A dead badger, five pheasants, and loads of cows and sheep!

Merry Christmas! Thank you for all the cards and packages
and for the messages on our Christmas tree!

It was so great to see you guys on Wednesday. It feels so strange for me, because it honestly doesn't feel like long since I've spoken to you guys. It's kind of bittersweet to recognize how fast it's going for me out here...

We did have a nice rest of the week. Boxing Day was good -- we had a few members invite us over for lunch and dinner, which was nice. It's hard getting things going sometimes with four elders, but we saw that when we did step it up and go out trying to work we saw miracles. When we got home from Brother Coronado's house, we had twenty minutes before our lift home was going to get there. I felt twenty minutes was way too long to be sitting in the flat, and so I grabbed Elder Dyck, and we went outside contacting. Lo and behold, the first person we saw walking out the door was golden. We walked up to him, and he was off somewhere, but willing to talk to us for a few minutes. He studied at a University down in Devon (where both Elder Dyck and I had just served) and, while there, had a very good Mormon friend. Coincidence? Hopefully Chichester will be meeting with him soon.

Move calls just came. Elder Sorensen and I will both be staying another transfer, but Elder Cullen's taking off for the Digital Zone.

This week's been really good, otherwise, though. We've been working with one Fijian family that's really cool. Sister Vatubua's been a member her whole life, but her husband isn't. We've been working with him a bit, and he's just such a solid guy -- totally open to reading the scriptures, and most of the commitments we extend to him, he's already doing. It's pretty cool. He even came to church on Sunday without us inviting him. It's really exciting.

We had a few other cool experiences this week trying new things. We decided we'd go up to East Meon, as we'd never been out there before. What a great day -- I saw a dead badger, like five pheasants, and loads of cows and sheep. It was so nice being in the countryside again. And the people are so friendly! Holy cow. Totally threw us off our guard. We got lost, because we'd forgotten the map, and so we just kind of tried to get our bearings. We stopped and asked some guy who was out with his horses if he needed help with anything, and instead of saying no and going back to what he was doing, he came up to us and talked for five minutes. And we asked another guy if there was anything that we could do for him, and he invited us in for tea and cake. Turns out, he works with the guys up in Aldershot ward to teach Gurkhas (Nepalese soldiers for the British army) English in their chapel. Neither was very interested, but it was just so nice having people that were so friendly.

We've been trying to see if we can make it to another church's service each Sunday, just to get our name out there and look for service opportunities, as well as to understand the people a little better and hopefully break down some walls. We missed the Church of England Evensong last night, but we're hoping to make it next week, and we'll be hopefully finding other churches to go to as well.

I'm getting my haircut today so don't worry. Also, hopefully it'll get fixed later today, or tomorrow, but we've been having the wonderful experience of our ceiling leaking! The guy came this morning, and it should be fixed soon. It's just wind and rain like crazy here.

Our pots and pans collecting the rain that is inside our flat.

This is supposed to be my "Joseph Smith" picture. I forgot to tell you, but since Stella (AKA Louise)
pointed it out, now everyone has twigged to the fact that I look like Joseph Smith.
Elder Brown won't even refer to me as anything but Elder Smith.

 Well, love you guys.

-Elder Green