Yesterday in Orpington during Priesthood General Session, I challenged myself and invited all present to invite all our next door neighbours to come to church with us on Christmas Day.  This will be interesting for me personally - I get on fine with my neighbours so a simple "Would you like to come along to my Church for an hour for a Christmas morning service' will not be a problem - as long as I go knock on their door this week to give them time to consider and plan for it. Well one of them, a sweet friend is a very active Catholic, so that one will be a bit trickier - but you never know! I know that many of my brethren at Orpington will invite their neighbours. Always, there is never any harm in asking and inviting.  Only good can be the outcome.

Today I received an email reply from the family I invited to Church this Sunday at Welling.  They are also involved as leaders in their own 'chapter', a branch of their church, and so are unavailable.  The reply gave a strong indication of wishing to come when things have quietened down after Christians.  I am confident that they will honour this interest that has been expressed by them several times to find out more.

I await a delivery from store.lds.org of another batch of hardback Book of Mormon copies.   I also ordered a variety of PACs and some DVDs to have ready to give.  store.lds.org does take a while - like 4 weeks + sometimes to get the order to your door. (I am wondering why.) So, anyway, ordering well in advance seems the prudent course.  I have one friend from Teacher training college days to whom I wish to send him a book, ideally for Christmas, but no matter if they arrive late, I'll send one anyway.  The special reason is that in 2011 he published a book of photographs of our college days in which I feature and also wrote a reminiscence.  So I figure one good book deserves an even better one!

Yesterday I gave the 10 'Joy to the World' PACs to the Elders in Orpington Ward to use.  So I have run out.  This evening I went with Church friends for a meal at a local restaurant and have just arrived home and here I am.  As I have been writing I realise that the waitress who served us did not get a PAC from me!!  I can hardly understand how this happened - particularly as I would liked to have shown how easy and fun it is to give a PAC in this situation.  The reason I now know is that my wallet was empty of PACs! - and so I did not have the usual prompt ready at the point of sale!  The wallet is now stuffed with other PACs at the ready for the rest of the week!

I feel strongly that 2012 is going to be an important year for members of the Maidstone Stake.  Many are very hearty in loving others already and becoming active in almost daily inviting and certainly praying daily for opportunities to speak with and invite others will simply enlarge their already beautiful characters in a way that will forge them to become more like our Elder brother and Redeemer and our Heavenly Father.  Surely as more invitations occur and we all become more comfortable and skillful at saying and doing the things the Holy Spirit guides us to do there can only be more coming to the waters of baptism, and the road to the Temple as a result.  It will be unstoppable - rather like a river bursting its banks, the latter-days Saints breaking forth from their old bounds to enlarge the pool of Saints in the Maidstone Stake!