FIRST TRANSFER DOWN!

Hello! Hello!

An exciting week this was!  It was a lot of missionary stuff that wasn't too interesting, but I'll tell you the fun stuff!

We had a District Thanksgiving which was pretty fun!  Our Thanksgiving we had planned with the Branch President fell though, which was pretty lame, but oh well.  We had a chicken instead of a turkey, and some banana pie because you can't buy that pumpkin stuff here.  It was pretty much a discount Thanksgiving but it was still fun.  We also had a funeral for one of our Zone Leaders because he is dying (going home) at the end of this transfer.  It was a weird thing to witness.

We have a baptism scheduled for Friday but we may have to move it back because Crystal has flaked on our last 2 lessons and we might not have time to teach her everything.  Let's pray it works out!

We met a super solid dude named Phil while tracting this week.  He was actually interested, which like never happens, and we are meeting with him tomorrow so I'll update y'all next week.  Shout out to my dad who is also Phil...Happy Birthday!  And we're baptizing this one for you Dad!

So we were driving and Elder Staheli saw a dead deer on the side of the road and wanted to check it out to see if it had antlers or not so we went to go see.  Well, we got there and somebody had the same idea!  The deer had no head!  It was kinda nasty.

We went to Hereford Cathedral today and it was pretty cool.  It's really big.  They have some books there that are so valuable and old they're chained to the wall and that's pretty hardcore if you ask me.  They had a bunch of king graves and stained glass windows too.

I hope you all have an incredible week!  Go do something cool!

Love,  Elder Lott

Our District Thanksgiving

Elder Lewis, the Zone Leader, being sent off

We did a District Activity in Gloucester's Town Center

asking people what they were grateful for

Hereford Cathedral

This week Zach met Lucy Hobbs, who was a companion to his sister Sarah when she served her Mission in New Zealand!

FIRST BAPTISMS!!!

Hello all!

The beginning of the week was pretty basic, but once Friday hit it was crazy!  We had a meeting in Birmingham for all the greenies because we are almost half way through training - WOO!  It was fun to see some of my friends from the MTC again!  That evening was Ben and Kerry's baptism!!  We were late because we had to come back from Birmingham and we came back to mayhem! They couldn't figure out how to turn on the warm water for the font so the water was freezing cold.  I thought it would be fine until  I remembered that Kerry is 8 months pregnant and that could have resulted in an early baby!  They figured it out about 10 minutes before the baptism started, but by then the font was practically full.  They emptied it, and it takes about an hour to fill so we had to drag the program out for as long as we could.  It all ended well though, so all is good.  Ben and Kerry are so awesome!  They were confirmed yesterday in Sacrament Meeting, and that was an incredible experience.  The Spirit was so strong.

Today we went to a little model village in Gloucestershire!  It was a 1/9 scale model of the village Burton-on-Water and it was pretty cool!  It even had people in some of the buildings and there was a choir singing in the church.  Cool stuff!

Hope everybody has a brilliant week!  Go do something good for another person!  Love y'all!

-Elder Lott

Ben and Kerry at their Baptism 

with their daughter Eden

                                                       Burton-on-Water                                                           

THE BOOK OF MORMON CHALLENGE

One of my favorite scriptures is Alma 26:16, and it says,

"Therefore, let us glory in the Lord, yea, we will rejoice, for our joy is full; yea, we will praise our God forever.  Behold, who can glory too much in the Lord?  Yea, who can say too much of his great power, and of his power, and of his long suffering toward the children of men?  Behold, I say until you, I cannot say the smallest part which I feel."

This is one of my favorite verses because of the thanks it gives to God.  He has done so much for us, his love is so immense, and he will always be there for us no matter what.  Just like it says in that verse,  I really "cannot say the smallest part which I feel", because when I think about everything that I have been given and the love that he has for me I am filled with joy so great that words aren't good enough to describe it!  I know God lives and that he cares about each and every one of us!

Dear Everyone,

What a solid week!  I can't really remember too much because this week went super fast, but I'll do my best!

Our Branch President spoke with Elder Staheli and me about possibly doing a Thanksgiving Dinner because we are both American!  He will only let us do it though, if we can find some investigators to come, so we are working hard for it!

One of our investigators, Ben, who is being baptized on Friday, came out to knock doors with us, which is cool!  He even came back out the next day for a potential follow up and we got to teach a lesson.  It was so awesome!

We also had exchanges with our Zone Leaders in Hereford this week.  It was way fun!  We ate at a canoe port on the Wye River and there were a bunch of ducks and seagulls and two swans that came at us while we were praying, which was kind of sketchy.  We were throwing out bread like crazy and the birds were in a frenzy.  It was pretty wild.

That day when we were finding I was with Elder Johnson, who went to Alta, and was assigned to speak Chinese.  Because he speaks Chinese he gets super excited whenever he sees somebody who may be Chinese and he hauls his booty over to them.  Anyway, we were talking to these two people who told us they were from Thailand and they only spoke Thai so we were kind of disappointed, but then they started speaking Chinese to each other.  So Elder Johnson joined in and it was so weird and uncomfortable because they straight up lied to us.  And they they just awkwardly walked away.  It was pretty strange.....

Anyway!  It was a good week!  Hopefully the next is the same!

Love y'all!

-Elder Lott

Elder Lott with Brother and Sister Plant,

a couple who live where he is serving

At Hereford Town Center

A Duck Statue near the River Wye that caught his fancy

"This swan hissed at me and it was super dodgy."

Subject: Wales! Halloween! Facebook!

I've officially hit my one month  mark!  How crazy is that!  Sometimes it feels like it's only been a week and other times it feels like it has been 4 months.  But all is well!

Fun Fact about Wales!  In the MTC I was told that there are 3 million people in Wales and 10 million sheep and I was like yeah, right, there's no way.  I totally believe it now though because almost everywhere we go there are tons of sheep and I'm not even that far into the country.  Everywhere we drive there are sheep and sometimes they are just chilling in the middle of the road like it's no big deal.  They're crazy!

This has been a pretty solid week I think, with only a few exciting bits.  Tuesday was of course Halloween, and the night before we carved pumpkins at our dinner appointment with some of our members!  I did a stellar Jack Skellington, and in my humble opinion I think I had the best one.

I'll tell you about some of my investigators!  We have 3 people committed to baptism!  Ben and Kerri, who are married to each other, are scheduled for the 17th and Crystal, the daughter of a recent convert, is scheduled for the 24th!  Ben and Kerri are all stars and if I didn't know they were investigators I'd honestly think they were members already!  There are a couple of concerns with Crystal which I won't go into, but I think it'll all work out!  We have a couple of other potential investigators and a couple of Less Active members to work with.  I'm in a really good area.

I can use Facebook now!  As a missionary!  And it's pretty weird, to be honest.  I had to make a new account because I couldn't remember the password to my old one, so go friend request me!  The name is Zach Lott - I know, surprising! - and if I don't show up put Birmingham into the city category because I'll show up then.  I'll be sharing stellar, super cool, awesome, intriguing, and bodacious stuff about the Church and stuff like that.

Anyway, not much for this week but such is life!  Love y'all and hope your week is top notch!   Cheers!

My stellar Jack Skellington Jack-O-Lantern!