Letter - August 11, 2009

Hey there thanks for all of your emails. They are always great to hear. It sounds like everyone is doing well. It was a pretty exciting week this week and there are a few stories that i have to tell so get ready for them.

So on Saturday we go and we see this guy that we are working with at the moment. His name is Adrian. He wants to be baptized on the 29th of August. He is an alcoholic and is pretty much always drunk when we see him. Surprisingly though he remembers most of what we say to him. But anyways, we are teaching him on Saturday and when we get there he was having an argument with the guy who lives above him. The guy was getting mad at Adrian because he was playing his music too loud and it was disrupting him. (The walls here are like a piece of cardboard. You could hear anything through these walls.) But eventually it all calmed down and we went inside and started teaching. While we were in there all of the sudden the cops show up and they arrest Adrian right then and there. It was crazy. They didn't even say why they were arresting him or what the deal was. They just came in and did it. They didn't do anything to us but we were just left there at the house wondering what we do now and what just happened. It was pretty crazy but Adrian kept asking them what he did and they didn't say and then he asked us what he did and we just said nothing that we saw he did was wrong. But as he was getting in the police car he told us that he would see us at church on Sunday. Haha. So Sunday rolls around and we call Adrian. He is out of jail and he is coming to church with us. So we start walking to church with him and he has Elder Bedke hold his beer for him while he is smoking. We have only been walking for about 10 minutes and he starts complaining its too far so we call a member and he comes and picks us up. We told him that he will have to drink his beer fast cause he can't have it in church. But our member comes and picks us up and we just tell him that the guy is kind of drunk but he really wants to come to church so don't ask questions. So then we get to church and we have a black member in our ward and he was outside greeting people as they came in and so Adrian walks up and says "Oh is this the bouncer, haha." But we get him into church and it starts and this guy doesn't know how to be quiet. He could very well be louder than Russell. It was crazy. The opening hymn was The Lord is My Light. Adrian wanted to sing and so he did just that but you can imagine how a drunk person sings. Me and Elder Bedke have been laughing hysterically this entire time and we are both crying we are laughing so hard. So then the member of the bishopric gets up and does all of the ward business and reads a letter from the Stake Presidency. He was up there for about 5 minutes and when he sat down Adrian leaned over to us and said "Well that guy was boring. It's a good thing he sat down." So then the sacrament starts. He thought the whole time that there was wine at the church but during the sacrament his phone starts to ring. He answers it and just says "Hey im in church, i'll call you in a while." I never thought i could laugh harder. But then a member that was in front of us kept looking back and one time he told Adrian to be quiet and that was the wrong thing to say. He spoke in his normal voice and said to the member, "Whats his problem? Hey you have a mouth why don't you use it." We tried to quiet him down but it wasn't working so Elder Bedke took him out. It was like we were babysitting a little baby. It was hillarious. So we almost had a fight in church this week and it was really funny because Adrian keeps telling us that he doesn't blame the members for looking at him because he had paint on his pants and he didn't have a belt on. That was my exciting story for this week. Adrian should be at church again this week but we told him that he needs to lay off the beer. I will never forget that experience.

But on the more spiritual side we hit the standard of excellence again this week. That is two weeks in a row and i am really happy about it. We have set some pretty high goals this week for people at church and people with a baptismal date. We will have to work extremely hard to get it but i know that we can do it with the help of the Lord.

We have Dana and Dionne who are being baptized on the 22nd of the month. I am really excited about it and then we have Adrian on the 29th of August and then we have a couple more hopefully on the 5th of September. It is unbelievable what you can do with the Lord's help. I love this work more and more each day.

We have interviews this week with President Ogden. I am excited about those and i am looking forward to learning more from him. He is a great mission president and he will continue to help the EBM (England Birmingham Misison) be the EBM (Earths Best Mission). I love this work. I love the gospel. It is so true. Me and Elder Bedke talk about it every day and there is no way that it isn't true. It makes perfect sense. Its amazing. I love Jesus Christ. He is my Savior. This is his work. I love you all and i hope that you are all doing well. THE CHURCH IS TRUE!!!!

Love Elder Sam Rudd