I arrived to the mission field with about 25 other new missionaries, and after meeting the mission president, we got an amazing meal and found a place to sleep for the night. Next day we had a bunch of training and learning mission rules, then finally we got to meet our companions. Turns out that I have three companions. Elder Williams is from Mesa Arizona and he came with me from the CCM/MTC, then there's Elder Powell from Logan Utah who has been out for only six weeks so he's technically still being trained since training goes for 12 weeks, but he's also training us. And then there's Elder Bradley who is from West Jordan Utah and has been out for 15 months. He started out in the Federal Way mission, but that got closed so now he got transferred to this mission. The area we're serving in is the Lacey/Olympia area, but we're serving in the Rainier Vista Spanish branch.
Our apartment is really small, because there's only one bedroom with two beds in it. So elders Bradley and Powell are sleeping on the beds while Elder Williams and I are sleeping on the couches which are actually more comfortable than the beds.
Other than this, the apartment had multiple other surprises that I wasn't prepared for. One being that we had basically no food whatsoever, two, there's black mold in the shower (which we're going to try to clean up today, but we're not sure how so if you have any ideas let me know), and three, apartments are basically the missionary graveyard for unwanted items. We've found tons of stuff that have just been thrown in closets. Elder Williams has been going to town on the apartment. He's been cleaning absolutely everything including the walls, organizing closets, and fixing everything. It's pretty funny actually. He says he's never like this, but he just feels the need to clean.
Also between the four of us we only have one car and three bikes. Generally, we only use the car because everything is so far spread out and the branch we're serving in doesn't have any boundaries like a ward would. So I haven't even used my bike yet which is a little disappointing since I was actually looking forward to it.
As for the rest of this week, I've already had some pretty interesting experiences. The weirdest one so far is when I met a prophet while tracting. One thing I've been surprised about is the difference in culture here. Everyone is religious, but they're all of different faiths: Buddhists, Catholics, born agains, I've even met someone who said his faith is one where they study every faith and believe in all of them. But running into a prophet really takes the cake. This guy believes that he is a prophet and he has seen God. He has some crazy beliefs, and all he wanted to do was to bible bash us. It was so weird.
But so far our schedule is mostly studying in the morning until 12, go knocking doors, try to get appointments, but have all of them fall through and so we go knocking some more. I haven't been able to teach any lessons yet, and it's frustrating that we can only teach Hispanic people. I feel like the MTC didn't prepare me for this at all since all we did there was practice teaching lessons and I haven't had the opportunity to teach anyone yet.
However, I feel like I've felt the Spirit a whole lot more out in the field already than I've ever felt in the MTC. One thing I want to share from my personal study is an invitation from Elder Bednar. He invited all the missionaries in one of his talks to get a cheap Book of Mormon and starting from the beginning and mark every spot where it mentions God, Christ, or the Spirit. I've started doing this and the change in my study has been incredible. It's usually hard to pay attention sometimes or understand what its saying, but as I've been going through marking, I've been a lot more focused and I've learned more as I've read. I invite each of you to try this even if you only do it for five minutes each night, you will be able to feel His presence more in your life.
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| Our trainer is introducing us to everyone for our first Zone Conference. Elder Williams, Me, Elder Bradley, Elder Powell |
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