Dear Family,
I feel like a salmon going
upstream, and by that I mean I'm in my original proselyting zone (not
the exact same area) and am thus having some serious deja vu at points. I
can't say I'm really familiar with the area I'm currently serving in,
so it's not that bad (other than the occasional "oh hey I remember
driving down this street once"), but driving to the church where
district meeting is at was quite bizarre, to say the least ("oh hey
there's that intersection... and post office... and grocery store...
etc.). Also, I got to see people from all three of my previous wards in
the stake during general conference.
Anyhow, about the ward and area and such... I'm serving in English
(again), so this transfer will mark the year mark of me not being in a
Spanish ward. Aesthetically, the northern half of the area is pretty
unique: houses and small apartment complexes indiscriminately mingled
together, plus the whole "Uptown" area (quite classy looking). With
general conference and a relative dearth of dinners, I haven't gotten to
see as many of the members of the ward as I would have liked. There was
a ward activity on Friday, and the people seem nice enough, but I can't
say I remember very many of the faces. On the plus side, our ward
mission leader is quite awesome. He used to be part of the stake
presidency, and he's very motivated.
Our teaching pool seems pretty good. We have somebody lined up for baptism in a couple weeks: James. He's a nice young man who referred himself to the missionaries a couple weeks back and already knows the church is true. And he wants to go to BYU. You can't get much nicer than that. In addition, we have about 5 or 6 other people that we are teaching, with varying degrees of progress and understanding. Also, something we've decided to do as a companionship is just to man up and plan a little bit of knocking every day. It keeps us from being rusty, and we've seen some interesting things come of it.
Also, we're in car again (I'm the driver because Elder Jenson is
currently at war with the DMV (long story involving long lines and
bayonets)), though judging by the gas prices we'll probably be using
our bikes (or walking) quite a bit.
Elder Jenson and I get along very well, both in terms of
proselyting and personality. Terse and to-the-point describe his
contacting and tracting approaches, which works quite well.
Teaching-wise we're good at letting each-other have the chance to speak
and jumping-in when needed. We're also pretty good with our random
conversations together. Out of the nine companions I've had, he is only
the second one (well, I guess technically first) thus far with which I
can have an intellectually stimulating conversation about BurgerTime.
General conference was quite good. One thing I've noticed is that
when you're scrambling to take notes that the whole thing seems to go by
quite a bit faster.
Friendly,
Elder West
