CHRISTMAS!!!

December 20, 2010

   yay christmas!!! I gotta tell ya. Christmas is not the same here. you see Christmas lights on maybe one house in each neighborhood. so lame. the  town is all decorated though and we live right by it so at least we get some Christmas joy! we also have a cute little christmas tree with weird pine cone ornaments cause that's all we could find in our flat. its adorable really.

 it snowed on saturday and you'd think it was the end of the world. people in england rock but they gotta learn a lot when it comes to snow. EVERYTHING shut down. e v e r y t h i n g! it snowed probably 5 or 6 inches which is pretty wild for england but they don't know how to handle it. they don't have plows or anything so everythings just stops working. we take the bus pretty much everywhere so we had to cancel most our appointments and a baptism was cancelled that we were supposed to go to. since they don't have plows the snow just stays on the ground and gets packed down. its been three days and there is still loads of snow packed down on the streets and sidewalks. they even had to cancel church on sunday. so since we couldn't go to our church we decided to go to a C of E church (Church of England). the church it is at is beautiful! its like 900 years old and it is so cool. but the service was a little wierd. it was really interesting and fun to go to but no matter how hard i tried I did not feel the spirit there. the weirdest part was when they got there they handed us a program but it was basically a script. the prayers had been written down and then the parts in bold were what we were supposed to say. it was really strange. I don't think the minister was too thrilled about us being there cause he wasn't very friendly. I'm so glad we went though! It was such a cool experience. i think we're going to go to a baptist church next time we get a chance on pday or something.

this week has been going really great! we got to go to the temple for the mission christmas party. it was so fun. I am so lucky that I get to have a temple in my mission. I could sit in the celestial room all day. after going through the temple they had asked each zone and each district to do a musical number so I sang oh holy night to represent our district but the best was what our zone put together. we made a nativity movie and we also filmed a lip sync to joy to the world by the motab. it was so funny. there were people playing fake violins and flutes and trumpets that a couple elders had made during breaks and then we were just mouthing the words. it sounds weird I know but it was SO funny! I think our zone leaders are going to make us copies of it so I'll try and get a copy to send to you cause its pretty entertaining:)

  well I think last time I wrote I told you about Juliette and how she's planning on baptism for Jan 8. well that's still rollin but her name is now Alyssa....yep.... she hated Juliette so she decided to legally change her name. she is super excited about it but it definitely weirded us out. when we're praying for her we always forget what to call her. her parents were pretty upset about her changing her name, understandable, but she's happy about it. she's such a funny girl. things have been going really well with her! we went to teach her last night and she had a friend over and she had told him all about us and was interested in learning more so we're teaching him now too.

    

 for some reason I am at a loss of words... maybe its cause I'll be talking to you this week!!!!! yeah!!!! I just don't have much to say right now haha

things with sister allred are great. I asked if she's related to any allreds I could think of but she said no. she's a really good missionary and even though we've both been out for a short time its been going really great and we work well together. she's from layton utah so we get a lot of 'crazy mormon americans' comments haha

  it sounds like everyone is doing well! I love you all, I'm sorry this is so short. because of all the snow half the places we usually email at were closed so I don't have much time to write up a good email. but get over it cause we'll be talking on christmas. :)

we're supposed to call from a members house cause it's super cheap for everyone if we do it that way. I'm not 100% sure what time I'll be calling you. for you it will probably be between 8-10. sorry. that's all the info I have. I'll just call the home phone. if there's anything we need to work out other than that they're allowing us to call on christmas eve to let you know but that convo has to stay short. anyway, gotta go. LOVE YA!! talk to you soon

  love, sister gregson

thanks again for all the letters!!