Wonderful Christmas Time

Well since today is not actually p day I'm going to have to be brief,

I'm glad you guys are recovering from the mental blow of losing another son to the mission system. I bet he's doing just fine. He's still in Utah for another 5 weeks so he'll be ok. As for me, I'll be skyping you probably around 5-6 my time... we'll see how that goes. Just be on the internet and looking for when I come active. Or just look for an email that I'll send you and that way you can know when I'll be on.

I think we've done this like 3 times now so I think we can handle it pretty smoothly this time. but I won't be able to call you via phone because I used up all the calling card minutes when I called mark last week :P Unless I want to buy another one... but 5 pounds is alot of money when it can by you dinner for a few days.

We are booked to the top though for the next 4-5 days. At Church yesterday we had almost everyone come up to us and ask whether we could come over or not. Seriously so many people. I didn't imagine to get a response like that. So we tried to fit as many people as we could into our schedule, but we had to push a few back to New Year's time. That's ok. At least I don't have to cook for about 4 days or so :) That is like the best feeling ever :) So much food... well there goes all the exercise I've been putting out for the past 3 months. I've done really good with it. Shannon would be proud that I've been moving my fat butt over here. :)

Anyway I'm excited to hear from you, I hope everything is going well :) I'll catch you on Wednesday.

Love,

Elder Smith

Just Around the Corner

Its crazy to hear that Mark leaves in three days. That is probably really stressful for both you and him. Imagine having two sons on missions, imagine the blessings!

Well I'll try to give you a clear picture as to what is going on around here in my mission. I'll try to answer a few of those questions that mom has sent me.

First I will probably call mark via his cell, if he doesn't answer that for any reason than I'll call the house phone. You can tell me if this is wrong but I believe his number is 18013858856. Obviously I still have the house phone memorized.

I don't know by what you mean by "email blasts". I do get your regular emails if that is what you mean.

I have found a place to skype this Christmas with our recent converts Anne and her family. So I'll introduce you guys on Christmas to each other :) Plus we are having Christmas dinner with her family. Jamaican style :) It'll be really fun.

So yeah, things are going pretty good over here. Elder Evans has been teaching me all about how to pimp cars and how to make them cool... apparently his brother just spent over 100K on his BMW M3. Just a little bit ridiculous. So when dad mentioned that he met a guy that had a 10K airplane it made me chuckle just a bit because I've met a lot of people here in England who just love their expensive toys. I think my favourite car I've seen this week was an awesome Mercedes Sl 65 AMG. The thing was so stinking loud. Just happened to pass us as we walked to the chapel and it nearly blasted my eardrums out. Then I had a revelation that one day I'll build a car like that... but I don't think be doing that anytime soon :P

So as to that friction chafe stuff... I don't know how to get that over here... where do I buy it? because that stuff would be a life saver to me. My legs just like to rub it up over here :P

It been quite a gray week as for missionary work. We've been seeing a lot of less active members and a few that didn't even know they were members of the church... which I don't get how they got baptized and then forgot about it :P But alot of the are pretty cool people. Erik is one of our less actives. He's pretty much crazy. He's from Ghana, and I'm not sure as to why the government let him have a drivers licence because when he pulled up to meet us he bumped into people's cars with his tiny Peugot, which really upset a few people. Its really funny because he just doesn't care :P Up until he got his car impounded this past week because his neighbour complained to the police because he can't drive straight.

We have a cool Iranian lady that we are working with for baptism. She runs her own business with her fiancee and she converted from Islam to Christianity after she came to the UK. We've been working with her for about 2 months and she has been really good. The only thing we have to do is wait for her to get married :P Which could be a while according to her future husband's plans. So we'll see where that goes.

Oh Mom wanted me to answer questions about my camera... My camera charges off the battery charger that came with it. I did have to buy a converter for it but since the charger works for 240V it isn't a problem. Where as with my iHome I brought it only worked on 120V so that was the problem. So make sure the things that you buy are comptable with the voltage in Thailand. You can look that up on Google I'm sure.

My camera doesn't charge on the computer unfortunately. Only through the battery charger.

Well I hope I've fed your appetite for this week. I hope everything goes well and I'll call mark this Tuesday around 1-2... which is 7-8 for me because that is when I get done with missionary activities. Just let him know to be ready and that I might call the house phone first just to make sure my international calling card still works.

Love you guys,

Elder Smith

Two Weeks Till Christmas

Well England has switched its gears and is now heavily in the holiday season. Well there have been advertisments here in London for Christmas pretty much since the end of October. They get started here nice and early.

Anyway its been an "ok" week. Most of our investigators were pretty hosey this week so it made it really difficult to have lessons. It just makes it so we have to knock more doors, find new people, and continue the age old process of finding and teaching. If your not finding, your teaching, if your not teaching, your finding. That's pretty much the missionary motto. I do enjoy the teaching part. That is always fun. It's really cool to see people who have never heard of the gospel before suddenly start to understand the purpose that we share. Kinda fun. As for knocking on doors in the nighttime when it is freezing... well not quite so fun.

Enough about me ranting, I saw from some of the pictures that Brandon is engaged. I'm not sure what I should say to that, but good for him :) They Hillyards may have had the first missionaries from there family, but our family had the first marriage. I'm not sure these are things we want to brag about though :P

So with the call for Mark on the 17th, the only time I've got is after a conference so I'll call in the evening here. I'll just be at the flat so I don't need to go anywhere. We can finalize next week but I'll probably try to call around 8 (my time) which will be 1 in the afternoon (your time). I might be able to do a little bit later because I'll be free about after 7 my time which is noon for you. So just let me know how you want that to work.

Its good to see the snow in Utah still exists and that I'm not the only one missing snow during this time.

Well I'm glad you are all safe. I do love the Christmas time here. I'll talk to you guys on Christmas, and i'll speak to mark next week.

Love,

Elder Smith

3 Weeks Till Christmas

Great Grandma Prediger

Grandma KSmith

Grandpa JHSmith

Grandpa JWHillyard

And the youngest of the lot, Grandma CHillyard

So I've had a good talk with President this week and I've gotten some cool privileges for this Christmas time.

So first thing, I've received permission to call Mark on the 17th of December and speak with him for little bit before he goes into the MTC. I can still call you guys on Christmas, but I've recieved a bit of time to speak to Mark before he goes in. President thought it would be good for him to hear from me so I'm excited to talk to him :) So I'll have to let you know how that goes as we still have a 7 hour time difference. 

So I think that is the most exciting news that I have. I'll probably only be able to call, so I don't know if I'll have skype for the 17th so just be prepared for a phone call. As for right now everything is going alright. We have another possible baptismal candidate so we are excited for that as well. Christmas baptisms are great :)

It was great to see all the pictures of the family around at Thanksgiving time. I really enjoyed seeing everyone still alive and well :) (especially the old people :). Looks like everyone is doing well and keeping warm.

I had a fun workover in a place called Watford, were Elder Hansen died or ended his mission and I got to have an awesome basketball game there. So much fun. Man, I learned a few good moves from my Brasilian companion so I actually did impressively well... plus all my running has put me into pretty good shape if I do say so myself :) So that was really fun. We were trying to get the coach of the basketball team that we were playing with to come to church this Sunday, really cool guy and he really loves the missionaries. So that was a cool experience. 

Well I'm excited to see how this Holiday season goes, I got the package from the mission office i think. I haven't opened it so don't worry :) I know better than that. I'm excited to see you guys this Christmas as well so I hope you guys have a good time as well.

I'll catch you guys later,

Love, 

Elder Bradley Smith

Thanksgiving a Maybe

What is interesting this week is that we've had one of our investigators invite us over for Thanksgiving dinner this week. Quite interesting seeing that none of the members have, but none the less our friend Chris wants us to come share a "international" Thanksgiving with him. Chris is a pretty cool guy. In his upper 40's and he is quite English. He attends the current Church of England but has always been fasinated as to why Mormons even exist. So we've helped him understand that a bit and he also wants to get a taste of our American culture as well. So we should have a good Thursday this week.

As for this past week things have been going pretty well. We've managed to have a few good appointments this week so we've been pretty happy with that. We're having interviews with our President again this week so we'll probably have a good conversation there. Not exactly sure what we are going to talk about but we'll probably find something.

We ran into a few crazy people this week. Most of them drunk to be honest. Our town center crawls with those kind of people after about five because everyone just goes straight into the bars. We had an interesting experience with Muslim man that said if we really believed in Jesus we'd be Muslim. I guess everyone has their own point of view because that's what the Catholic church has been trying to say for the last two thousand years. I thought we handled the situation pretty well. No bashy comments, no rude insults, just testify. Worked really well. Keeps the spirit there. I've had way to many conversations that involve me or my companion pulling out the bible because someone tries to quote it off the top of their head. I think if any conversation gets that far, the spirit is not really there.

 We also met with another lady from Iran, her name is Nina. She actually looked us up online about 2 months ago and got in contact with the missionaries from LDS.org. She's been really cool to meet. She speaks a modern form of Persian, or Pharsie... not exactly sure how to spell it and she runs her own travel agency with her husband to be. She converted from the Muslim faith to Christianity due to a few of her friends here. She is kind of the same way that Chris is, the guy having us over for Thanksgiving, and she wants to understand why we are different from the rest of Christianity. So we've had a good time teaching her this past week and she's been coming to church. Possible baptism to be I would hope.

I'm really looking forward to Christmas, its just crazy thinking how fast this is coming up. It's going to be December this Sunday. Next thing I know I'll be talking to you guys. Say hello to Kyle for me. He gets back in like 15 days. I can't believe that he's already done with his mission. Well tell Mark not to panic about missionary work. Your always taken care of, for the most part. Give him a decent camera, you want pictures of your mission. Its going to be cool to upload all of my pictures to a new computer and be able to look at the past two years on there. It'll be great. I hope you guys are doing well. Not getting sick or anything. My companion is suffering the common cold at the moment. Puts a damper on his usually happy attitude.

We'll I'll catch you guys soon.

Love ya,

elder Bradley Smith