Rain and Sun Together

So, I've had an interesting week. Some good and some bad. I now know why Romford has been referred to as a land of iniquity as of recently. There are a lot of tragedies that occur in this town. One of our less active members was recently beaten up by her boyfriend who had both too much to drink and was on "sniff" or drugs... so she was really shaken up this past week. He had abused her for a long time. I had met the guy once before he beat up this poor girl and I wasn't too fond of him. Just drinking and smoking in the house. It makes me glad that we have commandments that keep us from becoming like him. I know you guys probably won't ever met her, but I've seen how some people's poor choices cause a lot of suffering in their lives.

Maybe, on a happier note I had a really good work over or companion exchange with my good Welsh friend Elder Carder. Good Man. It was a bit of a relief to be able to speak to someone that speaks fluent English at least for the day. I'm working with my companion a lot to improve his English, but sometimes you just need a break. So, I've learned the value of a good companion exchange.

On the not-so-sunny side we were tracting yesterday and knocked on some guy's door. He didn't answer at first so we moved to the next door. Just after knocking on the next door, this half-dressed, bald guy comes out of the door we just knocked, cussing and swearing, and telling us how worthless we are and that we just share filth. Obviously, he said a lot of other unmentionable things, and if Mom was here this guy would probably be dead. (When I am afraid and confronted I try to act toughJ --MOMOMOOM) I was actually fearful that this guy was going to hit us or something. I'm not sure if he was drunk of not... but it would not surprise me one bit if this guy was slammed. We didn't stick around long enough to find out. So that was actually my first hellfire experience. I thought it would have happened sooner than now, but I guess it comes eventually.

Some blessed land is Romford, right? :P I actually really love this place. It just has a lot of good and bad. So I'm doing all right at the moment. Nothing too bad... just trying to avoid spending all my money in this place:P Lots of expenses here. Plus, I'm going to have to spend like three hours cleaning today, but at least we are planning on going to Costco this afternoon!! :) (Son like Mother.) I'm really excited to go back to the land of America for a few hours (lol).

I hope you enjoy the pictures from this past week. Some were from the Elder Ballard thing in London, and the rest are throughout the week. The girls are the sisters from our Area. We tend to hang out with them a lot. So cool. Regular people from Utah... It’s nice to have some normal people around to keep us sane :P

Anyway I hope your week long camps were fun. I haven't gotten to go exploring or hiking, or nature walking for quite a while... so you'll have to take me on some camp outs when we get home. Give Mark my regards. He's going to love BYU. I can't wait till I get to go back there... it’s gonna be marriage central :P I'll try to postpone the marriage thing for as long as possible... but as Mom and Dad probably both know BYU is kinda a hard place to avoid marriage :P Anyway have a good week.

Love,

Elder Bradley Smith

Romford Days

Hey,

I've been having a lot of fun in this place. We actually get Travel Money :)! So pretty much every day we just take the buses everywhere we need to go in Romford. Apparently Romford has the best bus system in all of England. All the buses are on time and quite frequent, I've really been impressed with the public transportation in this country. Really, really,  good. So I was a bit stressed at first when I had to shove everything in my bags... and move my whole life to Romford. That wasn't too easy. I used vacuum pack bags to fit most of my stuff, and I'll show you some fun photos of what that was like :P My new companion is from Brazil. I really thought sometime on my mission I was going to get a Brazilian. Just my luck :P Just kidding, He's a great kid. Only been out for 6 weeks, so taking over the area and not knowing anything hasn't really helped me out to much :P So its been a huge learning curve for the past few days. I'm enjoying the nicer weather for the past few days. Sunshine has been out, and I'm getting sunburned again, what a relief. It’s better than getting wet :P So I feel I'm finally getting the hang of the area, so I'm not quite so stressed anymore. My companion has been feeling quite ill this week though because he caught some cold or something and it’s just making him feel tired and headaches all the time, but I'm 100% healthy. The only thing that Elder Oliveira doesn't like is that he thinks he isn't working hard enough. So he's in this cycle of feeling sick, yet he wants to work harder so he's stressing himself out. So I've been trying to help him calm down, and just relax a little. Apparently his trainer was just a machine, and just was WORK, WORK,WORK. The kid never had a break, so now that I'm trying to learn everything and catch up, my companion is stressing out that we are not doing as much work as we could. And I promise you we are not lazy. I've literally hit my pillow and I'm out every single night this week. So it’s been a long week. It’s interesting to see that Mark has graduated. He got my same GPA LOL. 3.94, Yep, I think I was something close to that, I may be wrong. At least Mark gets to live in a super posh place. New Heritage is really nice. I think I'll just live from home when I get back, you know... save money and stuff... but you guys probably will want me to move out anyway :P but you don't have to worry about that for 14 months or so. I can't really believe that is June already. I remember just a while back when it was freezing January and wondering when summer was going to come. Interesting how time flies, yet some days feel so slow...Yet the time passes by very quickly. I'm betting this transfer is going to go by very quickly. Romford is a huge place, one of the biggest areas in the mission. And we have to cover it all by bus :P So it’s going to be fun. Plus I like being the senior companion. Let’s you have a little flexibility if you know what I mean. I think everything is going to be just fine here. We have an enormous mall that has literally every kind of shop that you can think of... so we are going to go exploring today and have a bit of fun. I didn't get to many photos this week, so I'll get some more and share them with you next week. I always seem to be making this promise :P I hope you guys have had a good week. Hey, 151A North Street, Romford Essex RM1 1ED. That is our flat Address in Romford, just so you can send me post and stuff. If you could send me a letter so I could have something to show the library so I can get a card that would be great. 

Love,

Elder Bradley Smith

T.J.Eckleburge to the Rescue and $450...

Well its rainy again, no surprises there...

but this week has disappeared again, just like all the others. I'm really nervous now. I got my call yesterday... and you can guess where I'm going. I'm going back to ESSEX! Sweet land of the Chav's (kinda like English gangsters). So I'm going to the city called Romford... but I don't know the flat address yet, so I'll get that to you as soon as possible. I'll be follow up training a younger Elder named Elder Ollivera... or something like that. He's been out for about 6 weeks... so he's really young. I'm just a bit nervous about being the senior companion since this is obviously my first time. I'm not really sure how to handle it... but I guess I just have to take it as it comes. So I'm leaving my good German friend Elder Wolf, and he's probably going to die here in Luton (he'll finish his mission here). So many of my good friends go home tomorrow. One lives really close to us. Elder Fisher is from Lehi, and he gets his plane flight home tomorrow. He's been my zone leader for 6 months and we've gotten to know each other quite well. I'll be sending emails to him, so you guys can help him find a new girlfriend or something :P He's a really cool guy. Elder Affleck my previous compadre, goes home this next transfer, so middle of July. Everyone I know is just getting so Old! There all going to be gone here :P Besides all my friends disappearing, I'll get the chance to make more. Plus I took some awesome photos this week for you guys, you can enjoy my new nerd face... but I actually really like my glasses :) I guess that is what we were going for :P Not to bad, except when it rains than the get all fogged up and stuff... but thats just life. Its good to hear that everyone is still alive in our family, Mark hasn't killed anyone yet (lol). I'm jealous you guys get to go on Holidays. The closest thing I get is P-day for 12 hours and thats about it. Then its back to work. I'm curious as to why Shannon is going to Timpanogos. I'm guessing all of her friends are over there. Well all know that Vikings Rule still :) So tomorrow is a big day, I have to spend my time packing here today, and visiting all my friends here before I leave. I think its good that I'm going. I've spent way too long here in this area. To many people know my face. So Romford will be exciting. I'll send you guys pictures of my new companion and the area, and we'll see if it rivals Luton in Dodginess.

Love,

Elder Bradley Smith

Happy Mother's Day

Hey so I'm trying to upload the photos I have, because I used our DVD player to rip them to my flash drive... interesting process but I tried it out last night, but the stupid browser on this computer isn't working... so I can't get the upload files button to work. In other words I click on the upload button and nothing happens. So I don't know if its just these computers are so old and running and ancient version of Internet Explorer or if I just got the stupid computer out of the whole library... not sure which. Probably both. Anyway... If you send me that card reader that would be wonderful :) So I guess we already talked everything out yesterday, so I'll just tell you the plans for today. Elder Wolf and I get to enjoy Sunny Luton again, so I'll pop into a place called Specsavers to check out some glasses... Its been recommended by our ward members, so we'll see how that is. We also have our washing machine coming today, so we'll have to hang around the flat while they put the new one in... I'm on my last pair of unused clothing... so I'm just in luck. We also had our flat inspection this morning by our lovely Senior couple the Sanchez's I told you a little bit about yesterday. Good people. We are missing a few things like drawers and stuff so they are going to get those things sorted out... which will be nice. Besides that its the regular shopping and enjoying the day kind of day. Nothing to special happening. I hope you guys have a good day planned out. Its going to be a long time before we can talk again. Its the great fast. About 7 months. So Christmas time :P Thats going to be a long time. But I guess I'm used to this now, so no need to worry. Tell the family I love them, since they all dissappeared before I was done with the call last night :P Anyway I'll talk to you guys later, and I'll send you photos with the new glasses... I might be a bit picky about which ones I get because I don't want to look stupid. Yeah, I remember when I was in fifth grade and I wore them for a little bit... those didn't last long :P Anyway good day and good luck with mark and the end of school coming up.

Love,

Elder Bradley Smith

Ps

I guess I'm sending photos like this for just a little bit

What? Ducks?

It’s about time the temperature has been warming up around here. I've been looking forward to enjoying some warmer weather finally. I could actually take off my jacket this week and just wear a regular suit coat. I feel so FREE! So anyway, it’s been a really good week so far... Just most of our investigators are really hosey, so our appointments have been sporadic to say the least. I have been getting along really well with Elder Wolf. He's just pure genius on a lot of different things. As I probably told you previously, he loves to study. So he has been giving me a lot of insights into many different doctrines of the church when studying the bible and Doctrine and Covenants. So many cool things to be learned from there. So I have really enjoyed working and learning from him. He is also one of the best Bible Bashers in the mission... not that he is proud of it. He doesn't look for bashes, bashes just come to him and he has to confound false doctrine. We had an interesting lesson with an Evangelical Christian the other day where this guy named Mark was trying to say that we are not saved by works but by Grace. So we had a nice discussion where we absolutely destroyed him doctrinally, and eventually we just had to tell him he was not being open minded enough to hear our message and that he was just wasting our time. I actually enjoyed that experience, even though we probably won't be teaching him again... but it was still funny. Besides that it has been a lot of street contacting this week, as well has spending a lot of hours trying to find less active families in our ward that have been gone for more than ten years... Yeck... these records are so out of date. I realize what a pain it is for the church when people move and don't give an address to where they went. Doesn't help the missionaries who have to go hunt down there old place and see which new black family has moved in. That was mostly a joke because every single family we have gone to see that has left Luton a new black family has moved in... talk about cultural diversity :P So things are not so bad, just the same really. The things I'm looking forward to the most is the end of May... and you can probably guess what is going on there :) Elder Wolf and I are gonna have a sweet birthday party conjoined. Since P-day is in between our birthday's we'll probably do a big party then or go to London or something fun :) We are still deciding. Also I believe Mother's Day is the 12 of May, so we are working on scoping out a place to Skype you guys from. We might hit the Hart's again, so we will have to see. Funny that I'm still in the same place since I last Skyped you guys back home. I guess I'm just blessed to stay in this town for a quarter of my mission. Man my companion, goes home in 4 months. All of my companions I've had will be home by August. So I guess I get to learn from the best. Anyway its been a good week. I'll think of a good birthday present for Dad tomorrow. I don't know what I can do.... Many I can send a funny picture or something :P Only problem is I haven't gotten around to buying a camera card reader >_< So I can't really get anything off my camera yet... sorry >_< I know it’s been a few weeks, but Elder Wolf doesn't have a card reader, and my direct line cord into the computer cannot read my camera for some reason... Probably because all these computers are way to dumbed down! UIGGGGGg. I hate that so bad. Well anyway, I'll go look for one today in the mall next door since I have time to do that. Last p day we went to St. Albans so I never had time... So I'll talk to you guys next week and see if I can send some stuff through when I do the progress record on Thursday.

Love, 

Elder Bradley J. Smith

PS   Ok, I just saw mark’s video with the Ducks... Are you guys actually keeping those animals? Lol. I'm a little confused on several things... first I thought mark wasn't dating Elise anymore... but I guess that was just false pretenses... But anyway, I think that is funny that you lose the chickens and then you get ducks :P You'll have to tell me more about that,  people :)

Cheers, 

Elder Smith