Elder McKinley's Stint Across the Pond

A little different this go round. (He sent a voice recording and I can't figure out how to include here. Yet.)

Hey family. friends, associates, compadres, and all around lovely people. Here we are once again. i might get a bit pensive in this email but I am also trying to condense the length so we shall see what happens.  This past week was crazy busy at the beginning and then it mellowed out by the time we got to Sunday. Tuesday was spent in London for a tri-zone conference. We had to get up at 4:50 and we got back at 9:45 but it was a really great day. It was the first zone conference President Checketts has officially conducted and I thought it went really well. There are a lot of changes happening and a lot of really good plans for helping us move forward. I won't get into all of it, but just know I am super excited to be a missionary in the England London Mission. I got to catch up with old friends and make some new ones and it was just a blast of a day. Wednesday involved an adventure to Havant to get my bandage replaced. Let's just say I am ready for it to come off. We a...

Hello family, friends, and those of you whom I love to bits. This week has probably been the weirdest of my mission. So basically I have been all over the mission the past week and it is not going to end any time soon because we have our first zone conference tomorrow and they are having it in Hyde Park, so I will be back in London for the third time in the last three weeks. So yeah. Crazy. I will just pick up on Tuesday morning.  So as I may have mentioned last week, my suitcase broke en route to Hyde Park. So Tuesday morning before I made the journey down to the Isle of Wight, I needed to buy a new suitcase. I went with a few other elders who were waiting for their new companions and was able to find a random shop and pay more than I would have liked for a new suitcase, which one of the elders was able to negotiate down to a lower price for me. I was not really in a mental state to process anything at the moment, so he gets a special shoutout for his help. Thankfully I...

Hey friends. Sad news. I am no longer serving in Oxford. I am getting transferred to the Isle of Wight. I will be honest and say I was not expecting it and that my heart still feels like it is in Oxford. However, I am excited to be going back to the coast (it is an island, it is all coast). My new companion will be Elder Brewster. He has a reputation for being an animated and fun guy so I am excited to be serving with him.  Honestly this week has been all a blur. I am going to give you the highlights and then my thoughts and how I am feeling because I am actually in Lodnon today and my capacity to process and then report information at the moment is a bit lacking. I am tired from the journey this morning that included me dragging luggage that broke through the horribly hot underground. However a wonderful Canadian lady came to the rescue and helped me out as I made the final steps to Hyde Park. This past week: -We got fed basically every nigh...