New Companion on a wonderful Island!

How can I focus forward in the New Year?
http://www.mormonchannel.org/video/mormon-messages?v=910930409001
 (this is one of my favorite Mormon messages) 

Let yourself learn from the past, but don't let it determine your future. When we decide to change, all too often we get focussed on the world or life we are leaving behind. During this season of new beginnings, consider what God has prepared for your future. It is better than what you now have as well as what you've had in the past, and the way to attain it is through faith in our Savior, Jesus Christ. He made the sacrifice that made it possible to move on. You can't go back, so it's time to start living forward in the best way you can.
"Look not behind thee." - Genesis 19:17

Elder Brown and the Gernsey Island 

 Our week was pretty good! We haven't tried any crazy finding yet, I am still trying to figure out what we could do here, but we did something called survey knocking. We basically go from door to door taking a survey which has questions about the gospel and what we do as missionaries. You would not believe how many people will speak to you when they think you are just taking a survey compared to regular knocking! It also help us immediately be able to tell if there is any real potential interest, and also tells us exactly what they need to hear! It is quite an easy way of tracting, and is more effective too. We don't do much knocking though, because we would run out of roads quite quickly, so I am really brainstorming on what sorts of thing we could do.

I think this New Years eve is much better than last years. I am going to love this place. We stay with the senior couple and the other elders in a 5 bedroom beech house! The senior couple (the Sharpes) made us a really nice dinner (shrimp, smoked salmon, bacon, etc) for new years eve, and they also cooked us a wonderful meal for fast Sunday! It is like having a family to come home to again! Weird, but wonderful!



Google maps doesn't work here, and even the Google play apps store doesn't either! I guess Guernsey is just too small for Google to care! I have had lots of fun here so far! All of the street names here are french. A few people speak french, but not really all that much. There are loads of Portuguese people that live on the island though!

They have their own currency here. It is still pounds, and they accept normal British pounds, but the money looks different, and it isn't accepted in England. Weird huh? 

Elder Sharpe is the branch president as well as the Branch Mission Leader, and probably loads of other callings. It is quite different, but I think it will actually work very well with some of the ideas I have tried to apply in other wards, but here it will be easier because everything is on a smaller scale, and the members that are active are committed because they have to be! I am excited and have high hopes for the work here!

My companion is from Latvia, his name is Elder Senkans. He has been out 3 months, so he just finished his training. There are about 30 names on our branch list, and about 8 active members come regularly, so it is quite small!

Elder Brown and Elder Senkans standing in front of the building they go to church in.

There are 4 elders here, and 1 senior couple. the zone is Poole, and I am the district leader here. It will be a bit weird, because our only communications with the zone/stake is through skype. I won't get to exchange with the zone leaders this transfer either, if ever.

I only could bring about 44lbs of luggage. One of the missionaries in the district here wants a hard drive, so he said he would buy this one off of me, I just need to know about how much it costs. I would probably use the money to pay back my companion for all the biking gear he had to buy for me when I first got here. I couldn't bring much stuff, so I only have about 5 white shirts, and it would be nice to buy a few more, but everything is expensive here.

I have had a sore throat and cold for nearly 2 weeks.  My new companion gave me some of his homeopathics and I feel better now! It is pretty fun over her on Guernsey, the milk here is soooo good! It is supposed to be some of the best milk in the world, but it is extortionate! So much money goes to milk here, because they have a monopoly on it, so there is literally only one brand of milk you can buy, unless you import it (which would cost more and taste worse)!

I love you all!!!!! I will send photos in another email. The library computers are really nice here, but they have taped over the USB ports, because they don't want anyone using them! But we have two laptops at the house we live in because the branch doesn't have it's own building.