The Wedding Singer

"The Wedding Singer"...though not  singing at a wedding, in this picture!

Glad to hear you've had a great week! I'm really glad Claire's baptism was good. I'm sad to have missed it, but I'm glad to have been able to see some pictures on Facebook.

I talked to Alison a bit about Aaron's farewell, also. It sounds like he's really prepared. I'm going to have to shoot him a Facebook message before he takes off. I'm so excited for him!

So, as you know, moves are this week. I'm sticking around as District Leader, and Elder Hebert's off to Portishead to follow-up train a missionary who just got done with his training. It's been a good transfer, and I've learned a lot serving with Elder Hebert. He's taught me a lot about the Spirit, and I'm really grateful for that. Elder Barney, my new companion, will be coming in on Wednesday. I've met him once or twice, and he's a really good guy. I've talked to a few other missionaries about him, and I'm really excited from what I've been told. From what I hear, he's a really solid missionary: hard working and very obedient. I think it'll be good for me, not necessarily because I'm a disobedient missionary or anything like that, because I'm not, but because I think I could use a couple of screws tightened. It's been interesting watching over these past few transfers how I've been put with a lot of laid-back, relaxed, hard-working missionaries, and how that's really helped me to be a lot less uptight about things, and now it's back on the other swing, to help me to become more firmly grounded. Or, I assume so at least. I guess I shouldn't quite assume what I'm going to be learning from Elder Barney.

Crawley District Meeting and Elder Hebert 's District Leader Appreciation Day!
We ate waaayyy too much chocolate, a three layer cake and Mexican Food!

The rest of this week's going to be fun, though. All the missionaries from the Channel Islands are flying in for transfers, so they'll be bunking with us. I'm going to go get tons of dried pinto beans and eggs today so that we can feast upon bean burritos for dinner, and breakfast burritos the next day. We'll probably be tearing up the turf field near our house as well the next morning for football.

The last week's been good! We've had a pretty strong week. We've done a lot of hard work in trying to find people, and it's paid off substantially. I got to teach my first lesson all in Spanish!! It was so cool. The guy's name is Hossein, and he's Muslim. We just met him on the street. We've had a number of these experiences lately where we walk up to people, and they say, "Oh, I don't speak English." and I say, "Where are you from?" and they say, "Spain," or "Portugal," and then I just start speaking to them in Spanish, and we get their details. Who could have though that there were so many Spanish speakers in Crawley...? Anyway, it actually happened again on our way to go teach him (which is crazy), and then we taught him. It was kind of awkward, since Elder Hebert just had to sit there through the entire lesson, but he was really open minded, and desirous to learn more. He'd watched a documentary on the church while he was living in Spain. We should be seeing him again this week.

We also found this amazing woman named Kirsty that we've started teaching. One of the days last week, we were out trying to contact some potentials when it just started hurling down rain... Oh my days, it was pouring so hard. And since it had been such a sunny beautiful day, we hadn't brought raincoats. So... We sat under a little overhang for five minutes with this cat and called potential investigators. We got a call from the Office Elders letting us know that they were suffering with us in the rain, and Elder Blair said, "Hey, if you knock ten doors, I promise you that you'll find a solid investigator." So, we thought, "Well, we've been lacking opportunities to rack up wife points anyway..." So we went to work. Apparently Elder Hamilton told Elder Blair off for promising us something like that, but we knocked into Kirsty's door. We taught her the Restoration last week, and will be going back this week with one of the members of the ward to teach her more about the Book of Mormon.

Hmm, what else? I found a dead hedgehog. That was pretty sad.

Oh, we've also had this weird habit of running into less-actives on the street. We've had it happen probably three times in the last two weeks. It's kind of fun, actually. I think we're going to be teaching a few of them soon, too.

The Zone Leaders' investigators Cat and Brian had their wedding on Saturday. It was nice. I was asked to sing for it, and so I sang "You'll Never Walk Alone," and "Make Me a Channel of Your Peace." I think it went alright. I'm waiting for all the flack from the other missionaries to start rolling in... After my first transfer, I was known to the AP's and a few other missionaries as "The Wedding Singer"... Oh goodness.

Yes, I did get the other part to my license. I'll be taking my test in August. Not sure what's going on for P-day this week... It's moves day, so Elder Gunnell and I will probably be hanging out for the majority of it.

Anyway, I believe that's about it!

And, of course we need a some goofy pictures of the Crawley District!

Love you guys so much,

- Elder Braiden Green