Finally in the Field

First off business for you mom, the girl's name is Haley Parker, thanks very much, also if you could give Ricardo a little motivation. Also when it comes to sending mail, if you could make my mission address known to the masses, that's how I get mail. They just forward it from the office.

Ok, it is good to be in the field. So Tuesday morning we flew out in a real small plane. Then almost 2 hours later we landed in Pasco Washington airport that had to be smaller than Sartartia Middle School. 14 or 15 of us flew out on the same plane, 4 of us were Spanish speakers. That night we had meetings with President/Sister Greer, the AP's and Senior Couple. I love the Greer's they are really great to us and care deeply for us. We got to walk down to the Temple there, small but really beautiful. That night all the elders went and stayed at the AP's apartment in bunk beds and floor mats. Then the next day our trainers drove from all over the mission to pick us up.

I'm down in Oregon, a real nice area. My trainer is Elder Montoya is great. He's a native Mexican so he helps a lot with the language. We get along great and have had mild success in teaching. This is his last transfer so he heads home real soon. After he leaves I'm not too sure what I'll do. We live with a nice older couple from the English ward we attend. As far as the split of lessons we teach in languages it's probably 60/40 English to Spanish. And as far as Spanish here goes, well I don't understand too much. If I can get them to slow down and speak to me like a slow child, I can usually understand, but that doesn't happen too much. The tricky part is hearing where one word ends and the other begins, but it's slowly but surely getting better. Although, I do love the Spanglish lessons, I can understand almost everything in those. My first day I couldn't understand a word, I very slowly improving.

There's this one family in the Spanish branch, they're recent converts the Castinetas, I absolutely love them. The first time I met them they were a little unsure because I was replacing their Elder who baptized them. But we've visited with them several times before and they have since adopted me into the family and shown a ton of love to me. They're great. We're teaching some people who will probably be baptized with some time, but the one I'm really excited about is Bob. Saturday night a Branch President from this branch out in a small town called Fossil (about an hour and half away from us) called and said there was this guy who had been attending church and wanted to meet the missionaries and be baptized.

So Sunday came and Elder Montoya went to our branch and I went with Hopper (A local priest) to Fossil to meet and teach Bob. We had to split because we had investigators coming to church that needed tending. So we get there and I don't think this place could be called a church, just a set apart meeting house. This used to be a little home that got converted. Also there were 9 people attending, including me, Hopper and Bob. They had one priesthood holder, the president, and the rest were sisters, save the president's son.

So after a nice testimony meeting where all of us shared something me, Hopper the president and one of the sisters went into a separate room with Bob. I proceeded to teach the first lesson with random input thrown in by the other people there. It went very well and the spirit was strong, at the end I invited Bob to be baptized, which he accepted, tomorrow Elder Montoya and I are going back down to fossil for the next lesson. I'm very excited about him. Because he's my first solo teachy.

There are a few other people that have been found since I've gotten here, but that's probably the neatest story. The members are real good about feeding us every night, and you can never leave the Castinetas trailer hungry. There's both ends of the spectrum here, we live in a nice house. But most of those we teach are in pretty humble conditions of trailers, or double wides, or whatnot. They are all very generous and kind, just living humbly.

Elder Montoya and I have both been sick this week, but are slowly improving and feeling better, so that's good. I think that's about it from this end. I was quite pleased to hear about Austin winning BOA, go Bulldogs! You'll have to go see a football game and tell me how they look. Hopefully everyone is doing well. Hey Whit, here's a favor You should do me. If you would be so kind as to send me copies of the prayer cycle, adagio for strings, appellation springs, things like that that are appropriate, that would be super awesome. Well I better go, but I love you all and look forward to the work and language progressing.