hiya

Hello one and all and thank you for the brilliant e-mail!

Everyone seems to be having a wonderful time back home as the St. George McKenna’s return from Baja California were they enjoyed many days of Oceanic fun and a well needed Disneyland ‘sandwich’ (meaning they went to Disneyland in the beginning and then in the end); now they are preparing for the big night when Ellyse has preference dance which involves 18 kids in the back garden and a disappearance act by Jeff, Jackson, and Carrson. Mom has lost her first place title but is still beating dad (and I assume Max :) as well). The “£$£”%£ family had a great Birthday celebration with Aidan getting some baseball stuff and then loads of awesome presents :). Some of the clan is making their way to the cabin to watch general conference and have some cabin fun! Jack seems to continue to receive a good amount of love even with the new arrival and Charlie continues to do what he does best; poop and look cute :). In response to some questions that were asked… No, I don’t really have enough time to get to the temple and so I don’t get to go very often at all :(… I named the car Pixious because it means ‘To put into flight’ and it is also the name a certain someone gives to a certain something in a certain movie, I will leave you to find out which :)… yes, as missionaries we do get together for conference but we wont watch it with the mission president, we will just go to the local Stake Centre and stay there all day Sunday because in England they have the Saturday afternoon session, Priesthood, Sunday Morning session and Sunday afternoon session all on Sunday! So it is a full day experience.

England has gotten very, very, very, very, very cold again with bitter artic winds and snowfall, this last week has been a toughie. Especially since almost all of our appointments fell through and Elder Diatel and I were finding the majority of the week. But despite the long days, the Lord truly poured his Spirit upon us! I would like to share with you all a big highlight of this past week. It was Saturday afternoon and our appointment had cancelled and for our back up plans we could either try by on some potential investigators in the area or we could go trackting. A feeling came into my heart to just go trackting but the natural man in me did not want to go knocking on doors AGAIN so I decided to let the decision fall on the shoulders of my companion, he to felt that we should go trackting and so we walked to the street that we had planned to trackt and began with house #1. We had mixed reactions some people were polite but not interested, others would yell at us, and some would just shut the door or tell us to go away, but then we came to Gareth’s door :). Gareth is in his late 20’s, married, has one child, and is a Catholic; but (to our surprise) he let us in. We started off with some small talk, opened with a prayer, and taught the
Restoration. The lesson went really well, the spirit was present throughout the teaching and when we got to the prophet Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon there was a very sweet feeling in all of our hearts of the truthfulness of what was said. As we reviewed a bit of what was discussed and answered questions we asked Gareth how he felt about what we taught. His answer was what missionaries call ‘golden’; he told us that he had always wondered why God had ceased to call prophets and apostles to the earth and the idea that he had once again established the same organization as Christ’s church was so exciting for him! How wonderful it is to be a missionary to share with those who are truly in darkness looking for the truth, to give everyone an opportunity to learn about the fullness of the Gospel and to posses the happiness that it brings! The Church is true; there is no doubt about it.

Loads of Love
Elder McKenna

P.S. the next P-day will be on Wednesday because of transfers so I don’t know what is going to happen there may or may not be a chance to E-mail.