WEEK 7 - First Week in Hondo

Well... This is it. I'm here. It is pretty fantastic. It's hot.

When we got here, we got to go to the stake center in Tegu and had a little orientation thing. The flight was reaaaalllllyyyy short and the landing was super duper sketchy. I ended up being the lider de viaje, so I had to be in charge of all the missionaries on our flight. Gag. But it was alright. After the orientation, we got to take a nap, hallelujah. That was so wonderful. Then we had dinner at President's house. President and Hermana Bowler are AWESOME. After that we went to bed. Early.

The next day was changes. Ahhhh. It was great. They show them on a powerpoint, your picture pops up and then your companions. I am with Elder Alarcón. He is from Peru, he has 20 months in the mission. After he trains me, he is going home. Our area is in Danli, it is Danli A. We are basically opening a new area. It is very very confusing. I'm not really sure what happened. But our area is really really nice. It is giant. We have San Angel, Quiquiske, Araulin, San Marcos Abajo, Urutia, Colonia de Maestros, Las Colinas, and Buenos Aires. We also have la estaca in our area. It is down the street from our house.

There is quite a bit of work to do here. Some of the missionaries that were here before were baptizing just to baptize, they didn't really teach a whole lot, so A LOT of the members are inactive. But we are working. And the members here are awesome, they help us with like everything. Our ward mission leader, Samuel, he is awesome. He just barely got called so he is kinda learning along with us but he is so great. We have found a couple girls that their families are members but haven't been baptized yet. One is 8 and one is 9. So we are working with them to get them baptized. We also contacted San Marcos yesterday. We found a familia that is basically prepared for the gospel. It really showed me how the Lord prepares people. They had so many questions that basically led the lesson.

I am trying my best not to get frustrated with my Spanish, it is not what they taught me in the CCM. I can understand a lot but I hardly know what to say. I don't say much. But the first week here was so so great.

Love you all. Miss you all.

(I had talked to several mission moms in Aidan's mission this last week, so knew that Russell M. Nelson was going to be visiting their mission a few days after Aidan's arrival. SO COOL! So, when he didn't mention it, I wondered if it had really happened. I asked him about it and he replied with the following.)

We all got to shake his hand. It was so, so great. I could feel the power and authority right when he walked in.