Seven Sisters!

Me and the Belle Tout Lighthouse, at Seven Sisters National Park in Brighton.

I've been so touched by the great work that's been happening here in Crawley this last week.Our investigator is probably one of the most faithful guys that I know. We've been teaching him about three times a week now, and stopping by every once and a while in between. He's got a few trials that he's working to overcome at the moment, but man is it powerful to see him growing the way he is. No matter what hits him, he just keeps saying, "I want to overcome it, so that I can be with my brothers and sisters in the church and be baptized." It's really incredible. And yes, he came to church, but unfortunately his friend was "busy".

We had Zone Training this last week, which led to a few pretty fundamental changes in how we're doing things as a mission. I'm really excited about it, though. For the last 14 months of my mission (aka, all of it), we've been counting lessons with people on the street so long as we present two points of doctrine and say a prayer. And that's great, really, because it caused us all to focus on actually teaching people when we meet them. However, everyone kind of felt they needed to be in the "green zone" each week, and so would spend time contacting each day and never turning up new investigators. Heck, the little "Potential Investigators" section at the back of each of my planners is just filled with people that I met once on the street, and never got in contact with again. Well, our new training plan is pushing that out of the way.

Basically, President's reinstated lessons the way that they used to be counted: they should include an opening and closing prayer, doctrine and a commitment. So, the majority of the lessons we count now are sit-down teaches. Now, I'm really stoked about this. It sounds like logistics, but really it changes the entire way that we're doing missionary work. The number of people we stop is important because we're trying to find those people who are actually interested rather than just teaching people just to teach people and make it look like we're doing good hard work. (I'm exaggerating how bad it is, but you get the idea.)

Oh, P-day was so great last week. We went down with the Office Elders, the Crawley Area Elders, and Ben Craggs from the ward to Seven Sisters down in Brighton. Oh. My. Days. Honestly, one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The huge chalk cliffs are so pretty. And it was so nice to be near the ocean again. I nearly freaked out as soon as I stepped out of the car and could taste salt in the air. We hiked up around the cliff, and messed around down on the beach for a while. The chalk flakes off all over the beach, and it turns part of the beach into this solid chalk ground... We had fun throwing the big chunks of it around (like boys do). I was so disappointed, though, because apparently clam chowder's not much of a thing here in England... I had a huge craving for it, and could not satisfy it...

More pictures from Seven Sisters...

Beachy Head Lighthouse.

Elder Barney, Me, and Elder Nunnally

The chalky cliffs of Seven Sisters.

Yes, that's Elder Foster on the right! He's with us now in the Crawley Zone, as Zone Leader.

Speaking of soup, for the cooking portion of this blog, we tried leek and potato soup this week. Not actually as difficult as I would have imagined it to be. It took a while to cook, though, so we just left it on the hob during weekly planning. It tasted so nice.

Homemade Leek and Potato Soup.

Finally, the fireside went really well yesterday. I was quite nervous beforehand because I haven't sung a solo in a good while, and probably hadn't practiced as much as I could have. Plus, Sister Miller (the woman who played piano for me) had the keys changed on it, and so my key change went from a fourth (quite normal, easy to pull off) to a minor third, which for some reason I just couldn't get into my head as correct. Plus, with the key change being different, I couldn't really practice with the recording I've got of it. However, after a prayer beforehand I calmed myself enough to really enjoy the experience. It was really powerful being able to feel the words as I sang them (I can see Taylor cringing as I describe this). And a lot of people ended up complimenting me afterward. President and Sister Millar were there, and Sister Millar was so overwhelmed about it she had to run up and give me a hug after the fireside. Here is the video...

Anyway, I believe that's about it. Slow p-day today, off to get a haircut (finally...) and write a few people that I've not written in a while.

Love you,

- Elder Braiden Green