Elder McKinley's Stint Across the Pond

Merry Christmas two days late everyone! I hope you had a fantastic time with your families and loved ones celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ (or whichever holiday you celebrate). I hope it was full of laughter and love for those things that matter most. Thursday  we had District Meeting. Since I'm the District Leader, I get to plan these meetings and this was my first planned one and it didn't go terrible! Hooray! We had some good laughs and just helped each other figure out ways forward with missionary work for the new year. In the words of a good friend of mine in Birmingham, "it was good fun" (I'm looking at you secret companion. You know who you are.) Then Elder Allen and I were on exchange and we went caroling around the village of one of the members here. It was a really fun experience and we were well received by most. A lot of people kept trying to give us money and then were confused when we declined and even more confused when we offered them ch...

Good morning, salutations and Merry Christmas! This is my last email before that special day, so I wanted to start off by saying Merry Christmas to you all! Before I get into the week, I wanted to take some time for some shout outs.  First, to the Vaughn family, thanks for the Christmas banner! I love that picture of of you all and I thought the delivery was so clever! Way to use Facebook.  Second, to everyone sending me Christmas cards, thank you! I love them and you're so kind.  Third, to all of you for your continual support and love for me. You are the greatest Christmas gifts :-) So getting into this week, it was really great! We made some cookies and took them to people we're teaching, people we are trying to teach, and people we aren't teaching. It was really fun and a nice change of pace. You can see our artsy pic attached. We only burned a few of them so I called it a win.  Elder Moorcroft waa feeling rubbish so we went to the medical cen...

Good morning family and friends and loved ones! I hope you've had a great week. I've heard that some crazy weather has been going on around the world so I hope you are all warm and cozy. Let's get to it. So this week we finally finished moving into our new flat. I'll have pictures next week when it's actually clean because we had to do a crazy fast move  on Monday  morning and then drive 5 hours to the London Temple for our mission temple trip. If I had a bit more time, I'd explain more about temples, but for now, just know they are really sacred places where we makes promises with God and He makes promises with us. Find out more on  mormon.org  :-) anyways, we are moved in now and that has honestly taken a big portion of our time this week.  We had a branch Christmas party this weekend! It was super fun and we had so much food  it did make me think of the many church Christmas parties I've been to over the years and made me miss everyone a bit. But...

Hello and good morning everyone! I hope you have been having a fantastic week and time in life in general. Let's get down to it because things happened this week. I am staying in Holsworthy for another six weeks! That means I get to be here for Christmas! I'm really excited. I absolutely love the people here and am blessed I get spend more time with them. Sadly, Elder Lopiano was moved to another part of the mission. It was great to serve with him and I love him a lot. I was sad to see him go, but I know he'll do great things where he's headed. I have a new companion here though! His name is Elder Moorcroft and he's from Australia. He's a pretty interesting guy. He's been on his mission for 18 months, so he's got some experience under his belt. It should be a good time working with him.  Another crazy thing happened. So all the missionaries around the world are grouped into sets of missionaries called districts. These districts usually comprise...

Good morning friends, family and those who I love so very much! Another week has swiftly passed in the land of Devonshire and I'm excited to tell you all about it, so let's get cracking.  It was Thanksgiving last week and I hope you all had a wonderful time with family and friends. They do not officially celebrate thanksgiving in England, but a family who lives in the branch here fed us thanksgiving dinner anyways! They lived in the states for 10 years and so when they came back to England they brought thanksgiving with them. It was amazing and pictures are attached. I'm super grateful for all of you and for the support you give me. I'm beyond grateful for my family, my faith, my God, my life experiences, and the opportunity I have to be serving here in England.  Moving forward, through the week, there was a baptism this week! A boy in the neighboring congregation has been meeting with the missionaries there and  Friday  was his baptism! We went to help out...