that though it does bear a slight resemblance to home if you look for it. It's kind of hard to describe. It is really cool though! Country roads are sided by massive hedges and are very curvy some of them are 2 way but barely have enough room for one car. For some reason they all have a speed limit of 60 mph which would flip any normal car. Nobody drives to the speed limit anywhere because the roads are so tight. I'm pretty used to being on the opposite side of the road but sometimes it's still a little weird. I can mostly understand people but sometimes they talk too fast or say a word that I have no idea what it means. All is well though! 

I also saw my first castle! Grosmont castle which is way out in the middle of nowhere. According to Elder Staheli it was pretty weak as far as castles go but I thought it was pretty cool.

Exciting stuff! More exciting stuff to come! Apparently a cathedral that they shot a good chunk of Harry Potter at is in my area so hopefully we go to that! There are also 10 castles! Crazy!

Love y'all! Cheers!

Elder Lott

Me in my favorite part of our flat

My companion Elder Staheli

Origami Yoda hanging from the light in our flat

Grosmont Castle

The view from a wall on Grosmont Castle

A cool panoramic from a viewpoint we found

I get to email today because it's possible that I will not be able to on Tuesday! 

This wasn't a very eventful week as it has been almost completely made up of classes. But there were a few fun things! On Tuesday night we had Elder Philips, one of the area seventies for Europe, here for a devotional. He got way distracted and took forever but it was pretty good. He spoke about testimonies.

On Thursday we went on a church history tour and we got to see some of the important places in the development of the church in England. We saw a house Heber C. Kimball stayed while in England, a town square where people listened to the early missionaries, the Ribble River where the first English converts were baptized, we visited where Gordon B. Hinckley lived when he got his famous "forget yourself and go to work" letter, and some old church where the missionaries were allowed to preach. It was pretty cool and it was so nice to get out of the MTC! I finally got to see some of England! 

We leave the MTC  for Birmingham on a bus Tuesday morning @ 7 so I'll be there soon!

Love,  Elder Lott

Visiting and old church

Stained glass window in the old church

Ready to go!

Ribble River - where the first baptisms took place 

President Hinckley's apartment when serving as a missionary in England

Hello everyone! This week has been an absolute blur! So finding stuff out about the outside world is like totally impossible right now and if we have any question on a current event we need to ask our teachers to google it for us. Turns out we are near the tail end of Hurricane Ophelia-I think that's what it's named-which is currently over Ireland I'm pretty sure. This is the closest I have ever been to a hurricane! I also got sick this week and totally lost my voice. It was like super deep and somebody told my companion that I was nice to listen to. After that though I sounded pretty bad. I'm mostly over it now though.

On Friday we all went to Piccadilly Square Manchester for a day of proselyting! What an experience that was! The very first person I spoke to was an old man who looked pretty nice. Old people are usually nice right? Well it turns out they sometimes aren't and this old man was not very nice. As soon as he saw me walking up to him he started talking about how he didn't want to speak with me he began to walk away. He then turned, pointed at my name tag, and said, "That's a load of rubbish!" He then proceeded to tell me that God isn't real because if I were to pass out in the middle of the street right then, God wouldn't appear to take me to the hospital. It wasn't the most sound argument I've ever heard but he seemed to believe it so I must be missing something. If you figure it out let me know! That pretty much sums up the rest of the day though. I don't think I saw a single smile on anybody's face other than the other missionaries that were there. Must be the rain or something.

In happier news, I joined the MTC choir! How's that for weird? I mainly joined because of how boring and repetitive the day is here but it ended up being an awesome time and we actually sound pretty good! One might even say angelic if they were understating our talent. Tonight we are singing Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing for one of the Area Seventies, Elder Philips, as he'll be here for a devotional tonight. Speaking of choirs and MTC devotionals, we watched a recording of the devotional Elder Christofferson gave in Provo this week and I saw Elder Connor Morris singing in the choir there! What a guy!

I think that is all this week! It was a good time! I'm unsure if I'll be able to email next week as I'll be heading out to Birmingham on P-Day. Wish me luck! Love y'all!

-Elder Lott

October 10, 2017


Woohoo what a week! Before I forget I am going to mention I can read emails whenever I want but can only reply on P Day so email whenever you want to. It has been super long but it has also been super good! The MTC has been a party so far and all the missionaries are so great. Everybody has bonded really well and it is honestly like a giant scout camp right now lol. The flights went really well and I had a couple other missionaries on both of them which was very nice because I was able to get to know some people right off the bat. Because we had time to kill after our flight to Atlanta, we decided to walk to the gate for our next flight but it turns out the Atlanta airport is actually massive and we had to go from the A gates to the F gates and lucky us that is the entire length of the airport! It seriously took us a solid 20 minutes to get there and we were walking on the moving sidewalks so we were going super fast. Should have taken the tram I guess. The flight to Manchester was around 7.5 hours long and I slept for maybe a combined 45 minutes so it was pretty long but all is well! When we got to Manchester we had another cross airport trek that was about the same distance but we got to do it with our bags this time! We then had a 45 minute bus ride to the MTC. By then it was like 9 in the morning here so we had a full day ahead of us! By the end of Wednesday I had been awake for around 32 hours and I started to fall asleep as soon as I sat down.

The day I got here the MTC was completely empty so all the missionaries here arrived the same day as me and that has been pretty fun. We have kids from Wales, Italy, England, Scotland, South Africa, Australia, Germany, and the Netherlands. I am probably missing a few as well. One of the flights from Utah got stuck in Chicago overnight so I did not have a companion for the first day. My companion is Elder Kelleher and he is from Herriman! A good guy for sure! In my room we also have Elder Johnson and Elder Odle. Elder Johnson has so much energy and enthusiasm it is exhausting to be honest. The best way to describe it is for me to tell you that he was a theater kid in high school. 

I was also made the district leader so that is something! It is really easy and all I do is tell people to pray and lead the music when we start class. I also need to go to leadership meetings on Sunday mornings. In my district I have the 3 other Elders in my room along with Elders Wheeler, Thacker, Stock, who are all from Utah, and Elder Palmer who is from Nashville. We also have two sisters, Sister Takairangi, who is from the Cook Islands, and Sister Nelson, who is from Utah as well.

Wow there is so much to say! We went to the temple today which was cool. It was nice to see a new temple as I had only gone to the Draper temple before. Driving on the opposite side of the road is spooky and all the Americans were screaming in  the van because we thought we were going to crash. The Europeans are hilarious, especially the kid from Scotland and the kid from the Netherlands. Almost all the Europeans know more than one language and one kid is even learning his 5th. He knows English, French, Spanish, and French and is learning Greek. He is in the MTC for 9 weeks. The Europeans who speak English as a second language say things in such a different way and it is so much fun listening to them speak. 

Funny Story! One day as we were getting the stuff for sports, Elder Hogg, the Scottish guy, had a volleyball and Elder Beech, the South African, asked him, "Is that a netball?" Because of his accent Elder Hogg and I both thought that he said, "Is that a nipple?" and we both started staring at his shirt. After we realized what Elder Beech actually said we started laughing so hard it was difficult to breath! I find it twice as funny though because Elder Hogg says nipple like, "nepple," because of his accent. Something happens almost everyday that makes me laugh to the point of my face hurting. It is a constant party! Elder Hogg is like a walking quote machine though. Almost everything he says sticks around for like 3 days.

We also have been teaching our investigator Nathan, who is of course just one of our teachers, and it has gone well! It is a little weird the first few times but I think I have gotten a pretty good idea of how things go. I am just super relieved that I do not need to do it in another language.

Sunday was probably the most spiritual day of my whole life. I almost cried like 4 times. We had a testimony meeting that was incredible. It is awesome hearing the stories of all the missionaries who are from Europe because many of them are converts of only one or two years. We also had a giant FHE that night in which we watched an MTC devotional Elder Holland gave in 2009 which was incredibly powerful. He is an incredible man and speaker. We then watched a presentation one of the seventy gave to the new mission presidents and there were 2 videos shown in that which made I think everybody cry. To finish it off we sang a couple hymns and part of the way through a sister slammed her hymn book shut and started crying. 

Well a lot of stuff! This was super long! Talk to you all next week!

Love, Elder Lott

Preston, England MTC

Elder  Lott and Elder Kelleher

The pond outside the MTC

Zach's First Letter from England

October 4, 2017



Hey everybody! I have made it safely to the England MTC! All is well, the flights went smoothly, and here we are! To be honest it still doesn't feel like I'm in England but judging by how everybody is driving on the wrong side of the road and it's really cloudy and everybody I speak to has a fancy voice I guess that I am? Anyway, I need to go as this is just a short email they're letting us write to let you know I've arrived safely! Love you all!


Love, Elder Lott





P.S. My P-Days are on Tuesdays while I'm in the MTC

He's Off to England!
October 3, 2017

Zach Being Set Apart As A Full Time Missionary
October 2, 2017

Bishop Brady, President Richardson, Zach, Phil, Gonka

So grateful for good friends!