I am here! I've been put in Lafayette, Louisiana which is the fourth largest city in the state. There are about 120,000 people, and it's been voted the best food in the country as well as the happiest city tied with (of course) Provo. My new companion is Sister Thomas who has been here for seven months and hasn't served in any other areas. From the sounds of it I can expect to be here for a while because it takes time to get the wards to trust you. I am having a blast, though I really wish I could be with you guys as you go do exciting things too! There's so much that the boys should get ready for, because this is not easy. The MTC can be fun, but if they think they want to speak a foreign language, they will not want to after a few weeks there. There's so much to learn and it's absolutely exhausting work. The food is okay, the soup is really good (there, I mean). There is a lot of spiritual tearing down and building up again. It's an experience like no other.
My first week here has been really good. I haven't done any tracting yet, as the efforts in this area are focused on less actives and refferals. My first day here was transfer day, and since I had no clean clothes we did some laundry then as well as some grocery shopping instead of going out for appointments (we didn't have any anyway). We drove through the Bayou to get here and it stretches forever along the interstate in some places. I've already seen the temple in Baton Rouge though I haven't been in it. It's kind of weird. It looks like an ancient temple in the middle of nowhere, though it's in the middle of town. Things are so spread out here it's as though we're in the country. They don't believe in sidewalks here which only adds to the effect.
Sister Thomas and I share our area with a set of elders and our ward includes the zone leaders as well as a senior couple. We have a district of five sets which is huge. Our first full day we spent doing weekly planning and we spent three hours on campus at UL doing a media board. Rejection is easy to take here because everybody is very nice and polite. Even though there are only 6,000 active members in the whole state, everybody here believes in God and nobody goes to the same church, so they're pretty open to taking pamphlets about Jesus. The elders got a lot of rejections though. We had our table set up in the middle of campus where they have a swamp. With alligators. It. Was. Awesome. There is a lot of swamp to see around here, or at the very least big trees. It has the look of the Civil Rights Era mixed with pirate cove, which is an really interesting combination. And it is LOUD! I'm not talking cars and music and people loud. I'm talking Jurassic Park loud. At any moment I might be seized up and chewed apart by some giant lizard. The June bugs are insane. I haven't seen any other bugs, but I've heard them. I see lizards crawling all over the place too. I keep telling Sister Thomas I feel as though I live in a zoo. The humidity isn't too bad yet. It feels about the same as early summer in California, but it's going to be a long and muggy summer here. I'm going to have to get new clothes. Salt Lake stores were not equipped with the right stuff during winter. I get an allowance of $157 a month, so money will be tight.
So... Thursday was weekly planning, Friday was District Meeting, Saturday and Sunday were General Conference. The chapel was empty for both days. The church is right across the street from a high school and Saturday there was an Easter egg hunt going on that was massive. The church parking lot was full with cars for that. The irony was that it was being put on by a new church in town looking to recruit members. How sad it is that people think that God would need to bribe us into converting with flashy toys and music? How ironic that the parking lot was full so people could go participate in that rather than hear His restored Gospel in the chapel they had surrounded? I felt as though I were literally in Lehi's dream of the Tree of Life. How true are Nephi and Isaiah's warnings in 2 Nephi that people will be lulled into a sense of false security and begin to believe that there is no evil? Even the New Testament makes it plainly clear that anything that doesn't declare the truth of the Gospel is not of God. I was pretty upset.
Nevertheless, Conference was good. I'm really curious to know what your favorite talks were. I thought some were very applicable to our family specifically. I took to Jeffrey R Holland's talk the most. You'll have to send me an Ensign when the report comes out so I can read them again. I actually fell asleep during the Sunday afternoon session which is really bad, but Oh My Goodness, I am not used to this!
On Sunday we had a potluck between sessions and got some gooood food. Sister Thomas is determined to lose weight though, so we're going to try dieting. No more treats.
I guess I should say something about investigators, since I have met with a few people. I'm changing their names though because we've been warned to not disclose any information since there are people who work really hard to thwart the Work from progressing. We went into the ghetto part of town the other day looking for a young man who was baptized a few years ago but has gone inactive because his relatives are against his practice. As it turned out we ended up at the wrong door and met Rhonda, who was trying to clean out her carport. She was very open to chatting with us about her life and how things are not so great for her. We were there for at least an hour, and after teaching her a bit about the Restoration, she told us we could come back on Tuesday. Then we met with Dale, who's mother was a member a long time ago but was excommunicated. He was baptized when he was eight, but hasn't been active since. He's a very cautious sort with very conservative values and a curiousity for the Church. I really hope things go well with him, because I felt several times that the Spirit was there teaching.
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