Monday, October 15th 2018

Hey There! 

My new Address is 4665 Prestancia Place Apt.104 Waldorf,  M.D. My new area is huge! I will send you a picture of the boundary. My new companion is Elder Howes! He is brand new to the mission. He was originally called to serve as an American Sign Language missionary, but our mission president wants him to be trained in English, because there is a lot more work to do in English, and he wants Elder Howes to have some experience before he is moved back to ASL. Elder Howes is hard of hearing so he has hearing aids to help, but even then his hearing is not perfect. He mostly reads lips, but his preferred way to speak is in ASL. I took 2 years of ASL in high school so I am using as much signing as I can, and Elder Howes is teaching me more. 

The White Plains Ward is huge, there are about 900 members in our ward with about 300 active members. We are covering the west half the ward. We were also going to cover a YSA ward, but President changed his mind. I met Elder Howes at the Temple visitor center, we had lunch with the mission president, and we went off to our new area. The first 2 days were pretty crazy. White-washing an area has its Pros and Cons. The 2nd day after being together with Elder Howes, we had a missionary training for new missionaries. The crazy thing about this transfer and the next transfer is the mission is receiving over 20 sisters. The Elders are now outnumbered in our mission. There are multiple zones in our mission that are just sisters. 

My mom asked me the question, what do you do for dinner when you don`t have a dinner appointment? Answer: Leftovers! Most of the time members will give us leftovers from dinner we had with them, but if we don't have a member dinner or leftovers, we find a Chick-fil-a, or a Cafe Rio, or we make our own meals, which mostly consists of crock-pot pot stuff with microwavable vegetables. 

Since the ward split up into two areas, the Elders in the other area have been updating us on the members and investigators we received in our area. They told us about an appointment they had set up in our area, with a family that just moved in from Northern Maryland, and the husband was baptized about a year ago. We go to the appointment, and the family they were talking about was a family that was in my first area!  I was like, Julio! It was so good to see their family again, and I'm so excited they are in our ward! Julio, us, and some other members in my first area would often go trail riding together. Good times. 

Church was awesome! I loved standing near that entrance to the chapel and introducing myself to everyone as they walked in. This is my first time being in a ward that's shared by other missionaries. Our Ward Mission Later is incredible!  He is the most excited man I've ever seen about missionary work. The White Plains Ward has a lot of potential, probably because half the ward is part member families. It should be a great couple of months here! I'm assuming I'll be here until February. 

WORK HARD! PLAY HARD! PRAY HARD! 

Elder Dallin McKay Spurgeon