London Calling: Quite a Catch! (Do you get it?)

The SUPERMOON from "across the pond."

Well, things are going here in Crawley! I'm actually quite pleased with everything. There's always room for improvement, sure, but we're not doing too badly this week.

We were able to meet up with that Portuguese family again, and had a pretty good lesson. We were hoping to come with the Portuguese family from the ward, but they weren't able to make it... So, I stumbled through another lesson in Spanish, and had her son translate anything that I didn't understand. I've been trying to spend some of my study time throughout the week doing language study so that I can keep up teaching in Spanish, and try to understand the Portuguese. However, I've not had as much time as I would like... Oh well. They didn't come to church on Sunday... But, we'll get them there eventually!

We had interviews on Wednesday with President after District Meeting. I love interviews, honestly. It always seems like President Millar is trying to get through them as fast as he can, but I do always get quality feedback from it in the end. President's quite pleased with the work here, both in the area and online, and he's put us on assignment to figure out something that we can do to help all of the Recent Converts in the mission. We've kind of expanded that to investigators as well, especially those with baptismal dates. So, we've been brainstorming, and we've got a few ideas in the works... Sorting through the kinks is going to be fun. I love problem solving. That's something I've actually come to love most about this area: we have so much more creative freedom, and so we get to be innovative, and come up with new ways to make the work more effective with new tools that haven't been explored to their fullest capacities. The engineer in me is just eating it up.

Yes, I know I look like a fool...but my mom wanted a picture of me carrying my guitar everywhere I go!

We've become really good friends with the High Street this week. Previously, we've not really spent too much time out there, but we've been trying to do a lot of finding this week out that way, which is good. It really does maximize your ability to teach a lot more people. We had some pretty interesting experiences, too... One of them, we were on our way back to the chapel to do some lunch and internet study, and trying to talk to people along the way. We met this one really cool Indian guy who wanted to meet up at the chapel this week. It was strange, because halfway through our talking with him, some guy walked by, stopped, and said, "Don't believe a word these guys say," which, Elder Barney pointed out was quite rude... Anyway, the guy was still happy to meet up with us this week, gave us his number, and we said a prayer. Behind the man, was a parked car with another man sitting in it. I had intended on giving him a card, but he called us over and told us a story about his son who had almost died. He was a strong Christian himself, and so we gave him a copy of the Book of Mormon and said, "Look, if you don't read it and pray about it, you can't tell us it's not true." So, he'll be reading it, hopefully.

We've had a few really good dinners this week. Two DA's with women who are recent converts. We felt bad because we weren't able to get a male member to come with us to either, so we had a little picnic in the hallway. It was Liliana's idea. Man, such good food, though... I'm so grateful to the ward for what they do for us. And on Saturday Elder Barney and I had an incredible dinner. So, we were at Asda the other week, and found some whole fish that were only a pound on clearance. We thought we'd experiment with them, but we just got lazy over the next week, and considered giving them to the cats. But, we were doing our weekly planning on Saturday, and so we were going to be in the flat for a little bit longer... So we made the fish. Oh my days, so nice. We coated them in butter, garlic, and herbs inside and out, and popped 'em in the oven, then served them on a bed of rice with a white sauce I whipped up from the extra milk we had left over. Let me tell you, Elder Barney and I are going to have no trouble getting married when we get back. Oh, it was delicious.

Our picnic in the hallway with Liliana!

Doesn't our dinner look good? Elder Barney and I are becoming quite good cooks.

Later, we popped out the eyeballs to eat with the Zone Leaders. It's strange, they've got an iron-y taste to them, and there was this weird pit in the middle...