July 4, 2016

Hi everyone!!

Well I am so pumped to be here in the Nations Capitol for the holiday!! We are excited for our 4th of July Plans. Like you said, the Reids are taking us to lunch. It's always fun to have a connection home so we are excited to spend a little bit with them. So there's a mission rule today that we can't be on the Mall. Kinda a bummer.  But
esta bien. So we are gonna get a ton of Elders together and have a BBQ then go to a high school in DC where I guess you can see all the fireworks really good from! We have to be in at 10:30. 

So to answer more about our work in our area you guys asked about. So overall Elder Jorgensen and I are able to work quite a bit in our area. We still have around 5 investigators we are teaching. Our area is a little smaller just to compensate the fact we don't have as much time to work. We have commitments with Zone stuff that takes some time, but missionary work comes first, administrative comes second. So we have a huge focus on still doing as much missionary work as we can. I love it cause it's a good balance and I feel like the Zone stuff fills the gaps that normally would just be knocking doors.

I'll try to do a better job in my letters with talking about the people we are working with.  So our two people on date are Chico and Kirk. Chico is an older man who is from I think Nigeria. He has tons of health problems so he is really hard to get in contact with. But has a huge desire to be baptized. Them Kirk is pretty rough around the edges. He is straight out of the ghetto. Covered in tats and was in jail a few years ago. But he became a dad and that changed his life. He is trying so hard to change. He realized the gospel can help him change so he is working hard to overcome stuff. His b-date is way out there on September 4, but we are gonna try to get him ready by then!!

This week was super great!! So we had two days of taking care of moves within the Zone so we weren't able to do tons of missionary things (I know ironic with my last paragraph), but were able to help out the mission! We have officially transferred over to President Johnson. We got to meet Sister Johnson on Friday and she is amazing!! We had to run to the mission office to get the truck and Big Nasty (15 passenger van) for our move. The Presidents were in a closed door meeting so we didn't get to meet Pres Johnson, but Sister Cooke and Johnson were talking with each other so we met her. She is so awesome! I can't wait to get to know them more!

The other highlights of the week were getting to see some previous people that I love! So on Saturday we had a lesson with an Ethiopian so we needed an Amharic missionary so we did and exchange and I went up to Laurel, so guess who we went to see....Ismael!! Oh man it was so great to see that kid!! He was so excited when he saw me and it was great catching up with him.

Then we got to go see the Beals on Sunday! Jorgy was born in WP1 so the Beals know me, Coombs and Jorgy and they wanted us over for the 4th. But we had plans so they wanted to have us over for dinner on Sunday. So since Coombs in a traveling assistant we were able to go down for the evening. It has been so long since I've felt loved by members. As sad as it is, but in the inner city we don't have the members that become family to us. So getting to feel the love of members we are so close with was amazing. Just getting to sit around a table and eat better food than I can cook myself while laughing for an hour plus straight has been well missed. Plus they wanna see Jorgy and Coombs before they go home so they scheduled for us to come to have dinner with them on the 24th. So a pretty good way to celebrate the 24th away from home!! Plus it is the last Sunday of the mission for those guys!

It's been another great week in the Nations Capitol! I can't wait to tell you guys next week all about the 4th here! I hope you guys enjoy the holiday back home!! Have a great one! Love and miss you guys!!

Love,
Austin

Ismael!

Elder Mullen, Ismael, and Me

Elder Jorgensen, Elder Coombs, Maddi, (daughter), Bro Beal, 

Me, Sam, Elder Cruz, Sis Beal