A Whole New World (Week 52)

It's kind of surreal being here in the UK. I am only on the fourth day of being out of quarantine, but I feel like a kid in a candy store haha. The architecture, the new language (hah), the food, the lay of the land, driving on the wrong side of the road, the common rain, and especially the people, are some of the things that are just super, super cool here, haha. I honestly can't believe I'm here, but the time I have spent here has been pretty sweet so far! A lot of this past week was spent in quarantine where we were able to do some extra studying, resting, and playing card games. Good times, haha.

Friday we got out of quarantine and also got sent to our areas. I am with Elder Mallonee, a stud of an Elder from Spokane, Washington! We are in Solihull, which is just southeast of Birmingham. So far so good, still trying to get situated with who we are teaching and all of that good stuff so more of that will come! On Sunday we walked 3 miles to church, and I absolutely loved it. Afterwards some of the awesome members loaded us up with a bunch of food and gave us a ride back home, so that was pretty neat.

Fish and chips here are amazing!! And the sweets are just sweeter haha. There is the place called Greggs and it has these sausage rolls and wow, they are fantastic. I might gain a couple pounds here.................................................. 

On Saturday we were on our way to the park and there was this lady at the bus stop that starting talking to us. We were having a super solid conversation and I had a Book of Mormon with me that I felt impressed to give her. The conversation headed towards what we do as missionaries and what we believe. I asked her a question that I had heard in a talk from President Nelson that I had listened to that same morning. President Nelson had asked this question to a king to teach him about the Book of Mormon, so I didn't see why it wouldn't work. I asked her if she had heard about the ministry of Jesus Christ to the people in the ancient Americas. She had not and we were able to teach her about it. It was an awesome way to bring up the Book of Mormon naturally and to testify of the love of Jesus Christ for all of us. Sharing the truths of and from the Book of Mormon is something that to me has been very fulfilling and worthwhile. I love Jesus Christ and His Gospel.

Love, Elder Shockley 

E N G L A N D (Week 51)

 Well, I doggone made it to England.

Haha but only after a good 1/2 of a week in California. On Wednesday we had Zone Conference and it was very powerful. President and Sister Reeves are amazing and know what is up and that is that. Then I went back to the Apartment and packed my stuff and called Alec for his Birthday. Shoutout to Alec for becoming a man this week haha love you bro. After that, the Assistants came and picked me and 2 other missionaries (who were also going to their original assignments) up. They had a final lesson for the day before we went back to their apartment. At about 8 pm we had a lesson with a member in their YSA ward who was struggling a bit, on the grounds of the Newport Beach Temple. That was quite the experience. We had have 5 us missionaries and another amazing child of God just having a really good Gospel conversation in front of the temple. That will be something I remember for sure! I learned and grew so much from my time in the California Newport Beach Mission with awesome wards and amazing non members as well, also missionaries and President and his wife, and especially with my companions. Biggest of all, I learned from our Father in Heaven and Savior Jesus Christ about their infinite love for me and us all. Very grateful for my experiences and trials in California.

We woke up at 3:45 A.M. to get ready and head for the Airport to be early for my 6:45 A.M. flight to Atlanta. The flight was about 4 hours with only some mild turbulence. When we landed in Atlanta, there was about 3 hours until the flight to London. I decided to get some food at Bobby's Burger Palace, and that was possibly the best decision of the day haha, IT WAS AMAZING! 

After some more fun time in the Airport, I boarded the Plane to England to finish the rest of my mission. That was about an 8 hour flight, and was my first time leaving the country as well as my first time having a meal on a flight. Super Cool. I had this weird Chicken and Potatoes stuff with these other vegetables. It kind of tasted like soap, but it was still food so I still ate it and enjoyed it haha. The best part about the meal was the Ben and Jerry's Cookie Dough Ice Cream. Definitely worth it. 

After the plane landed in London it took like 2 hours to go through immigration and customs, so that was special. After that I went and waited for my taxi. The taxi dude found me (Thank Goodness) and I went with him and another missionary, Elder Pincock, to our flat (apartment hah) in Stourbridge! We live outside of Birmingham kind of on the west side and will be in quarantine until Friday. I will be headed to Solihull on Friday which is basically the eastern edge of Birmingham and am stoked to get to work out here! We also have another missionary staying with us for the quarantine, Elder Dayton from Lehi, and it has been fun trying to adjust to the new time zone; Jet Lag is real haha. I have had some extra time to study the scriptures and to pray and have very much enjoyed it. 'Thus we see that the Lord is merciful unto all who will, in the sincerity of their hearts, call upon His holy name.' - Helaman 3:27

Love you All :D

P.S. may or may not have burned a shirt for my 1 year mark.

Knocking on a year (and a shed) (Week 50)

Heyyy everyone!! I hope you have had a solid week just like I have :D Sorry for the the weak email last week but here we are now. My companions are awesome! I am here with Elder Kentner from Fort Worth Texas, and Elder Burningham from Provo!! We have had a super fun week and have been grinding. We are covering two wards and have plenty of work to do, so it is just a party. I am coming up on 1 year as a missionary in the next couple of days!

On Tuesday we met with this Part Member family. The dad of the family, Chris, isn't a member but has been meeting with missionaries for awhile now. He has been getting super busy with his family, school, and work but said that he is all in right now, so we taught him the Restoration and put him on baptismal date for July 3rd! He is super prepared and we are excited for him. Shout out to the Spirit and the missionaries before us for getting him to that point. It is a little sad I won't be there for it, but it is all the Lord's work.

On Wednesday or Thursday we were in this one neighborhood, stopping by a few people. We knocked on this one door and this man came to us. He looked at us for a moment and then started calling us bigots. We tried talking to him but he kept coming back with the fact that we were bigots. He said that because we believe in something, that made us a bigot. I asked him what he believes in and he said, "I don't believe, I think." Haha, so that was weird and apparently I am now a bigot. Nice. But like come on, deep down everyone believes in something or at least thinks a lot more deeply about some things than others. I don't even know but I do know that my belief in Jesus Christ has brought me more joy than anything else in life. Some people are missing out.

Friday was a pretty awesome day as well. Earlier in the week I had taken a look at our map and noticed that we have part of a canyon in our area, so of course I thought it would be a good idea to go up there and knock on some people's doors (even though our mission isn't really doing full tracting yet). We found this dude named Juan who said he would want to hear more from us, so Friday was the day we decided to go back. There was a language barrier so we decided to bring one of the Elders who speaks Spanish in our district with us. We got up there and didn't find Juan but talked to his grandma, and I got to sit there and smile as Elder Tuttle taught her in Spanish. We decided to keep knocking on the surrounding doors. Not too much luck but it was nice to be out in some nature. We got to this one door and my companion knocked on it. After a second I proclaimed," I'm pretty sure we just tracted a shed." And that we did. Not too much luck there either, haha.

Saturday was one for the books. We did some service for this super awesome lady that we are teaching named Debra. Then we went to Brian's baptism in the Laguna Niguel zone. Throwing it back to Christmas day (about 6 months ago) I was in Aliso Viejo. We were out visiting a member and on our way back to the car we saw this dude walking two big dogs. At that point, because of local Covid restrictions, we weren't supposed to approach anyone on the streets to do street contacting. I decided to talk to this guy anyway. Turns out his name was Brian and he said he was interested in learning more. Fast forward to now, Brian has been taught by a couple of companionships of Elders and is in the Addiction Recovery Program. Brian has overcame many addictions and many trials and was baptized on Saturday. The Atonement of Jesus Christ is REAL. He can change us, and he truly has descended below all things. 

Love, Elder Shockley

RSM (Week 49)

Well, I got transferred to Foothill Ranch which is in the RSM zone. Super lame check in but I love you all and I have flight plans to head out to England on June 17th!! I will keep you updated and write more next week!!

"For with God nothing shall be impossible" (Week 48)

Hey Family! Happy Memorial day! I hope everyone has an enjoyable day. Haha, it's been a rocky adventure the last two weeks but hopefully some things that I write about will be decent to read.

About mid-week we got a phone all from our Zone Leaders, asking us if we would be available to go to the Hospital and give someone a blessing. We gratefully accepted the call and then coordinated a time to go to the Hospital. After about 20-30 minutes of actually trying to find the room where the person was, we were able to find it. We had the opportunity to give a blessing of Healing to this sweet lady named Elaine. She recently had a stroke that put her in to the hospital. That was a first for me and we were glad to be of service to anyone that we could.

Recently we have been struggling to consistently teach people, but we have been teaching our friend Kirk for the past 4 or 5 weeks! Kirk is awesome haha, he is older than most and lives by himself. He loves the Dodgers and the Lakers and we always have good conversations with Kirk. He is starting to read the Book of Mormon, and we are super stoked about it! Kirk is an absolute stud; if you wouldn't mind praying for him that would be awesome. 

On Sunday, as we were standing by the doors and greeting everyone coming, my companion saw someone on the sidewalk and kind of motioned to me to go and invite them to join us for Sacrament meeting. This person payed no attention to me whatsoever, so that was fun. But this idea sparked in our minds to invite some more people. We saw some people across the street at a park who were all kind of just gathered with each other. Perfect. We were going to bring all 6 of these people to church with us and then they are going to get baptized! So we booked it across the six lanes of traffic in our suits and made our way around to them. As we approached we invited them to come join us. Sadly they were all drunk and didn't understand what we were saying  then this one dude pulled out his phone and started playing some music. Then he started dancing in front of me and my companion. It was quite hilarious and sadly they didn't come to church, but hey, we'll keep trying.

The final thing I want to write about actually happened last week. So earlier in this transfer my companion had broken his foot as we were playing basketball. Sad. He had to go to the doctor and eventually got put into a boot. On Wednesday the 19th, he had a check up appointment to see how his foot was coming along. Elder Fuiava had been playing around on his foot and not been wearing his boot about a week after the injury. Even though I told him he should probably wear it to avoid injuring it further, he said he was alright and continued on with things, haha. At his foot appointment, the doctors had to keep looking over his x-ray again. They were shocked to what their eyes were beholding. My companion's foot was completely healed. No more break in the bone, and that was only 3 weeks after the initial injury. The doctors kept saying how it was impossible. He was supposed to be booted up for 6-8 weeks and the fact that he was walking on it and even playing on it after a week suggests that healing happened even before 3 weeks. As we heard this, my mind was brought back to the night of his injury. I had asked him if he wanted a blessing, and he said yes. I gave him a blessing of healing and know without a doubt that the healing occurred, and fast too! The physical healing power of the Atonement of Jesus Christ through the Priesthood is real. Truly "with God nothing shall be impossible."

-Elder Shockley