"Did you hear? Missionaries eat Beef Stroganoff!"

Trail from our flat to the fields.

So, the last week has been crazy all over the place... Moves week is always a bit like that, but I guess even more so here in the Digital Zone.

The first two days of the week were spent mostly packing and setting everything in order. Elder Hebert had a lot of things to pass over to me as the new district leader. Unfortunately, I still feel a little bit left in the dark about what I'm supposed to be doing further than normal district leader responsibilities, but that's only because Elder Hebert had only ever served as a district leader here, so he didn't know anything different. But, I think it'll be fine regardless.

Me and Elder Hebert. I'm going to miss this guy!

Tuesday night we had all of the guys from Guernsey and Jersey staying with us. Normally, they don't all come up for transfers, but because of the fact that all of them were getting new companions, and one of them was training, they all had to fly up. So, we ate burritos with them, and played football (English and American) the next morning. I forgot how much I actually appreciated American football. It was a lot of fun, but man, they left a huge mess... We just finished cleaning it all up today...

Wednesday was our P-day. We had tons of missionaries here in Crawley, with all of the elders and sisters from the Crawley Zone up here waiting for new companions, along with the Guernsey guys who weren't training. We probably could have gone out and done something big and fun together, but being as Sister Mott from the Visitor's Center was sick, we just all hung out at the chapel watching church films, eating too much cheapy Asda pizza, and just chatting. Elder Rulz and I spent a good amount of time together playing music. I wish we had had a violin for him, or something. We just traded off on the piano. So, we stuck around until all the new companions showed up, and then waited around after that until the Visitor's Center Sisters showed up to pick up Sister Mott. It was fun, but a long tiring day.

Elder Barney arrived! He's really great. He's from Riverton, Utah, and went to BYU for a semester before coming out. He's from the same group as almost all of my companions (Elder Blackner, Elder Sorensen, Elder Gull, Elder Hebert...) which is really strange. He and I are very alike, actually. We've had a lot of similar experiences on our mission so far, and have a lot of the same strengths/weaknesses. So... This transfer is going to be pretty cool. We've started talking about a lot of what we want to change about the way that work is done in this area, and we're seeking a lot of help from Heavenly Father to do so.

My new companion...Elder Barney!

We had a couple of good dinner appointments this week. The Milburns always make us Mexican food, because they know how much we appreciate it, so that was wonderful. And Sister Miller had us over for lunch on Sunday -- the classic bread and salami and cheese with potato salad, which is pretty much what I would want if I could pick anything for lunch.

We had one pretty funny experience this week. Elder Barney and I were coming back after DLC on Saturday night around 9:10, and happened to see a group of caravans (motorhomes) parked on a large grassy verge with a few people hanging out. Typically, that means gypsies, and I kind of wanted to go talk to some gypsies. So, we figured we had about ten minutes if we wanted to make it home on time. We walked across the road, and started talking with a few of these guys. One of them had seen "Meet the Mormons", (a Television show that aired recently about missionaries that tried to give the church a bad name) and so he knew a bit about what we do. A few minutes later a car full of girls pulled up on the grass and started talking to us too. It was so funny. Honestly. They started asking us a few of the normal questions, "Do you guys drink alcohol? Tea? Coffee?" Etc. But then it turned a little bit:

Traveler: "Wait, so do you guys eat... Food?"
We affirmed that Mormons still eat food.
Traveler: "Do you guys eat KFC and McDonald's?"
Us: "Umm, yeah, not that often, though..."
Traveler: "Woah! Guys! They eat KFC and McDonald's! What are you having for dinner tonight?"
Us: "Well, we were going to go make some beef stroganoff..."
Traveler: "Hey! They eat beef stroganoff! Can you believe that?!"

The rest of the visit was interesting, but we invited them along to church. The next morning, we stopped by again on the way to church, and there was only one woman left there. We started talking to her a bit, as she had been the most interested from the night before, and was saying she really wanted to come to church. So, she called the rest of them and said that we were back and asked if they wanted to come to church too. A few minutes later, we see the little red car pull up. I look out the window of the caravan and wave. The car pulls into reverse, backs up, shoots out the round about and never returns. The woman was so embarrassed, and felt so bad. I felt pretty bad because she was totally going to come to church too, but she had to watch the caravans since they were parked illegally...

Anyway, that's about it for the week. Love you guys so much!

- Elder Green