WHERE DO I BEGIN.

I'm in the fielddddd!!! My experience at the CCM is over and I'm now a missionary for truesiez!! Life's pretty great here in Buhl, ID (my very first transfer ever)! It's a pretty small little town where like everyone knows everyone and I just love it! Quite the change of pace. There's actually a pretty prominent Latino population, so my companion and I meet a lotta Spanish speakers. My companion's name is Elder Casillas, from Mexico!! Thank goodness! He's a native Spanish speaker, and we pretty much only speak Spanish to each other, so I'm practicing way way more than I thought I would! I'm learning tons and tons, and I'm hoping to be fluent pretty soon-ish! Guess we'll see!

I've met so many cool peeps here. Idaho's definitely quite different from California! In fact, when I tell people I'm from CA sometimes they'll just laugh right in my face, but I don't mind! But we have some really cool investigators that I'm working on getting to know. It's pretty tough to get to know people right now, 'cause of Spanish. I'm pretty good at speaking the language and getting my point across, but comprehension's a no-go for me at the moment, so it's pretty tough to get any thoughts in. But it's okay 'cause I can feel myself understanding things more and more every single day!

A couple days ago I had my first baptism invitation!! And it wasn't planned or anything. We were talking to this couple who basically completely believe that the church is true, but they're super hesitant to be baptized because they're Catholic and scared to make such a huge change in their life. But I was like "these things are true, and you know it", and then asked them to do the deed! They hesitated because they still want time to think, but we're hoping to get a commitment soon!

We met a guy on Saturday named Leon. We were just trackting and ended up on his doorstep and he answered and I was totally startled at first! He's a burn victim, like, a BAD burn victim. Half of his face is like melted away, and it was pretty freaky at first. But he is seriously one of the nicest, cheeriest guys I have ever met. We're hoping to talk to him again soon and get the lessons started! He thought it was pretty funny that we showed up on his doorstep 'cause he has a sister in the church! So there's a start!

The first week of my mission has been so awesome, I'm so excited to be able to do this every day! I love you all, miss you all, and pray for you all daily! Have an awesome week! :)


Elder Slavens