First Month in Trowbridge!

	Hey fam! I hope Deep Creek is fun. Super bummed that I'm not there, but there's nowhere I'd rather be than here.   In all honesty, this week has been relatively uneventful. It's really hard to believe that my first transfer is almost done. Granted, I know I'm staying here so it's not really relevant... but still! For P-Day today, we went over to the Wells Road Chapel to play sports. It was a lot of fun. Unfortunately, weekly District Meetings with the whole zone have been abolished :( it was too expensive for the mission for everyone to get into Bristol on a weekly basis. That's okay though, it just means we will probably have more zone P-Days. Now, our District Meetings will be held with just our district, alternating between Trowbridge and Bath.   We did see one major miracle this week! On Saturday, on our way to our teach with Adam, we received a text from an inactive member. The missionaries had been teaching her a couple of weeks back, her children hadn't been baptized so they were going to get baptized. Two days before the baptism, they cancelled, saying they wanted all contact to cease immediately- apparently they had to choose between church and family. Anyways, we got a text from them requesting that we arrange a lift for them to church. This was quite difficult because they live in Frome which is a considerable distance from the chapel. However, we succesfully found a member (after calling about 20 people) who was willing to drive them to church... but he could only drive them to church, he could not drive them back. So then we called everyone again, saying that they just needed a ride home. After an agonizingly long three hours, we finally received a call back from someone with whom we'd left a message, saying that they could drive her and her children home. The whole thing was quite miraculous. I'm pretty sure that these happenings correlated directly with our obediance- the night before, a member offered to have us come over and watch the opening ceremonies and feed us tacos. But we didn't watch! It was a HARD decision. Especially for me, taking into consideration my love for tacos. As such, I gained a powerful testimony on the positive consequences of obediance.   This week, I also gained a testimony regarding the usefulness of the Area Book. One day, as we dug through one of our three area books, we found about forty former investigators who had not been contacted since 2008. We had prayed just that morning, requesting that we find new people to teach. As we read through their records, we realized that quite often they had no real reason for not learnign the gospel anymore other than "not being ready yet." We now have created a list of all these formers with their addresses and will visit them over the coming week. I am so excited to see the results of this endeavor, even if none of them are interested, we will be able to update their information and make our area book all the more useful for the missionaries that follow us.

Our weekly Family Home Evenings for single adults and investigators has either been hit or miss. This week is was most definitely a miss. We were going to play a Frederickson family classic- Trivial Pursuit. Upon the arrival of the supposed FHE beneficiaries, they decided that they were above Trivial Pursuit. One person (remember, these are grown adults) said "ehhhh this looks boring, bye guys." The rest decided to take a walk. Two people stayed, because they were physically incapable of walking. So the four of us sat together and read Trivial Pursuit questions because, as it turns out, we did not have dice. 

On a FAR more positive note, Elder von Allmen and I have managed to start weekly basketball on Wednesday nights at the chapel! It is SO much fun. We have a couple of members come, we invite our investigators and less actives, and occasionally the Bath Elders come and bring people with them. It's always a blast. The ward I'm in is really great. I feel so blessed to be here in Trowbridge. With the unfortunate exception of the previously mentioned FHE attendants, everyone is so good to us and incredibly supportive of the missionary effort. I am so excited to see what the next week has in store!  Thank you to everyone who has wrote me emails and letters this week, I love you all so much. You are the best. If I'm ever slow to respond, I'm really sorry... it's just because I'm extremely busy! 

Awesome scripture of the week: Alma 27:18 :)

With love,

Elder Frederickson

(Alma 27:18 Now was not this exceeding joy?  Behold, this is joy which none receiveth save it be the truly penitent and humble seeker of happiness.)