"Around the House" Work

Hey Greene Family!

How's the weather over there? It's mid-March and its still pretty cold on this side of the states. Kinda sad but I'll live. I'm so grateful for your letters this week. They seemed to read my mind several times and provided some good help as to what I need to do. This past week was hectic. I've never been so pushed mentally in my life! Shotgunning into an area takes some serious work (Now I feel for Elder Rose a little more when we shotgunned my first area!) But it has been great and sometimes I've just had to smile or laugh because it's so crazy. My new companion is Elder Fast from Mesa. He is a great missionary and it's fun to be from the same place. We have both had to change our whole way of doing missionary work in this new area (you were right on target Dad). Normally a missionary is family focused. Normally a missionary can knock doors when all else fails. But this area is single focused and knocking doors won't work because you don't know if they're young and single! And on top of it all, this week is Spring Break for most of the colleges around here... Hahah. All in all, we had a lot of growing experiences and many miracles.

The best part about the younger generation is they are real with you, kinda like you said mom. We went contacting by a college and the college kids did one of two things. They either say "yeah I'm interested, come at this time", or "No I will not take your card." There's no "Well you could maybe come this time, but I have a bunch of things to do" or the billion other half excuse/half lie responses. They're either open or closed, no halfsies, haha. So I've really enjoyed that aspect. Singles wards are really chill too. We went to a meeting on Sunday and it was like 20 minutes long. Elder Fast was getting all flustered because he's never been to a Singles Ward and it kinda freaked him out, hahah. But I thought it was a lot of fun and I already knew a couple members from my time at the Spanish Branch (meet in the same building).

This week was a lot of "around the house" work because starting a new area and zone takes some prep work. I would rather be out all day but it was necessary to sit down and make some plans/organize things. So when Saturday came and we finally were done with in the house stuff, I was just dying to go out and work all day, also, we had a huge miracle and a member invited us to the temple that night with her non-member friend, T. Our first appointment was to do a baptismal interview for an area in the Zone. As we headed into the city, my companion took a turn too sharp and hit a curb, hard. We popped our tire right outside the meeting place for the interview. I had to just smile to keep myself from being frustrated. We did the interview, changed the tire, and went to find Pep Boys. We got to the closest one and they said they couldn't see us until Sunday. So we called some places and found one 10 miles from us. So we went and they told us it would take a while and we had to be back at the church to be taken to the temple. It was a trial of patience, but long story short, it worked out. We then went to the temple and I felt like the frustrations of the week were lifted off my shoulders. T. felt the Spirit as well as we walked around the temple and watched the Joseph Smith movie. She wants to prepare for baptism. (Sadly after the trip we found out she lives in the Annapolis stake, but maybe she can get a boundary exception, hahah) Anyways, it was a huge miracle and I felt like it was good practice for later in life when I'm like dad driving out with the boat and I get two flat tires on the boat trailer. Hahah

Side Note: I saw an "Hermana" that looked familiar at the temple and it turned out to be Sister Demoree Brown, who went to my high school, she's like Trevor's age. Kinda funny.

Despite the split, our new little Zone did awesome! We had a great week with two baptisms. I am so blessed to be here in Baltimore. Thanks for your letters and I hope you all have a great week!

Con amor,

Elder Greene

PS Mom I am no expert on talks really. I have only given one talk on my mission and it was prepared in 5 minutes before sacrament meeting. But I do know when I prepared for my farewell talk that I took time out of every night to study, pray and write my talk. I think spreading it out over two weeks is easier than writing it last second the day before, hahah. But if I think of anything else I"ll let you know. Also, please don't send me pods. I have 50-60 right now and transporting any more than that wouldn't be fun, maybe in like two months you can send me some? Oh and our ward has like 50-60 active members to answer your question dad.