Buddhist Blessings of an Enchilada...I wish!

The Crawley Zone visiting Sir Winston Churchill's home, Chartwell, in Kent.

 Sounds like everything's good back on the homefront. Let me tell you, it feels really, really weird seeing those pictures of Katie... Everyone in my life is completely different now, and it's so strange to me. I don't know how I'm going to adjust when I get home...

Anyway, we've had a solid week. It's still been a little bit crazy with how we count lessons now, but I've become so grateful for it. It really helped us to focus on setting return appointments with everyone that we see on the street, and so we've had multiple appointments every day of the week. Granted, only three or four of those actually came through... But, the people we did meet with were really solid. We've actually got one new baptismal date because of it! He's a really sincere English guy. He kind of looks like Dad, actually... We didn't get to teach him much on the street when we saw him, but when we came around for the appointment, and taught him about the Book of Mormon, he was so amazed. It was really cool to see someone that excited about that. So, he's set for the 18th of October, and he'll be at church next week.

Our other investigator is still doing super well. We're hoping to get him to the temple this week to watch the Joseph Smith movie. It ought to be pretty good. He still loves coming to church, and was so disappointed he couldn't make it yesterday. We had a teach with him this week, and asked him to pray, and (as always) it was one of the most sincere prayers I've ever heard. As the three of us walked out, Elder Barney looked over and said, "Guys, I think he's converted." It's fantastic seeing that kind of change in someone.

What else... We met a lot of really amazing people on the street this week. We stopped a really cool Buddhist Monk lady on the street. She actually knows a few of the people from the ward. She was super nice, and really wants to come see the chapel. So, we left her with a prayer, and she left us with a Buddhist blessing of something like, "inshila", which means "As you pass." I totally thought she was about to say, "enchilada", though, and got really excited. (I have Mexican food on the brain!)

We also had an interesting experience with a bunch of Mauritian guys in Broadfield. We were walking along on our way home, after having had a bunch of appointments flog us, and decided to go stop by one last potential. Well, we saw this one Mauritian guy sitting on some stairs next to an underpass, so I went up and started talking to him about the Book of Mormon. He was really interested initially, and so we said an opening prayer, and continued on with the lesson. And then two more guys rolled up. And then two more guys rolled up. And then two more guys rolled up, so we were teaching like eight or nine of them. And then they all started "rolling up," if you know what I mean... We left, seeing as they were high, but we got one of their addresses to pop around another time.

As  part of our Zone Goals, we've been focusing on sacrificing the things that aren't any good for us to help us to have the Spirit stronger in our work, and one of the things that's been helping a ton is actually as simple as watching what we say. We meet quite a few pretty rude people on the street. That's just part of missionary work. However, we've decided to stop being snide and cheeky after meeting them on the street. Where usually, we would stop someone, and it would go like this:

Us: Hey Sir!
Them: Sorry, busy.
Us: Oh, we're talking about the Book of Mormon!
Them: No. Busy.
Us: Oh, can we leave you a card?
Them: I'm busy.
Us: Right... We can just give you this card, and you can go on the website and look it up when you're not busy...
Them: Do you speak English? I told you I'm busy! Stop harassing me!
Us: *grumble grumble* They obviously don't speak English... *grumble grumble*

We now just skip the grumbling, and we find that we're much happier! And find far more people who want to listen.

Last P-day was good, by the by. We were planning on going to Chartwell (Winston Churchill's Home) around 2:00, so that we had plenty of time, but as soon as I got to the Visitor's Centre, there was a man on the phone speaking Spanish, and they needed me to translate for him. It was a Sister Missionary's father. Apparently she has been quite ill, and so I had to translate all of the details for him, which was interesting. I was really grateful for the opportunity, even though it meant that I only got to go to Chartwell for an hour or so. And I guess, speaking of languages, my Portuguese has also been improving. I started reading the Book of Mormon in Portuguese, and occasionally listen to it, and it's gotten me to the point where I can actually communicate quite decently with Portuguese people.

Anyway, Chartwell was pretty cool. They had a real Monet on the wall, which was pretty sweet. My favorite part, though, was all of the gifts given to him by Stalin. Honestly, the USSR gives some fantastic gifts, like fruit bowls made of crystal with a man shooting a grizzly bear with a bow in silver. I wish I was friends with Stalin. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take pictures inside... So, there's not a whole lot of pictures to show... Oh well.

Well, love you guys. Hope you have a great week!

- Elder Green

Looking Forward to General Conference!

Weather here in England is doing alright. It's been a bit warm, but nothing too bad, lately. We've been having scattered showers from time to time, which helps things. Honestly, some mornings I wake up and wish that it were raining.

Man, I am getting so excited about General Conference, honestly. It's so funny being a missionary, because that's one of the things you seem to look forward to most: more talks to read from in Personal Study, more information to plan District Meetings on, new Mormon Messages for investigators!!! (I think being a missionary is getting to me.) For those of you who don't know what General Conference is, twice a year we have the Prophet, the 12 Apostles, and the other leaders of the church speak to us about what God would want us as a whole to know. Honestly, it's the best.

So, this last week's been pretty good. Not a whole lot to say about it, honestly. We taught our investigator a few times -- he's doing better, for sure. We've decided to focus on helping him to live everything else, and by doing so, he'll be more able to live the rest of the Gospel. So, that's the plan for now. We haven't been able to see the Portuguese family in a little while...

Oh, and I didn't sing at Zone Conference. For once, there's someone else in the Zone that they ask to do musical numbers! Sister Walmsley did a fantastic song that she had written. She writes tons of songs like it's no big deal, and sometimes I'm jealous of that. She's actually got a blog where she puts them all up. I'll link you to it.

Elder Nunnally and Elder Barney are doing great! Things are going pretty well. I feel like the whole mission is still getting used to the new training plan with the lessons thing, but we're trekking through.

I've not yet scheduled driving lessons. I'll probably be doing that today or tomorrow. I might even wait until Wednesday to see how Elder Barney's first lesson with this company goes.

Oh, by the by, I was in the presence of British Nobility this past week. We were asked to sing for a WWI tribute at the Visitor's Centre this past week. We sang Jerusalem, and the local Lord and Lady were there. Pretty sweet. The rest of the meeting was pretty good, except for the listing of everything the British Legion has done with their money in the past year...

Yes, we're off to Winston Churchill's house today,

Went for a haircut this week and they asked me if I wanted a part line...and I said, "Yeah, I part my hair"...Then, they took a buzzer and a cutthroat razor to my head and carved a line through my hair! Then they proceeded  to puff up the rest of my hair using a ton of hairspray... It looked absolutely ridiculous.

Love you!

- Elder Green

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

A road trip, a new "Tri", and getting hit by a car!

I can't believe I've been out for 14 months! You don't even know how quickly it goes... It's not fair, honestly.

I was speaking with Brother Mann, our ward mission leader a few weeks ago during correlation, and he said something that stuck out to me quite poignantly. He was talking about how amazing it was that someone like Joseph Smith, and unlearned, 14 year-old farm boy from upstate New York could have possibly become the amazing Prophet and leader that he did. Elder Wood was the one to ask, "Well, how did he do it?" Brother Mann replied, "Well, you're not going to like the answer. You see, Joseph Smith grew at such an accelerated rate because of two factors that are present in, it seems, every prophet's life: high levels of spiritual experience mixed with extreme trial."

Now, I'm not going to make it out to be that I've had anything remotely close to "high levels of spiritual experience" or an "extreme trial", but when I've seen the two mixed together, I have noticed a lot more growth than I would have imagined otherwise.

This week's been a good representation of that on a small scale. We've had so many wonderful experiences, but it's also been difficult.

The beginning of the week was kind of tricky... We were having a rough time figuring everything out, because of constantly switching "tri's"... See, Elder Clark left on Monday, and we spent half of that day up at the temple waiting for Elder Rogers, who would be in a tri with us. I had no complaints there, because we got to do a session at the temple. And then the next day, after our cheese party with the Craggs family, I went on a road trip with Elder Rogers down to Uckfield, and then up to Welling while Elder Barney stayed here with Elder Gunnell and Elder Lane. And then Elder Cooper was in a tri with us until the next day when we got Elder Nunnally... Super confusing...

ROAD TRIP!

Our new Tri's getting there. I know we'll figure it out. Elder Barney, Elder Nunnally and I are all working hard to increase the companionship unity. First week with a new companion is always spent getting used to things, so I'm not too worried. Elder Nunnally's a great guy. He's from Georgia, and has only been out three months, so we're polishing him off. We all get along pretty well, and so I think things will roll really smoothly once he starts getting used to his second area.

Our new "Tri"...Elder Barney, me, and Elder Nunnally.

Like I told you before, our Lithuanian investigator is coming along super well! Man, he's such a star. We met with him twice this last week, and the second time we committed him to keep the Word of Wisdom. He's going to have to give up a few things for that, but he's already super desirous to do so. You should have seen how excited he was talking about it. His greatest desire is to be baptized, and it sounds like anything that will get him there he's willing to do, and I'm really inspired by that. He's set for October 4th right now. He came along with us to church yesterday, and though I think he wasn't anticipating how long three hours really is, he seemed to really enjoy it. I felt bad because I was responsible for getting a lot of other things done, and was having to run around everywhere, but Elder Barney and Elder Nunnally took good care of him.

Another one of our other investigators agreed to a date as well! But then she dropped us on Saturday morning... I'm pretty sure she got anti-ed, which is too bad... I find it ridiculous that other people feel the need to spread rumours about us and make things bigger than they are. C'est la vie misionnaire. We had a few other people drop us as well, and we've had to drop a few... It was strange seeing just how many people it was this morning. But, it's fine. As Dad always said, "Everyone learns at their own rate." They'll come to eventually, whether in this life, or the next. For the meanwhile, we're able to focus our efforts on the people that need what we've got for them right now.

Out "finding" in Bewbush.

I got hit by a car this week. It must have been going at least forty. And now that you're freaking out, I'll tell you why it's not such a big deal. We were walking down the sidewalk, and British roads are notoriously small, and this woman in her new car comes speeding down the way. I must have been a bit too close to the curb, and she must have been as well, so her side mirror smashed into my wrist. It folded inward and the mirror popped out, but I didn't see her stop. Some people behind me asked if I was alright, and I told them yeah, it wasn't a big deal. And then, this woman comes walking down the road and yells at me for walking too close to the edge, and leaving my bag hanging out, as my bag hit her mirror and broke it. I then informed her that it was my wrist she hit, and Elder Barney nearly flipped out on her for not apologizing to me for smashing into me with her car... After she calmed down from being so flustered, she apologized, and we fixed her mirror for her. And, because I'm such a man, I didn't even bruise.

Anyway, not much else to report. I expect things will be getting increasingly better as the weeks go on. We're doing our best to put our all in, and it's bringing back results.

Love you!

- Elder Green

"Dodge Knocking"...and lots of pictures! (Thanks Elder Clark)

Walking through the green tunnel, under the roundabout by our flat.

Carrying Elder Clark's bags down the lane.

Washing up in the stream.

Week's been going just great. It was so much fun working with Elder Clark. He definitely made the week a lot more interesting than it would have been without him. And, you're going to love him, because he took tons of pictures. I'll send them all your way.

Elder Barney, me, and Elder Clark...our "tri" at the temple.

So, at the moment, we're teaching three people pretty solidly: an English woman, our Portuguese Family, and a Lithuanian guy with the coolest name ever!  A quick update on each of them ---

Our English investigator has got a heart of absolute gold, and really wants to gain more faith in her life. Her desire is so strong, and she's the most sincere woman, we've just felt bad because she seems to be pretty busy, and other things unfortunately are getting in the way... We were able to meet with her once this week, though, with Brother Goldthorpe from the ward. Though we only had about 15 minutes to teach her, it was a pretty good lesson all things considered.

The Portuguese family are doing well also. We were actually able to meet with her husband and her this week, and he's so funny. He kept making jokes about how we needed to eat more food (they always seem to feed us), and after the lesson he grabbed his box of cigarettes, and just started singing, "Smoke! Smoke! Smoke!" as he walked outside. We'll help him out with that soon. It's great, because Marea started trying to teach me a bit of Portuguese. I retained almost nothing, but that's okay. She's super kind as well.

And our Lithuanian friend is such a cool guy! The way we met him is such a miracle, too. We met his brother in town centre after an appointment that we had with another woman, and he asked us for a Book of Mormon and said he'd love to come to church. Turns out, he was drunk during all of that... But, he gave us his address, and so we went to go visit later in the week. When we met our investigator he told us he was a Seventh Day Adventist, and totally gave me a full on bear hug because he felt bad that he thought Mormons had magic powers. We asked if we could come around the next day, and he said that'd be fine. So, we met with him, and the Spirit was super strong. And when we asked if he thought it could be true, he said, "Yeah, I do think so." And we invited him to be baptised. We gave him a baptismal date (October 4th) just this morning, and he's so excited. He was asking, "So... Do I really have to read the whole Book of Mormon before I get baptised? Because, I just want to get baptised as soon as possible."

What else... We've been having a lot of fun trying out our new contacting technique of "Dodge Knocking". We go and find the sketchiest places in town (typically the flats above shops in town centre) and go knock them all. It's really fun, because the stairways to get up to them are always super hard to find, so it becomes a bit of a scavenger hunt. We didn't see a ton of success from it, especially as many of the buildings above the shops turned out to be offices, which is super unusual. But, we did pick up one potential investigator, which was good, so we'll be stopping by to see him soon.

Above the shops..."Dodge Knocking."

More "Dodge Knocking" pictures on the stairways.

Elder Clark really taught us a lot about how to do missionary work a bit differently. Since he had served in the Las Vegas mission for one transfer while waiting on his visa to come back out, he knew a completely different mission culture, which was super useful for us. He taught us how to use the pamphlets much better, and a lot about more effective study. Plus, we had tons of fun just doing what we do best.

Digital Work!

Oh, moves calls!! Elder Barney and I are staying, but we're getting a new companion for our tri! We'll be with Elder Nunnally from Georgia. Man, party every day.

Eating at a Caribbean restaurant with Elder Gunnell...what delicious fish!

The edge of nowhere!

Anyway, that's about it for the week!

Love you all,

Elder Green

"Go away you Silly Boys!"

A beautiful Bewbush sky.

Let me answer all of your questions before I go into things: The Portuguese family's doing fairly well, actually. We were able to bring over a recent convert in the ward (Liliana) who is Portuguese to teach them this week, and that helped sooo much! Man, they hit it off like they'd known each other for years. Not even five minutes in, it was like Marea had forgotten that we had come over at all. Hahahaha, which I was totally okay with. She told them all about when she got baptized, and how she joined the church. She's an absolute star, and we're frankly annoyed that we've only got one of her (otherwise she would be the perfect antidote for all of our investigators!)

We also got the son, David, his own copy of O Livro de Mormon, and it was really cool to see. They made us go eat food that they had prepared for us, and when I handed it to him, he started straight off reading it out loud to his sick grandmother. And when we finally asked to say a prayer, we almost couldn't get him to put it down to say the prayer. Man, it just warms the cockles of my aortic valves. Unfortunately, due to David's crazy work schedule, and Marea having to take care of her mother, neither are able to make it to church... So we're hoping that a miracle will happen there.

I'll try to give you a few other anecdotes from throughout the week to let you know what missionary work is like:

We were walking along yesterday with 30 minutes left before dinner, and not enough time to do anything else, so we wandered up the road from our house to go contacting. We tried to stop one man and said, "Hey, have you heard about the Book of Mormon?" and he said, "Go away you silly boys!" Like, he actually called us silly boys. Silly. Boys. Oh, I couldn't stop laughing for the next five minutes or so. Man, some people are just too funny.

We planned some time to go do some contacting in town on Friday, and so we were on our way, and tried to talk to two women, and realized one of them was deaf. And, the other wasn't interested... But, anyway, we got stuck at the level crossing, and as soon as the barriers went down, Elder Barney's phone started ringing. So, he tried to pick it up, but the person on the other end hung up. And then they texted, saying, "Call me." And then they called back right when the train was going by (so, we couldn't hear them at all). But, it was a potential investigator who had flogged us twice, and so we had given up on her. She was calling to say that she was in town, and that she wanted a copy of the Book of Mormon, if we were in town too. So, we met up with her, had a lesson, and then taught her. Then, we taught another guy on a bench nearby (even though Elder Barney needed to use the restroom) who was wearing a cowboy hat, even though he was from Eastern Europe.

Phil, the ASDA (grocery store) man came up to us again last week. He always addresses us as "Sheep Stealers", bless his soul.

We've been teaching like crazy online. Elder Blair introduced a new technique that we've been trying, and we're finding tons of new Facebook investigators. It's cool, a number of them have now ordered their own copies of the Book of Mormon. You also get a few interesting people... Elder Barney has one man who keeps sending him the smallest pictures in the world, and sending him a million little Nepalese Christian Ministry websites.

Elder Barney and I will be in a "tri" this week with Elder Clark from my group. I'm really excited, because he's coming back out on his mission after going home for a bit. It'll be great to see him again, and work with him. I think he'll have a ton of ideas.

We're still working on the ideas for recent converts... We're going to try a Facebook group, but many of the recent converts don't have Facebooks..We'll keep working on it.

Bowling on P-Day!

I guess I am a "Silly Boy!"

Looks like I need to work on my game...

Anyway, love you!

- Elder Green

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...

Our original plan was to hang the fish out the window to attract the cats to the Zone leaders door...
I'm glad we decided to eat them instead.

Oh, and to lure the cats over, we chucked the fish heads out the window. Man, it didn't even take a minute before two cats came running over!

The beautiful English sky as we walked out of church.

Playing Ultimate Frisbee for our morning exercise.

That's it!

Love you!

- Elder Braiden Green