Sept 2, 2012

Hey,

So I am still fuming over losing mom's email. I hate re-writing everything out. So I will have to make it much more brief.

I had gone over 400 days without being sick. I felt like Jay Bouwmeester. Never taken any sick time my whole mission, up until this wednesday. The sickness that Erickson had must have passed to me. I woke up all though Wednesday night sick and then at around 7 am I started puking. I felt pretty horrible all day, my stomach just felt in agony and I coulnd't get comfortable or fall back asleep or do anything except roll around feeling miserable for like  6 hours. Then I felt a bit better, and was able to sleep. Then I woke up really hungry, and I didn't care if I puked or not, I needed to eat. So I started eating Ichiban type noodles and juice and toast and held it all down so that was good. I woke up Thursday feeling pretty much back to normal. But I was gutted, as I wanted to go the whole 2 years without taking a sick day.

I'm glad Riley liked the package. My only concern, something I should have thought of, is that they might not use the Elder Steed on spanish badges. They might use like some spanish word instead of Elder.

We did service for the people who wanted to give us a car. There are too many miles on it, so it is unlikely that we are going to be able to drive it. But we cut their hedge, and I got to mow the lawn with the ride on mower. It is like the biggest lawn i have seen in England.

The people, Luke and Gemma, came to church with us Sunday as well.

They are both pretty crazy but I think they enjoyed it and the branch seemed to like them. To say thanks for the lawn, they took us out for a big sunday carvery after church with their whole family. Gemmas dad owns one of the hotels here, so it was at the hotel and was amazing food. And later that night they picked us up and took us to their church, which was Anglican. It was my first time ever going to a different church. It was really different, but it was really interesting and I really liked it. We got to talk to a lot of cool people afterwards as well including the reverend. And I rang the church bells.

This week we have just done loads of knocking. I told a really good story about doing service for chavs in my email to mom, but lost it.

If you remind me next week I will tell you about chavs.

Urusla actually invited us over for dinner thursday night and she came to FHE withthe branch on monday and she loved it. So things are going okay with her again. She also gave us 3 huge bags of groceries and sweets.

I did get the big package of letters from Graham and those guys a few weeks ago. That was great. Thanks also for that photos of the crew at the Draycotts and also Riley wearing his new jersey.

And I never got the binder from uncle cam. But he did send me two of his favorite talks my first month as a missionary. The talks were 'In the Strength of the Lord' and 'Beauty to Ashes.' Both are great talks, but In the Strength of the Lord especially has made a difference to my mission.

I gotta go teach someone in 11 minutes. Bernadette.

Love Elder Steed