WOW!

Well, | have to say that I am very grateful for all the letters you have written to me! I can't say that I wasn't a little disapointed when I went to Email and only had one from Timette, but this time it was much better! In ansewer to some of your Emails... Chelsey your a geniuse and I am completley confident in your abilites you will do fantastic... Trent the accients here are pretty thick, need i say more, and Bugger is just as bad a word as you think it is (also the peace sign with the palm of your hand facing you, thats like the bird)... Timette I'm so glad that you are doing so well in you calling and I know that you will continue to do great... Jeff I trully am grateful that I was able to go on those amazing Bike rides with you and Trent before I left, they are great memories and I hope that my bike will be of some use to you while I'm gone... Dad, The MTC President is an amazing man trully a man of the Lord and My mission President seems just as amazing as well (I had the oppertunity to eat dinner with him here)... Mom, I love you and I know that you will be fine on the computer, I say it all the time but I do not doubt because my mother knew it... Thank you everyone for keeping me in your prayers, I can not express to you the comfort
that it gives me to know that you are praying for me! So, back to England, the weather is still very nice not quite as nice as it has been (very cloudy and a little rain) but still nothing as bad as what seems to be going on back in the States. The experience here at the MTC seems to get better and better as the days go by, there is a great saying we say here, "The days go by like weeks and the weeks go by like days" and it is very very true. But even though the days are long and hard I can't believe how much the Lord has blessed me with my learning and ablity to teach! The MTC all though incredibly spiritual and wounderful is starting to become a little 'confining' and I can't wait to get out into the mission field on Wensday! It is an amazing and incredibly humbling thought to think that it is already time for me to get to work, but I know the Lord will bless me! When I look back on all the things I've learned here at the MTC I think the greatest thing that I have come to realize and what has given me the greatest comfort of all is that the Lord is very much apart of this work and that even though I may be a small and simple thing I know that if I relly on him
that through me he will make sure that not one of my brothers and sisters that are prepared and ready to hear the word will be lost! It is an amazing feeling to know that even though I may not be the best teacher in the world or the best scriptorian to ever walk the face of the Earth that the Holy Ghost is real and that he can express truths that no amount of doctrine can accomplish! I beg my father every day to bless me with the ability to teach with the Holy Ghost to express my testimony with power and conviction in a way that I will acomplish every bit my Father has planned for me! well I have to go I'll give you my adress on my next email! LOVE YOU ALL!

HELLO AGAIN!

We'll it would seem that my Email time while at the MTC is on Saturday, so the next Email will be on well, Saturday but after that I'm pretty sure it will be changed. The MTC is intense! almost every second of every day we are studying and learning to Preach the Gospel from "Preach my Gospel". "Preach my Gospel" is an amazing book that trully does come from God, the lessons are beyond spiritual and the way that it teaches is in a way that is not offensive while at the same time very straightforward in what we believe, and I feel incredibly blessed that I am able to teach and learn from it. I went on my first tracking yesterday (Friday) and it was quite an amazing experience. We were given a little piece of a neighborhood that was in pretty bad shape and told to "get to work". Me and my companion were pretty apprehensive so we prayed together and I'm sure that my companion was praying in his heart just as much as I was when we came to the first door to knock. No one was home at the first house so we went to the second, same thing, and then we went to the third and we met one of the kindest woman that I think I will ever meet tracking. She was cooking a meal at the time for her neighbor's kids so she wasn't able to let us come in to teach her the first lesson and we were only allowed to be out tracking for 2 hours before the bus came and picked us up so we weren't able to go back, so I testified about how much the Book of Mormon has done in my life, that it trully is a record of prophets that were on the American Continent and how blessed I was as a child to have its teachings in my life and how much it trully strenghtened my relationship with my parents when we read it together and asked her if it would be alright if we gave her a copy. She said YES! so I gave her my missionary book of mormon and asked her if she would read a section of the book tonight before she went to bed and she said YES! I then marked 3 Nephi chapter 11 and bore testimony of the Savior and how wonderful it is that he came to the people on the American Continent as well as those in Jerusolem. After we we asked for her information and asked if it would be alright if other missionaries could come back when it was appropriate and she said that it was just fine and that she was interested in hearing what we had to say. Once we took her information we said goodbye and for ever more in my life I will remember and pray for Sara the first person that I may have actually had an influence on in bringing the light of the Gospel into her life! Well, the rest of the houses said no, some polite, some not so polite. And guess what England is very Catholic, wow, who would have known :P. The funniest bad experience had to have been when a man told us to bugger off and that he would sick his cat on us :). Timette thank you for the email that is amazing that Mike has that chance your Deal or no Deal chance is just getting better and better! I don't think you can send me the finished video but I know that it is wounderful, amazing, and stupendous. Relief Society 2nd counciler is a rough gig, but I know that with your attitude Timette you can make any calling the envy of the ward. England has not rained once since I got here, it is a little cold but beautiful blue skys as far as the eye can see (I think they just tell american's that it rains so that we wont come and bother them), so Utah is worse by far! I'm glad that your helping mom and I hope and pray that she will be able to accomplish the things that she needs and wants to be accomplished. Well, I love you all a ton and Timette thank you for the Email. Hopefully after I get out of the MTC I will have enough time to Email you all single Emails but until then I was hopeing the Dad will just Forward this one. The pictures are of me and my companion and the Preston Temple (by the way I had a session and it is beautiful).

I Made It!

Well, here I am at the MTC. I figured that I wouldn't be able to E-mail while staying here but I guess I can. England is amazing! I feel trully blessed that I am able to learn here at the Preston MTC which is actually in a small logging town of Chorley, go figure. The flight getting to England was pretty nice, I believe there were about 28 Elders and Sisters coming over so I was in good company. Yesterday (Friday) was just a registration day were we had to see the doctor, get interviews, and things like that; so it wasn't all that great but I did get my companion who will be with me for the duration of my MTC stay. My companion's name while I'm at the MTC is Elder Manning from Colorado. He has a great personality along with a strong testimony of the Gospel and we are getting along great, he is serving in the England, Leeds mission. The Missions here are England Manchester, England Leeds, Scottland (the whole country), Iryland (the whole country), Germany, and Switzerland. I feel incredibly grateful that I was sent here to learn how to preach instead of the Provo MTC; there are only about 50 of us and all of us arrived together and will be leaving together and were the only ones here, so we are on a very personal basis with our fellow missionaries as well as our teachers. Winston Churchill wasn't lieing when he said that were two countries seperated by a common language (the accient is fascinating but sometimes you just can't believe that there speaking English). Today (Saturday) we had some great introductions to the teachers as well as learning a wee bit on how a missionary should serve his mission and I have to admit that it is very intimidating to think about all the resposibilities that are upon my shoulders and how important it is that I learn everything I can in the few 17 days that I have to learn it so that I can be the type of missionary my Savior would want me to be. It truly does seem like a lot of work but I whole heartedly believe that so long as I humbly pray for assistance and continue to give it my all that the I will be blessed, that I will be able to retain the knowledge that I am being given, and that I will be prepaired to go out and get to work. I believe with everything that I have that this Gospel is true, that Presiden Monson is a called prophet of God, that what I am doing here is to help bring my brothers and sisters back to be with our Father in Heaven who loves them. I feel a love for the people of England that I never thought I would feel, I worry about them and want nothing but eternal salvation for them all. I love this gospel, I love the power for good that it can have on peoples lives. I love you mom and dad, and I hope mom learning the computer is going alright (I worry about her). Well for the moment I can only email my parents until I actually leave so if you want to forward this message it is totally alright. I don't know the next time I will be able to E-mail but I'm sure it will be sometime before next Monday.

Forever your careing and loving son
Elder McKenna