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