Elder Austin Carroll

September 12, 2016

Hi everyone!!

Mom why did you have to google Anacotia.. It was better you didn't know haha. But I'll talk more about the new area in a second. But yes Scott is the one I saw in the temple. And being over Suitland stake now I'm gonna for sure try to visit him and some other WP2 members when I get the chance to!

Well as you would expect with a new area and new companion it's been quite a bit of adjusting! But it's good!! It's fun to be back down in Suitland stake, while staying in the city as well! It's a great combo. Plus as well getting to serve with Elder Zocca has been a party and a half. I have known Elder Zocca since about February and have been great friends.. having a friend as a companion makes doing the work so much better. Elder Zocca is from Tanzania and came to the states for college. He went to the U because he's going into medicine and he was baptized while he was there. So he's only been a member for about 3 years and is the only member in his family, he's a little older so he's 25. But he's a stud, such a great guy!

Our area here is super weird. So part of it is in Anacostia, SE DC so super ghetto and everything. But then we have some surrounding Maryland so it's like southern Maryland, nicer neighborhoods. So just a really weird combo. So when it gets dark we can go work in really safe areas. Also don't worry, in the ghetto people really respect clergy and Jesus so they don't really mess with us. They sure love their Jesus people around here haha. But there's a lot of work going on here so that's super nice to be really busy! Also the ward is more of a branch. No joke 40-50 people TOPS in sacrament meeting yesterday. 5/6 people who participated in blessing/passing the sacrament were missionaries. So it's gonna be an experience here!

The week was a good one! Tuesday feels like forever ago.. But it was filled with saying bye to tons of people in the DC 3rd Ward. It was hard to leave, inner city wards are so interesting but it sure has a piece of my heart now. Wednesday was transfers so we had errands that entire day with all of that as well of Thursday had errands. Because we had to deal with bed bugs.. Look the whole cute "don't the let bed bugs bites".. No. don't ever say that again. Bed bugs are Satan. Long story short a missionary in the apartment I moved into had bed bugs in his wood bed frame and was getting bites but they couldn't figure out why until we found them in the frame. Luckily they hadn't spread to the mattress or other beds so we were able to do a self treatment and all is well in Zion again.

Sunday was for sure the hi light. There was a really big inner-faith walk in DC to remember 9/11 and we had missionaries up there as Volunteers and since we are still in the city we got to go. So we got to walk around to all these churches and help direct people, answer questions, pass out water, take pictures, all of that fun stuff. So it was pretty cool to get to be up in all of that. There were about 45 missionaries as well as President/Sister Johnson there. After that I got to have a super cool experience of going to listen to Elder Zocca teach. I say that cause he has a group of refugees in Silver Spring, Maryland that he teaches in Swahili (his native language in Tanzania). It was so humbling to be in the refugee community and watch these people get taught in their own tongue.

Overall things are going great here. I'm feeling like I'm on a bounce back from the downer I've been in recently. I'm feeling a lot happier and things are looking up. I'm so glad to have all your support back home. Sure love and miss you guys!!

Love,

Austin

Inner faith walk. This is from on of the Indian temple where we ran into Pres Johnson