Castle Ruins and M3's

I'm interested to hear Ryan's accent when I get back, because there is a big difference in accents from the North compared to the South here. Apparently I've got one of the worst in England, because I've spent most of my mission in Essex, being quite a indignant place and non for their troublemaker chavs. I don't practise the chav accent to much, we just use it for fun and making fun. Tons of words like "Innit" and "Bruv" and some other funny ones like "Safe". "That's safe bruv innit". That's a sentence they would say. Makes me chuckle.

Well the week has been about normal. We've run into a few difficulties with our baptismal family, mostly because one of their cats tracked in Fleas into their house and due to the state of the house, the fleas multiplied and replenished the house quite quickly. So they weren't able to have us over without us getting the fleas... so we thought we'll just have to wait it out. That puts us back a bit in our teaching schedule. Plus we discovered that the two parents are not lawfully wedded yet... they just have a common law marriage because they have been living together for so long. They have 8 children so far and still want more. What a true Mormon family. We'll be working out the marriage details for them in July, so hopefully we'll see them baptized by the end of the transfer.

I had the pleasure of seeing my good friend Elder Vogel again one last time before he goes back to Germany. He's the kid that kicked off the work here in Southend before I got here and we've been baptizing really well ever since he's been here. Crazy, now there are only two missionaries that go home before me. I'm an Ancient being around here. Well I actually enjoy it because then I get to teach others how to do the work and I get good respect from it :P Until they actually have to work with me, then they might change there opinion (just kidding).

Well its a sunny day and we are going to be playing football. We've been going crazy over here for the World Cup. To bad England already got kicked from the group phase, so they won't be winning this year... but USA have a good chance after drawing against Portugal yesterday night. GO USA! We've been much into Football due to me learning all about the players and teams, so I quite like it now :) Having a good time talking about it with investigators and members who love to talk about it. Good way to go into gospel conversations as well. I'll be wearing my England Jersey when I get back, and I'm proud of it :) So yes, you discovered the English flag is only the cross. The Union Jack represents all the other kingdoms that were united. Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England are in the flag, but unfortunately Wales didn't get there share in the flag :P Yep, good history lesson here. England's history is crazy long compared to our own little United States history. London is as old as the Romans. Flipping 2000 years. No wonder they have difficulty building modern roads and buildings in a city that was constructed during the time of Christ. Yep I'll enjoy the last few weeks that I'm here. Hopefully the sun will keep shining here this week.

I love you guys and I'll see you all very soon.

Elder Bradley Smith

The pictures are of a Castle in our area... It's pretty beat though... not much left.

Most awesome M3 I've seen yet. One day it will be my car.

Reptile City

Well looks like everyone is keeping busy, that probably means its a good summer then. I could try to run through my week, but I honestly can't remember half the stuff that has happened... my bad memory or I'm just always thinking ahead, one or the other. Well yesterday we got a surprise Barbecue with our friends the Barrons, and they bought loads of stuff from Costco and just had a massive fry up in the backyard, so good... and we ended up spending most of the day there because my companion is a bit ill at the moment from hey fever and allergies and goodness knows what else... but I'm still pretty healthy at the moment. Yes, I'm eating more vegetables because we found a cheap place to buy them, so now I can eat better. The barbecue probably wasn't the best for me though :P But boy, was that some good food. I don't know if you know about a special barbecue sauce, but it is made with Jack Daniels flavouring, no alcohol of course, but it is just incredibly good. You should find some so I can use it on my chicken when I get back :) We've also got a big family ready for baptism in two weeks as well. It's my companions first baptisms in his mission, so he's super excited. I'm excited as well because we are making my area into the highest baptizing area in the mission. Thank you. I've managed to pull off something amazing while I've been out here. Since the beginning of the year Southend has had about 8 baptisms, and now with 5 more will make us the highest baptizing area in our mission. I'm a bit proud of that because I've spent nearly 5 months here so far, and our Mission President is quite pleased as well. Knowing that this is England... and that not many people are baptized, this is a pretty good thing :) Plus our retention rate for all of our recently baptized people is still 100% at the moment. So I thought I'd brag a bit, but not to be overly prideful because it's not me that convinces people to be baptized, it's God.

So anyway, we're doing pretty good here. It's under two months till I see you guys, and I'm excited to be finished with all this business out here. It's been a long road, but guess there isn't anything else that would have taught me how to grow up than a mission. It feels pretty good to know that I've managed to make it this far. Sometimes I thought to myself that I wouldn't make it or that I would give up first, but it feels pretty good to accomplish something so big. Random thought, I now get to add like 300 hundred people to my facebook when I get home... Great, I thought keeping up with people in Utah was bad. I'm probably just going to delete facebook when I get home and have people contact me through real means like calling me :P I'm joking about that, but I am worried about things that will waste my time when I get home. Mom is probably going to reiterate those words to me in a few months when I'm playing a computer game or something and then tell me to do something more productive. Well, I've learned a few things about time management out here, so lets see if they actually carry into real life. Well enough of me ranting, I love you guys and I'll catch you in a few weeks as I've been saying for quite a long time now, but really I'll see you in a few weeks :)

Elder Smith

Happy Birthday to My Sweet Mother

Mom, you've almost managed half a century at life! Congrats, now you have to worry about things like Breast cancer and back pain for the rest of your life, but with the bonus of your daughter being a PA you shouldn't have to much to worry about :) You know I'm joking about the cancer stuff right? I just see so many ads in the buses here saying that if you are over fifty you should get checked for prostate cancer and stuff like that. Good I've got another 30 years before I need to worry to much about that stuff...

Well I've managed to make it through another week. I think these weeks are getting a little bit quicker now. We have a massive family on date for baptism on the 29th of June, about 5 people eligible for baptism plus a few children in the future that could get baptized at various times. Lovely family and they just walked into the chapel because they said Mormons like "Big" families so they thought they'd be welcome to come... which was true ;)

So hopefully I'll have my hair cut today, depending if the member doing it is feeling well enough to. The guy that normally does it, his name is Brad. So we're both named Brad. Unfortunately Brad happens to have bipolar, and so he goes downhill for a few months and has no energy, so we try to get him to do fun things and keep his mood up, so we'll probably drop by this afternoon and cheer him up :)

Well its good to know that everyone is doing well back home. I'm looking forward to that Lake Powell vacation now. Going swimming again after two years is going to be so Blessed. Yeah, don't worry I'll work hard until the end. Elder Maynard and I are doing pretty good, looking after ourselves and all. So far nothing to complain about, the weather has been a little weepy for the past few days, but otherwise not to bad. We got poured on at our football game on Saturday, mind you the football is soccer..., but we had a lot of fun getting soaked and running around in the morning. Not to bad of a way to finish the week.

Well I'm going to keep kicking around here for another two months and I'll see  you on the bright side :)

Love,

Elder Smith

PS

I hope you like the way I spend "Mum" :) Plus the car was so funny I had to take a picture, I didn't do it though.

Southend Till I'm Dead

More scones... I realized I spelled it wrong in the other email... and our Sisters who helped our Baptism :)

I thought this was so funny, "Also in silver."

Well, our beloved President decided for the good of England that he should just keep me in the corner of Southend for another six weeks. So I'm not going anywhere at the moment :P Which I consider to be quite a good thing. I'm really not in the mood to be packing, its just a pain. Actually I don't ever think I liked packing... sometimes changing the area was a good thing, but packing was never the fun part :P Plus I get to keep my home grown little Utah boy Elder Maynard, so I'm quite happy with that. He's keeping me Happy and Healthy :)

So, that pretty much covers all the fun stuff. I got some good pictures of a baptism we had on this past Saturday. Her name was Suelem. She's from Brazil and she was taught be Elder Berenguer and I, but when he left we had no one to speak Portuguese with her, so we got our new sister to finish the job since she's from Brazil. So we tag teamed with the sister missionaries and just got her baptized this past Saturday. Good stuff there. I still count it as one of my baptisms since we did most of the teaching before our sisters did :)

Well I've just got to survive about ten more weeks. Not to long, but still seems like it's gonna take forever... but that's just me being tired and lazy :P My companion is gonna work me till the end. I'm interested what President Jordan is going to do because I have like 3 weeks left after the next transfer, so we'll see what happens there. If all goes well, this will probably be my last area and I'll only have to pack one last time :) That's quite a good feeling isn't it. Well I love you guys and I'll catch you soon :)