Thanks everyone for the Happy Birthdays

Wow, it's weird to think that I'm 19 now. I think it's weirder to think that in just one year I'll be 20 and that sounds a ton older than 19 ha ha. Thanks everyone for the Happy Birthdays. I think I got more emails this week than any other week. Anyway, one of the members gave me a tie for my birthday. It was super nice and it's a nice tie to. Buying ties here is interesting because, since ... is a big tourist city, a lot of stores have their prices "raised" since tourists don't know the price they could be getting it at. Sometimes your able to find nice ties for around 3 leva which is super super cheap. Anyway that one tie I got is the first "Bulgarian" tie I have ha ha. I'm really good friends with the youth, or the two most active members in the church. They wished me happy birthday a million times yesterday. My companion and I didn't have time to make cake but that is what we are doing for our P-day activity. We explored basically the whole city now. I don't know if I mentioned it last week, but ... (He's the one that gave me the tie) took us on a hike. It was the funnest activity I've done here.

That hike went out of ..., so we got permission to leave the area. Basically, walk out of town, and your in the mountains full of nature and hiking. We got to a point where we saw the whole city of ... at the size of my finger. I didn't realize how far up we went until I saw that scene. ... actually speaks English and you can understand but he can't express himself super super good. I would just love to be at the same level he is in Bulgarian ha ha.

About 2 weeks ago, I started really applying a way to learn words from one of the Elders in my district. I have to admit, I think I can learn words now. Before I did flashcards, the MTC was great for that, but it isn't as practical as a word book. Eventually you have so many words in the book you would have a hard time knowing which words you new and which ones to work on throughout the 500 words I have written in it. So now the system is hard to explain but simply you review 10 words, write a tally mark on top. Next day do that with new words and the same and review the day before. You repeat the process until 7 days later then you write the day of the week on column with the 1st 10 words. Then you review those words that day of the week until you do it for 4 weeks. Then you write the day of the month and review it monthly. I don't know if that makes sense but hopefully it gets you an Idea.

I've been trying to focus on grammar to. I know a lot of words but forming simple sentences is still really tricky for me. I'm getting better each day, and I'll have to admit, it's a good thing there is a lot of days in the mission because it might be a while before I get "completely comfortable" with the language.

Right now, my companion and I have 2 baptismal dates planned for this month. One of them we're going to have to change though, because the person that has that date, we haven't been able to meet except for the day that we gave him the date. It's annoying because he says he wants to meet, but whenever we plan on meeting it always "falls through." But the other person ... (current investigator) I feel like is really going to get baptized. We have gone over everything with him, but the commandments. He's the first one that my companion and I together taught the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It's exciting because I've never had that lesson before with an investigator.

We also had conference this Saturday and Sunday. We watched it off of a flash drive that was connected to a player thing which was connected to the TV. Anyway ... went to one of the sessions and said that he is really going to try to read the Book of Mormon because conference helped him see how important it is. I'm so excited for him. Also it was all in Bulgarian so I had no clue what was happening, but I'm hoping to print out the talks eventually and reading them.

I would write more but I'm out of time. I love you all and thanks again for the Happy Birthday.

Love Elder Green