Hi all!
Well here is the 1st week in DC!
So my first area is the White Plains 2nd Ward in the Suitland Zone. There is 4 zones out here in DC. The easiest way to describe the Washington DC North Mission is that we cover DC and the 4 surrounding counties of Maryland. So where I am at is in a town called Waldorf Maryland. It is a weird combination of small country living with tons of trees (I'll send a few pictures) and then there are some slightly sketchy areas.
So out here in DC like you saw with my socks, things are a little more layed back compared to other missions. So first off sleeping in is a real thing. On P-Days we are allowed to sleep in "as long as it doesn't interfere with our preparation". So I got up at around 7:45-8 today. SO nice! Music we can listen to anything that is positive and up lifting. A few other mission specific rules are if we are not in a lesson we have to be home by 8:30, just to make sure we are safe.
So a run down of the week. We got off the plane and standing right off the plane was President Cooke, Sister Cooke and all the AP's and STL's. We got off the plane and the humidity just hit us. It is about 90's and humid so that kinda sucks. But since our area is huge we have a car. It is about 40ish minutes to drive from one end of the ward to the other. After the airport we took the metro up to the temple and took pictures with Pres/Sis Cooke. Then we went to the Mission home for the evening. It was a really nice night. Elder Mcdonald, Elder Jackson and I actually went and slept at a nearby members home because our group was too big to all sleep in the mission home. The next morning we had breakfast and went to the Stake Center next to the temple for transfers. I guess the new VC President doesn't allow the mission to do transfers in the VC. So that's kinda dumb. I also don't get my Ipad for a week or two so that really sucks.
I met my trainer Elder Coombs. He is from Paradise, UT and graduated from Mountain Crest. He is pretty great. We get along really good and we work hard. We talked the first day and said there was three things we wanted to do as a new trainer/trainee, be obedient, work hard, and have fun. So far we have been able to do all those.
Sorry my email is all over the place it is hard to keep a good thought train with this all. So I have been fully immersed into DC here. In a half week I have had a prayer with a Mormon turned preacher who made us hold hands and did all the "MHMM PRAISE THE LORD" in the middle of Elder Coombs praying. And there is more subtle mhmms that happened in Sunday school yesterday. It is all super funny. Also I have been thrown right into the mission. I was a part of two blessings. More then a few hours of tracting. And lots of less active work. At the moment we do not have any solid investigators, but there is tons of recent converts and less actives that we do things with. We eat every night with members here so I am trying to be mindful haha. So the ward down here is called the Land of Milk and Honey, because we have the reputation of getting fed every night. For the most part people out here fall into two categories, religious people who already have a church but love us and say thanks for what we are doing or people who are not religious and don't want to hear anything. Black people are way nicer then white people too haha. We have a few people from tracting that want us to come back though, like this one guy we knocked on his door and he said no but took a pass along card but then when we came back downstairs he was standing there and asked us to come back.
So we will see what happens with him.
So that picture from Brittani was from the Vance family. He was the previous bishop and they are awesome! They pretty much called us over and said they wanted to pray with us and they would have a family for us to teach in 3 weeks. Pretty awesome! Speaking of Bishops, so I have had a cold all week thats been pretty bad. But when I went over to the Cottles, Sister Cottle heard I was sick and gave me tons of Emergen-C and cough drops, so Mom I am well taken care of here. Don't worry:)
Love you all!!
Two pictures of what I look at everyday!
Elder Coombs and me.. We get told we look alike by lots of people. We don't see it. But out here we refer to our trainer as our "Dad" so all the missionaries think its funny we look alike
This is a picture that I got from my sister before we even got an email from Austin. Her friend from high school is living in the area where Austin is assigned and the connection was made when he was visiting their home. (Austin mentions this in his email) She sent a picture on facebook to my sister and she then forwarded it to us. We were so excited to see that he was there and that all was well!
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