Hello from Gloucester!

Ready for a transfer!

 Dear Everyone,

So transfers happened and I got moved!  I was sent to Cloucester C (stuck with C it seems-I'd hoped to go A, B, C, and then D (Stroud A, Warwick B, Coventry C, and then Swansea or Harbourne D as there ae only two D teams other than Coventry. . .)) with Elder Decaudin.  It's great.

Gloucester is a wonderful place-especially for missionary work. The people are so nice!--You don't have to do a perfect approach to get people to not ignore you-they are just nice enough to stop and talk! It's still a City so it has the City feel and energy but it's significantly smaller than Coventry (I've been told that I came from the Concrete Jungle...) but not so small. Also, I've only seen one mosque. Let that sink in a bit. Now, let the fact that I haven't seen a single Hindu or Sikh temple sink in. This should take about ten minutes to sink in. It's quite different. I'm not sure if I'm in the same country. When I talked to my first person in Gloucester, I thought he had an accent from the North or something but it turns out that Gloucester people have a bit of a different accent from Coventry. It's weird. Gloucester is very different. It's quite clean and upper-middle class. It's also way more ethnically English than Coventry was. The ward is amazing! It's pretty big but not too big--tonnes of families. The members are all really friendly, nice, solid people who teach and fellowship and everything! I love it. Also, we have a super awesome district here. It's the three teams in Gloucester (A, B (sisters), and C and then the one team in the Forrest of Dean Branch (they have a car!)). They are all awesome, dedicated, and obedient missionaries. I love them all so much! The Forrest of Dean Elders are both American but other than that, I'm the only American. We have two Canadians in Gloucester A (eh), and then a Canadian and a German in Gloucester B. Gloucester District is going to be great! I'll get pictures out soon but don't want to go into detail before you can connect the faces to names. There's a lot to do to get things up and running but I think it will all go well.

Out the window of our flat, a beautiful church. If the
church wasn't there, you would be able to see where
another team of missionaries live in Gloucester.
All the teams live about a 5 minute walk from each other
which is just really weird. 

My new companion, Elder Decaudin
(say it: duh-co-dahn without saying
much of the n at the end)

On Elder Decaudin:  He's from Rouen in Normandy, France and he just got finished being trained here in Gloucester so he's been out 3 months. His English is pretty good but we're still working on it and we have language study (a mixed blessing as it takes so much time). He's working hard at English and I'm getting to use some of the French that I acquired over 3 months at BYU. We oddly have like 7 people in the Gloucester Ward who served missions in France too-including both parents of an American family (sort of American--it's complicated).

So, this week has been good getting adjusted to Gloucester and a new companion. We have a lot of work to do and improve on and it should be good. I'm really excited for the future! I don't have much time to email but I love you all and hope all is well.

My new address is:

Flat 1, 4 Cheltenham Rd.

Gloucester

GL1 0LR

It's so much shorter than the address in Coventry so you can spend that much more time writing me!

Elder Houghton