Grateful for FHE

... Why hello.

Well not sure what happened to the past week but I feel like I email you all every other day. Thanks for the birthday package! And thank you to all who sent me letters or cards! I loved the ties and it's nice to have a couple more pairs of socks. I like the shoes and they fit lengthwise, but they kinda slip off my heels... so not sure what to do on that one. I can maybe make them work but if there's a way to exchange them let me know. Anyways, I ended up having like 3 birthday meals, haha. The night before a family gave us steaks because they thought it was my birthday (I didn't have the heart to tell them it was the next day...), the 15th we ate a big turkey dinner with the "C"'s and then on Saturday President Flores and his family gave us Spaghetti and a cake of just strawberries and whipped cream. Hahah. Marcos also got me an awesome satchel bag from Guatemala. I love this branch.

Well they're splitting up the Green(e) family (not you all, me and my companion). Elder Green is going to Mount Airy speaking English and I'm staying to train a new Zone Leader. His name is Elder Hitchcock (Hispanics have a really hard time with his name.) I knew Elder Hitchcock when he got to the mission, because I was his first Zone Leader, hahah. I'm starting to feel a little old. But he's great and I'm pumped to stay here for Thanksgiving and Christmas, and work our tails off here. I love this branch more than I can express. This will be the area I have and will have spent the most time in!

Well since last week we really focused on those families that came to church after the activity (the "C"'s and the "C"/"D"). We saw the "C"'s on my birthday and there was a pleasant surprise waiting for us. Hermana "C" (we'll call her Abuela "C"), the mom of Hermano "C" came in to visit for a month! The most exciting part of it is that she is a super active member in El Salvador. So guess who's going to help our investigator get to church for the next 3-4 weeks? Hahah. We had a really amazing/interesting lesson after dinner. Hermana "C" (his wife) asked us two question that kinda took us off guard. 1- Where does it say that Jesus came to the Americas in the Bible, and 2- Why doesn't your church talk about the Virgin Mary more? Now these questions wouldn't have thrown me off normally but Hermana "C" is a member of several years (not too active). We answered her questions with the Bible and the Book of Mormon, and our testimonies of course. But the best part was when Hermano "C" explained these concepts as well, adding his own testimony of the Book of Mormon/Restoration. It was a very amazing spiritual experience and we finished by giving Abuela "C" a blessing of health because she's having some diabetes trouble.

The other family, the "C/D"'s, we visited on Saturday. We had set a Family night up with them and we were anxious to see how it went. There is a wide range of people in this house. The mom is a less active member who has a testimony, her boyfriend/husband is our investigator. The oldest son believes it all, he just doesn't come. The next two sons are teenagers and claim to be atheists. And the youngest is 7. So we decided to focus on prayer and the Holy Ghost. We did an activity similar to what we did in volleyball one time before a match, one person (in this case, the youngest) is blindfolded and he has to navigate obstacles without anyone first and then with only direction from his mom, but he has to ask for the direction. It helped everyone to see that if we don't pray we tend to bump into things and make more errors in life. But if we do pray we have a whole lot more direction and although we will still make mistakes sometimes, we can be put back on the path with some help. We then watched a Mormon Message called Origin. It was a sweet experience because we were able to invite all of them to pray to know if it's true as well as what they need to do next. Let me just add how grateful I am that we had FHE's when I was growing up!

I'm glad to hear you all are doing well and staying busy. I loved what you said about work mom. Yesterday we woke up at 5:30 for a 7:00 meeting and had meetings from then until 3:00, lunch was peanuts while driving, then we taught 5 lessons from then until 9, and finally did call outs and reporting until 10. We were pretty tired but I remember thinking, it's been an awesome day. I know that we can only have true happiness by working and giving our all, o sea (not sure how to translate this phrase), consecrating ourselves.

I love you all! Have an awesome week!

Elder Greene

PS- I'm sure you'll ask me what I want for Christmas soon, not that I have any ideas really, but a calendar for 2014 would be awesome.

PPS I already got accepted to BYU so that's pretty cool. I changed my email on there to my mission email so I should know when I need to register for classes. Crazy stuff!

Proof that I opened it on my birthday!

Me and my gifts

Birthday dinner group