A Missionary in England: Finally, Pictures!

Dear Everyone,

Marta's graduation and our little
family left at home

Mom just sent me a picture of Marta's gradeeation (make sure you pronounce that with a Tuolumne County drawl) and it was like "That's way too small to be my family. . ." And I just got a letter from Dad with included Family History addendum today in the mail. The post code is GL5 1BG, by the way. (There has been some confusion on that!) I think Dad's might have been wrong but it still got here. I haven't sent much mail home as I've only recently gotten stamps and everything sorted out, and Pdays tend to go overtime so letters never get gotten to. I have been getting weekly mail from Eliza as well though.

"Post"

"Mail"

Getting post is super exciting! Funny thing is that here it's Post, not Mail. But we have the United States Postal Service and here it's the Royal Mail--weird.

This week has been pretty busy. We had a trainers meeting on Friday in Birmingham that we had to train to (that's right, we trained to the trainers meeting to get some training). It was quite an epic adventure and then we got off one train and realized that all the training teams in our mission's part of Wales were in another car on our train and all the other training teams near us were waiting at the platform for the train that we were transferring to. The meeting was quite awesome and we got some really helpful advice. It was particularly useful for me as it seemed to directly address my situation.

Also, President Rasmussen touched on a few key points of missionary work that I made a push to really do in a teaching appointment that we had that night in Cirencester with our investigator G. He's been sort of floundering in his investigation of the church but is pretty solid overall. He wants the blessings of church life for his young family (and inactive wife who is now coming back). In large part because I pushed actually teaching what we are taught and trained to teach in the way that we are taught and trained to do it, the lesson was a success and we committed G to be baptised on June 22.

I definitely see that humbling ourselves and doing what modern prophets have directed us to do in Preach My Gospel instead of thinking that we know more than they do is a blessing because A. it works and B. We get the added help of obedience. Preach My Gospel is an amazing resource as really it's the words of prophets written for modern missionaries. It is amazingly helpful and totally true. Living Preach My gospel is how one becomes a good missionary.

Elder Houghton

Apparently, Luke found an SD card reader, because he's finally sent a number of pictures along!

A view of the Preston Temple from the Tow Path

Helaman District (The Best missionaries ever!)

My favourite socks--"Hedgerow" pattern from Aunt Greta

My district, mimicking the family's 2008 picture!

2008 Houghtons visit the Preston Temple!

I got a kick out of Vim. It's like Comet.

The view of Lansdown from our flat (it's a road but it's not Lansdown road or street). It's kind of a famous road
in Stroud--on a coolish sunset night.