Feels Good to be Busy!

It's so funny that you mention the Fourth... Our Stake YSA are putting on an Independence day dance... Who'd have thought? And of course, Mom. I'm wearing all red, white and blue today as well, but that's just because those are the only casual clothes I own... We're going bowling.

The Youtube video's been taking forever and a day. But it should be up today. I hope. I'm going to try to get the next one going soon. I was planning on doing "Rock of Ages" with one of the kids from the ward, because I want to play my mandolin, but I don't know if I'll be able to do that one this week, so I'm working on "Come, Come Ye Saints". It'll probably be an instrumental version on the guitar, but we'll see what happens. The channel seems to be getting decent coverage -- I mean, I've got somewhere around 150 views on the first one, and about 8 followers. I'll be doing some more promotion this week.

Work has picked up, kind of. It's been an interesting week for sure... We had around three appointments every single day, and out of the seventeen or so that we had total, we only ended up getting in with two of them... But, it was cool, because we were running around trying to get as much work done as we possibly could, and it kept us really busy finding new people. Working so hard has really helped to build comp unity between Elder Hebert and I, so, good deal there. But it sure was a busy week... We didn't have more than ten minutes for lunch at least three or four days... And had to eat dinner after we came in around 9:30. It feels really good to be that busy, believe me.

We had one crazy story, though! So... Monday, we were finishing up some shopping down in town, and were on our way back, when we walked past a public restroom. I didn't really have to go, but I felt like I should, so I went in. It was disgusting in there, to say the least, and the stall with the door open was so bad, I didn't even bother. So, I pushed on the other door assuming that if someone were in there, it'd be locked. Well, it wasn't, and there was someone... Awkward. Anyway, I waited for him to finish, took his place, and Elder Hebert started talking to him when he walked outside. Turns out he's religious himself, was looking for a job, and was super keen on learning about the Book of Mormon. I joined in when I came outside, and we got his details, set up an appointment, and prayed that he would find a job. He then went and introduced us to all his Mauritian friends.

Well, we called him a few days later to confirm the appointment, and he was really sad that he had to cancel because he had found a job. We were supposed to meet him again Saturday, but he had to take his nephew to the hospital. So, we'll be seeing him this week. Sweet, huh? Just goes to show you can really find people anywhere...

On Saturday, the Stake put on a huge fun fair at the Catholic school down the street, and it was such a great time. We brought along Georgina and her kids, and they absolutely loved it, even with it chucking down rain. We were hoping for a few other investigators to show, but unfortunately they weren't able to... Still, the members of the ward were so friendly with Georgina and the kids, and really made them feel welcome, which I was so grateful for. I can sympathize on how difficult it must be to join a new church, and the ward's really helping them to feel comfortable throughout the process.

They were also able to make it to church yesterday, (and they brought a friend!), and will be going with us to Family Home Evening at the Ivey's tonight. Super stoked on that.

I've been really inspired by this last week to run this last year of my mission with everything that I've got. I've become so grateful for the Spirit lately, and am really focusing on doing everything possible to keep it in my life. I know that I cannot do this work without it, and that if I work my hardest, I'll have Him running alongside me the whole way.

Anyway, love you guys so much.

- Elder Braiden Green

Youtube-ing!

Hey Guys,

I've got a Youtube channel now.

This has been another great and wonderful week. P-Day was spent mostly preparing food for Zone Training -- I made Elder Gull's pulled pork and a ton of refried beans. It took up a lot of time (and a fair amount of our monthly budget) but everyone was quite impressed.

Tuesday was Zone Training, which was really great. We learned a lot about member involvement, talking to everyone on the street, and the importance of Sacrament meeting. President Millar spoke on the Sacrament, and it was very powerful. I was asked to do a musical number, which I did alright... It wasn't terrible.

The rest of the week was work as usual. We had a DA nearly every night, which was fantastic. I've been using the object lesson on faith with the burning tea bag -- I'll have to take a video of it, and post it up here. It's super fun for kids and stuff, because fire gets anyone interested. We met some amazing people, though! We stopped one guy over in Bewbush and asked him if he'd heard about the Book of Mormon. He was Pentacostal himself, but basically said, "Well, I guess I can't refute the Book of Mormon unless I were to read and pray about it!" Solid.

We had a great teach with Georgina! We were teaching them the Plan of Salvation, and she had a few of her kids friends over, so we had coloring time while we drew out the whole plan. We may have a new investigator from that too, if her parents will give us permission.

Also, went on exchange with the Office Elders on Saturday, which was sweet. We spent some time at the temple to teach a recent convert of Elder Hamilton's. I also had a pretty normal miracle, but it was cool. We had stopped to visit a former investigator, and as I was getting out of the car, I thought I should grab a Family Proclamation pamphlet. So I did. And we saw a guy on the road loading his kid into his car. So, I asked him about his family, and gave him the pamphlet. He ended up being the nicest guy, and so they've got an appointment with him this week.

I think my next hymn's going to be Rock of Ages, as I'm working on an arrangement with the mandolin right now. I'm going to try to get some of the young men from the ward involved, as there are a few musical youth. Also, trying to get Elder Rogers, one of the Crawley ZL's, to write a cello part for "Transfer". But, I'm going to wait to put transfer up until I get a bigger following.

Anyway, that's about it. 

Love you!

- Elder Green

New Frontiers

Man, I'm so jealous to hear about Big Sur... We are definitely going when we get home.

Our week has been so wonderful, honestly. Crawley is just booming with potential. We've found so many amazing people who are so prepared to hear the gospel. We've got a few really wonderful investigators that we've been working with for a little while now, and we're picking up new ones every day.

So, I already told you the story about the lady with the football in the stream, well, let me tell you the rest of the story. We stopped by to go see her in the middle of the week, because we had set up an appointment with her, and when we knocked on the door... It wasn't the right address. So, we were super bummed thinking she had given us a fake address or something. But, we had been calling around to some potential investigators and so Elder Hebert was actually able to get in touch with her and we got her real address (we were just a few off, for some reason...) and actually met them for an appointment. We were pretty worried, because we weren't sure if she had a partner or not, and we hadn't been able to get a member in time, but when we knocked on the door, a man opened the door and said, "Oh, hey guys! Come on in!" Elder Hebert was so surprised, he had to ask if Justine actually lived there, which she did. As we started talking with them, it turns out that her partner's father is one of the high priests in the ward, and that he knows a ton about the church, though she knows absolutely nothing. And as we taught her the lesson, she just lit up completely, and was absolutely amazed by the idea of Joseph Smith having seen Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ, and prayers being answered... Oh my days, it was so cool.

And you should have seen her partner's father's face when we told him that they were taking the lessons. So exciting!

We had a number of those kind of things happen throughout the week. I wish I had my journal right here so that I could remember all of them... We were teaching one of our more solid investigators, Dominic, and were trying to get to know him a bit better. Well, at the end of the lesson we asked him for referrals, and he said, "Well, actually, that's why I was asking if you guys get days off, because I was wanting to invite a bunch of friends over to play football with you guys, and then you could teach them as well!" Flip man! And he started telling us, "Yeah, I was on the phone with my cousin the other day, and I just keep arguing with him trying to tell him how true the Book of Mormon is! He won't believe it yet, but I'll keep trying!"

The whole week wasn't amazing appointments like these, but it was wonderful, because when appointments did cancel, or people just didn't show up, we would find the most prepared people along the way. It was really exciting to see.

As for digital work, it's been so much fun, honestly. I've been putting a lot of though into how we can use these tools more effectively, and it seems like we definitely have so many tools that we need to start putting to use. The Youtube page should be up and running this week -- Shanti is just about done with the design for it, and should be uploading the video for me as well. I'm going to do what I can to be publicizing it through different LDS communities on Facebook and Google+ and through my blog. So... We'll see what happens! I keep looking for new ideas every day, so if you guys have any suggestions let me know.

Love you!

We crashed the Crawley/Uckfield district's lunch.

Elder Hebert and Elder Gunnell enjoying their food.

Area 4: Crawley...The Digital World

So, I'm loving this new area. It's definitely different, but I'm learning so much from it.

The Digital Zone works pretty much like a normal area. We do the usual work of finding people, teaching them, and baptizing just like any other missionary, but we dedicate some of our time each day to internet work as well. Mostly that's through sending people Emails through our online area book program, using Facebook to teach people over chat, and chatting with people who get onto Mormon.org. So, it's possible that if someone were to catch it at the right time, and started chatting on Mormon.org, you'd get me. That's probably the most interesting one, because we get a lot of trolls... But it's whatever, you're going to get that any time you're on the internet.

We try to keep it to about an hour a day on the internet, because it's awfully easy to get distracted, especially with Facebook. I've been working at setting certain boundaries so that I get all my online work done quickly -- especially as I'm not teaching anyone yet over Facebook.

The weird thing about it, is that we're not in the same Zone or District as any of the Elders in our ward... Digital is like a Zone within a Zone... So, we see the Crawley Zone Leaders and the Crawley Elders every morning when we go play football (soccer) at the chapel, but we never have district meeting with them, or account... So, it's funky. We hardly ever even see our district, because they're all over in East Grinstead. Anyway.

Big Sur and Girls Camp sound like they'll be a lot of fun. Be sure to post pictures to Facebook (oh what a hypocrite I am...) so that I can see. Thanks for being good about messaging me on Facebook. They've told me that I'm allowed to talk to anyone, but to limit talking to family.

Hay fever's not too bad anymore, I've been taking more medicine for it. All the Elders in our ward have been suffering pretty good from it.

It's not too hot and humid, yet. The weather's actually been beautiful this last week, nice and sunny... I might actually get a tan on my arms.

Our flat's about a fifteen minute walk from the church, but the Zone Leaders drive us to the church a lot, since they live two floors below us...

I'm looking at setting up a Youtube channel soon, where I'll be arranging hymns and performing them online. So, look out for that.

We also had an amazing miracle this last week! So, we left church pretty late on Sunday, because of a munch and mingle we were having. We stopped by our flat, and when we came out of our flat, we saw this woman with three children walking away. We were going to try to catch up to her, but she was speeding along, but I heard her say, "It's okay, we'll buy you a new football." I looked down, and in the stream right outside our flat, there was a football sitting in it, and so I yelled, "Hey, I'll grab it for you!" So she stopped, and I took off my shoes and rolled up my trousers, and climbed into the stream (it wasn't very deep, so I wasn't breaking any rules...) I grabbed the football (soccer ball) and prayed and prayed and prayed that she would be interested, or that she would at least have an open heart. And when I got back, Elder Hebert was talking to her, and she was amazed by the things he was sharing with her. So, she gave us her details, we said a prayer, and got an appointment to come back and see her!

Anyway, love you so much!

Some pictures of our flat. I promise it's not as messy as it looks... The study room.

The kitchen

My bathroom -- we've actually got two!

Our relaxing area

The bedroom. Don't mind the unmade beds... Oops...

And Elder Hebert and I in the forest.

A Bittersweet Transfer

So, the groceries arrived early this morning, thank you so much. I feel terrible, because I probably won't be able to use them unless I pack them with me... See, I'm moving off to the Digital Zone! So, I'll find you on Facebook. President had mentioned that there was a possibility I would be going, which is fine by me. I'm going to miss this area a lot... I've learned so much about how to do missionary work here, and about being more confident in my missionary efforts. Most of those lessons came from Elder Munson.

Man, you guys have all the fun, don't you? I miss earthquakes. And all the TP-ing, and Caution Taping, and... We ought to put our new toilet paper to use... Happy Anniversary, I hope it was a lot of fun. Where did you go see the Music Man, the Pantages? Man, I'm stoked for Aaron, that's going to be an amazing mission. Not surprised, honestly, with so many people getting called to the land of their heritage. Now that I think about it, Tahoe will probably be called to Mexico (or Denmark), if the pattern continues.

We could have come and helped TP!

I will sure miss these good people! Thanks to the Welch's for taking such good care of me,
and being so much fun!.

This week is definitely a great week to leave on, though it makes me feel a bit bittersweet. We've had a pretty rough transfer, to be honest. It's been all over the place with different trials and difficulties, but I think that we've done our part to get this area running again. We had one of our investigators commit to a baptismal date, which is exciting. His name is Vendes, and he's from Jamaica. He's very understanding of doctrine, and seems very open to the spirit. So, Elder Munson and his new trainee will have a good time teaching him. And! We had a woman we met knocking (Knocking! In London!) come to church on Sunday. Let me tell you, knocking doesn't work in London. But, our leaders asked us to, and so we responded. And her sister had actually learned with the missionaries before, so she knew exactly how to get to the church and came along. Really exciting.

President Millar mentioned in his letter this week that there have been reports mission-wide of people approaching members and missionaries and asking them if they could come to church, and we've been no exception. This last week, we had two instances of that, or similar. Our first was most exciting. We were on our way to a dinner appointment with the Sintim family, and had actually just missed our bus, when a group of Ghanaians came walking through Mitcham Common, and down an alley, and one of them was watching us. He came up to us, and said, "Hey, can I ask you guys a question? How do I get my records transferred here from Ghana?" Turns out he's been a member for the past 10 years, and has been living in Mitcham the last 2 years not knowing where the church was. He wasn't able to make it for the whole of church on Sunday, but he showed up for Elder's Quorum, which is sweet. And then, in addition to that, we had an experience walking in Morden Hall Park. We had never gone contacting there, and the place is absolutely gorgeous, so we spent some time getting our bearings in the park, looking around, etc. Well, we started walking down one of the main paths, and were stopping people along the way, when this English couple walked up to us and asked if we were missionaries. We spoke with them for a little while about their life -- the man was from South Africa originally, and had lived there through the Apartheid, which was cool. Well, his partner started asking us a bit more about what we were doing, and we told them a bit about the church. They were both solid Church of England members, and new a fair amount about the history of Christianity and such, so we had an interesting discussion. Well, normally when we meet people like this, they're pretty stuck in their ways and unwilling to listen to anything that two 20-year-old's have to say about religion, because what do we know? But these two were actually so interested in what we had to say, and were asking for a Book of Mormon, and asking the most inspired questions, like "Well wait, if there was a prophet in the days of old, why hasn't there been one in all this time since Christ's death?" Oh, we were chav-snapping for joy like none other.

Anyway, Digital work's going to be interesting. I'm excited to go down to (Creepy) Crawley. I'm not sure all of what I'll be doing, I'll probably call Elder Cullen later to ask him about what happens there, but I know a little bit. First, I'll be working a normal area half the time, the way that normal missionaries do, so we'll still be expected to find, teach, and baptize in the real world. In addition to that, I'll be working on Facebook, Skype, Mormon.org, etc. to teach both investigators here in this mission, and worldwide. I think they said that the Digital Zone has baptized people in 56 different countries so far, and that was the count at the beginning of last transfer. So... Pretty cool.

Anyway, that's it for this week. I'll try to pack away the shrimp and asparagus in my suitcase so I can enjoy it with Elder Hebert and the other Elders in our flat.

District Meeting

Wandsworth Zone Conference

Love you so much,

- Elder Green