I HAVE A SON!

Hello Hello all friends and family!  This has been, per usual, an exciting week!  We have a little something extra this time around though!  I have my greenie!!!  His name is Elder David Raecivic (pronounced Raychivich) and he is from Belgrade, Serbia!  He is a total stud as well.  He has a super hardcore accent that sounds really Russian so it's pretty intense. It has been interesting having a foreign companion though because I have needed to totally adjust my speaking to fit his vocabulary.  He learned some English in school and then more after he was baptised because he was around American missionaries a lot.  He also worked in Dubai for a little while before his mission in a British hotel so he spoke English there. His English is good enough that they let him out of the MTC 2 weeks early!  His accent is hard to understand sometimes though because Serbian and English are like polar opposites in how things are pronounced and the noises that your mouth makes.  He can't make the "th" noise, for example, and if a word ends with "ed", such as "disguised", he pronounces the "ed" at the end (disguise-ed) so sometimes you need to really focus to understand him.  I can't complain much though because he is willing to be obedient and work hard.  The rest will come with time.  He's a good dude! 

Elder Orr and I trained to the mission home on Tuesday and Elder Orr got Elder Stiggson who is a Swedish stud.  They will be serving in Newport Gwent, which is in the Cardiff Stake in Wales. It was an exciting day!  It is kind of fun being on the other side of a new missionary's training now too  haha.  I can look back and think about how I was there just a few months ago and I remember all the dumb stuff I did so it is good fun!  I don't have a picture with him yet but I will get one for next week!

Elder Raecivic's family's conversion story is pretty cool.  His Father stopped the missionaries on the street about 5 years ago because he thought one of them was his friend.  After realizing that it wasn't him, he still invited them around just to be nice.  When they came by, he listened and he went to church about once a month, but the rest of the family was pretty uninterested.  This went on for a year and then they lost contact because of a transfer.  A year after that, Elder Raicevic's dad had surgery because of some gall stones and minutes after he woke up the missionaries called him.  He took that as a sign because he thought the gall stones were going to kill him.  The missionaries came by on June 21, 2014 and got the entire family (parents and 3 boys) to go to church and then on July 19, 2014, all except their oldest son were baptised.  The church is barely breathing in the Adriatic missions.  In Serbia there are 300 members and in Belgrade there are 45 members compared to 3 million residents.  Elder Raicevic is one of 6 Serbian missionaries in the world.  His brother is serving right now in the Leeds Mission!

We had the rainiest day I have yet seen on Wednesday, and holy cow it was tipping it!  We were soaked all the way through so that was a good first day for Elder Raicevic.  Then the weather got super nice the next couple of days!  We helped the Nuneaton Elders with some service this week too.  We had to help a lady move because she was being evicted and that was an interesting experience. It was pretty stressful because it had been put off for much too long so we needed to haul butt through all of her stuff.    Always good to help somebody out though!

The photos from the trip to California looked great and I am jealous of all the sunshine!  I have nearly finished my conversion to vampire so before long I will start to smoke a little bit if prolonged exposure to the sunshine occurs.  And BTW,  I miss Chick-fil-A with a fiery and burning passion.  It was the perfect meal for Sunset Blvd.

My dominance at the ping pong table has continued, by the way.  Nobody in the District can stop me so that's neat too.

Well, that's about all for this week!  It was good fun and full of exciting stuff!  For a spiritual thought I would like to quote President Monson in his final General Conference address about the Book of Mormon.
   "My dear associates in the work of the Lord, I implore each of us to prayerfully study and ponder the Book of Mormon each day.  As we do so, we will be in a position to hear the voice of the Spirit, to resist temptation, to overcome doubt and fear, and to receive heaven's help in our lives."

I hope you all have an incredible week!  Do something fun!

-Elder Lott

Here you go Mom!

April 3, 2018

Elder Lott and Elder Orr

Picking up our Boys!