P-Day #1 11/10/14

******Cole said his Mission President changed the rules and you CAN email him!!  His email is norman.warren@myldsmail.net*******

Hi Family!!

Thank you Mom and Omie and Papa for the letters! It was nice to have something during my first week!

California is so great!!! It's pretty flat, but there are some mountains out in the distance, but they're not the same as the ones back home!! I didn't realize how much I use the mountains to find my way around! It's pretty deserty out here. There's lots of sand, cacti, and palm trees (which I found out are not trees at all. They're a type of grass! Mind blown!) It was 100 degrees the other day! I'm starting to adjust to the weather already! At night it gets down to about 65 and it's starting to feel really cold! There are little lizards everywhere too! It's kind of sad not knowing all the birds that are out here, but about 95% of them are crows. They're the California equivalent of seagulls. They're everywhere!! People love dogs out here. Almost every house has at least three dogs. They're either Chihuahuas or German She
​pherds/Pitbulls. There is no in-between. It's even more fun when the dogs are just wandering around outside and then they chase us! It happens on a daily basis! Usually we can lose them when we're on bike, but a dog chased me when we were out running yesterday morning! I had to kick it to keep it from biting me and I felt so bad afterwards!! But at least I didn't get bit! It is nice, though to go to member's homes and they have dogs that are friendlier so I can get my fill of puppy love! 

There are three areas that we proselyte in. There's Little Mexico, which is where all the dogs, horses, and goats are. That's where we live. There's Sky Country which looks kind of like our neighborhood back home and there are no dogs that wander around because they're all in the back yards! Then there's Gem Valley. It's a really new development that's super nice! There's only one member family that lives there! 

The hardest part about our area is finding people that speak Spanish!!! So Elder Taylor and I have been working on some Espanol! Soy misionero para Iglesia de Jesucristo de los Santos de los Ultimos Dias. Tenemos mensaje Jesucristo por tu y su familia. Les gustaria si misioneros en Espanol pasaran por su casa? (I'm pretty sure I spelled most of that wrong, but at least I can speak it!)

My companion's awesome! His name's Elder Taylor and he's from Sandy, too! His brother actually used to live in our stake on Hidden Valley! (I think I already told you all that?) He went to Brighton High School and his family lives up kind of near there. We get along really well! He was in choir at high school and played volleyball and football. We work together really well when we're teaching, too.

At first I was kind of bummed that I wasn't in a car, but I love biking everywhere! It's a little annoying when we have to rely on other people when we do need rides, but other than that it's been awesome! The streets here are never busy and they're pretty wide so we usually take up the whole street when we're biking. And the area's pretty flat so that's nice! The bike doesn't have shocks, which is kind of annoying.. I got a flat tire the other day! I have to go and get some thorn resistant tubes tonight!

It's weird having to transition from the MTC to the mission field! I got a kind of unrealistic idea about missionary work from the MTC and from just learning about it at home! It's not nearly as strict as you'd expect it to be. There are all the mission rules but it doesn't feel like there are! Nobody told me how exhausted I was going to be!! As soon as my head hits my pillow, I am out! I think the weirdest part is that these are actual people! Sometimes I feel like that's a lot of pressure! But I get so excited when we're preparing to teach! We also spend a lot of time meeting with members, less active members, and recent converts.

Apparently there was some drama between the Relief Society and the missionaries before I came. Someone in the Relief Society was upset that the missionaries asked if they could come over for dinner that night and so that kind of spread throughout the ward. It's better now, but there have still been days when nobody signed up to feed us. Thankfully there are a lot of recent converts that don't agree with the attitude in the ward, so they've been very nice and always check and make sure we have somewhere to eat at night! Sister Smith, the lady we're staying with, usually asks and makes sure we have somewhere to eat. So we've had dinners to go to every night! I haven't had to cook yet!! 

We have about five investigators that we're teaching, but I've only met four of them so far. One girl, Andrea, is in Mexico for the next six weeks. But I've met with Veronica, Terry, Mark, and Ignacio! Veronica is super nice and friendly. She is kind of like a mom to us and calls us "mijo". She's come to church a couple times and we're still trying to teach her but she has a hard time remembering what we teach her and she has a really short attention span. We're trying to focus on the Gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, enduring to the end). Terry is stubborn. He lives with his ex-wife, their son, and his ex-father-in-law (weird, right?). The rest of his family joined the Church almost a year ago but he just doesn't want to get baptized. He knows it's all true but he wants to know everything before he gets baptized and doesn't want to lose his Catholic culture that he grew up with. We're not exactly sure how to help him! Mark is also very stubborn. He wants to know everything, too. He wants it to all make sense logically, so we're trying to teach him about faith! Ignacio was my first investigator I committed to baptism (whooo!!!!). He's on date for December 6th! Hopefully things keep going as planned!

On Saturday, I had my first Zone Development Meeting! We met together as a zone and went through a bunch of training and announcements from President Mullen. (There's a Sister Olsen in my zone that's from Price! I asked her if she knew any of the Deatons but she said she didn't..) After November 25, the Mission Office is going to start holding packages there so they can deliver them all to us on Christmas! So if there's something that you need to get to me before Christmas, just write "do not hold" on the package and they'll forward it on to me. They also told us to have you send packages through the Postal Service instead of UPS. That way they can just forward it on to us in the mail and won't have to try and wait until someone comes out to our area. I think the Office emailed you about this already, but I'm not allowed to chat back on forth on email. So if you could just email me Sunday night, then I can respond on Mondays!

I haven't bought a CD Player yet, but we can have an mp3 player as long as it doesn't play videos. I don't know what is going to be easier for you guys but that is also an option. Could you also  get some Christmas music too? Do you think you could find a bike tool kit, too? Just something with an allen wrench, knife, pliers, etc.. I'm going to look at the bike shop for a little hand-pump thing that I can keep with me.

I'm going to send a couple pictures but I have lots more! Do you want to set up a Dropbox or Google account that I can just stick them all in? That would be so much easier!! I was so glad I got to talk to you at the airport and I can't wait to Skype over Christmas!! 

Te quiero!

Elder Warren