Dear Elder Slavens: My New Life

Holy b'gosh, where do I even start on this week?? So much has happened in the past like 5 days, I'm like stressed out as to what to say about it. All I know is that I am stoked out of my flipping mind right now! Paul, Idaho is hoppin' man.

So this week started out before the transfer. I was still in Wendell, and I was stressin' out big time 'cause I had like two days to say goodbye to all these people I'd come to know and love after such a long time in their hometown. I straight up felt like a member of the Wendell Stake by that point. Like, I wasn't even doing missionary work anymore, I was doing member-missionary work. So I suppose it was about time for a change! But that was an amazing couple of days. It was pretty sad to have to say goodbye to everyone, but it's alright, because I'm blessed to be in an area pretty close to my home, and I'll definitely be coming by again sometime! I spent Monday and Tuesday just giving hugs (to dudes) and handshakes (to chicks), and doing my best to give support and wish everyone a bright future. Hopefully I left that area just a little bit brighter than it was when I arrived.

On Wednesday we had our transfer meeting, and I was introduced to my new greenie, Elder Josephson! This boy's got it, you guys. He's got the mindset for missionary work, he has a good, clean sense of humor, and he's ready to move. We've been having a really good time together, and we're just hitting the ground running in our new area!

So, speaking of our new area. We're whitewashing the place! There were a couple of missionaries here before us, but they both were taken out and replaced by Elder Josephson and I, mainly because they were English Elders and President Curtis wanted to replace them with some Spanish Elders (like us) so they could even things out. So here we are, and boy has it been an adventure. For a little bit of background, we have been called to serve in a Spanglish area. Our area covers three English Wards, as well as the whole Stake in Spanish! Pretty big area. So we're picking up all of the investigators of the last Elders here, as well as a bunch of Spanish ones from the Spanish Elders that we're splitting the area with. We showed up Wednesday afternoon, having absolutely no idea what the heck we should do! We didn't know a single person in this little town, and to top it off I had a brand new missionary who didn't have any experience. Thankfully he's a motivated little fireball, so that wasn't much of an issue.

We started off by getting to know the ward mission leaders, which proved a good choice of action. We met Marty Van Tassell, who I recently discovered is well-known around the mission for being the BEST WARD MISSION LEADER IN THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE. Basically this dude calls us up every day and asks us if we can go out with him. He's showed us all of the investigators we should focus on, and is just super SUPER involved. Definitely something I'm not used to - as a Spanish missionary it's pretty typical to have to do every little thing yourself because all the members out here are focused on English work! So I'm pretty much in heaven right now. I'll go more into detail about investigators and stuff next week though, because this is dragging out way too much.

Guess what. On Wednesday evening, my first day here in Paul, as I was sitting there freaking out about what I should do to get this area moving, I got a call from the 1st Counselor in one of our wards. So guess what I got to do this Sunday. Yup, I had to give a talk. Just pile it on, you know, whatever, I can handle anything. I gave a talk yesterday on how to be a good neighbor and a good fellowshipper as a member of the Lord's church. Thankfully, people weren't really focused on what I had to say, because I was the opening speaker, and the closing speaker was a dude who just returned home from his mission this past Wednesday. So I was just kind of there. I'm not sure if I did well, or if it was pretty mediocre (more likely), but I did get a lot of handshakes and invitations into the ward, which was nice!

So yeah, that was basically my week, in a very large nutshell. Next week's email will certainly be more condensed; sorry to talk your ears off! I hope you all have a lovely week! Don't be strangers!!