Monday, June 10, 2013

First Week!

Hey everyone!
So i just finished my first week in the field! On Tuesday the 27 missionaries going to Long Beach all flew out on the same flight and it was a small plane so we took up like half of it. One of the other sisters and I were talking to a couple before going on the flight and we gave them a pass-along card. They were awesome so hopefully they look up mormon.org. Also I sat next our district leader on the flight. His name is Elder Wilkes and he is from Nampa! but he said he doesn't know any Washburn's (I think he lives on the other side of town). The mission president and his wife are really great. They leave in a couple of weeks though and then President Tew will be here. My trainer is Sister White and she is really cool. She's from Mapleton and she's majoring in el ed too! We get a long really well and this is her last 3 months before she goes home so she knows a lot! Also we have a car which is so nice. They are cutting down the number of miles we can drive so we try to walk a lot but we can drive in the evening and to far appointments which is nice. Our apartment is pretty nice too. We each have our own bathroom and there is an extra bedroom that I get to use for all of my stuff, someone's genius planning! In the morning we walk on a high school track near our apartments and apparently its the school where they filmed Greece. Right now I'm serving in the Cerritos/Norwalk area. Over half of the ward is inactive so we have been trying to reactivate people and hopefully baptize a part-member family. Also we do a lot of street contacting which is just talking to people around our area and passing out cards about mormon.org (it is such a great website you can refer people to who want to know more about our church and what we believe, it also has all of the "I'm a Mormon" videos) There are always people walking around and since there are two other elder companionships living in our apartment complex we always see them tracting or walking round our area too. This area is really diverse. All of our neighbors are Korean and there are a lot of Korean shops around where we live (to bad Aimee isn't here to talk to them because I don't think they speak a ton of english) Also our ward has a lot of Polynesian people and there are a ton of hispanic people and indian people in our area too. We have been to a Brazilian, Philipino, and Vietnamese family's house so this ward really does have a lot of different people. Our ward is a random mix of  a lot of young families and old people so its kind of an interesting dynamic. It makes bringing members to lessons hard and its kind of hard to get people excited about missionary work, but hopefully we will find a way to do it. Also the weather here has been really nice. It is cloudy and hazy every morning until the smog burns off at about 11:30 (its kind of weird to wake up to cloudy skies every morning but it is still going to be a nice day later on) and then it is sunny and nice until the end of the day. Also it is humid here! Not super bad but it has been a struggle figuring out how to manage my hair since the humidity makes it frizzy all the time. I think I'm kind of starting to figure out how to fix it so hopefully I'll get used to it. Also we hear sirens at least twice a day here, I don't know why but there are always ambulances going somewhere (probably because there are so many people here!) Also our area i kind of interesting because you can be driving around in a pretty nice suburban area and then a couple blocks down you are in the ghetto. So there is definitely a wide range of living in a small area.
So far though I really like it! It has been cool to meet so many different people. Sister White and I really want to find a family to teach so we are going to keep working hard until we do! I am so grateful for this gospel and how it has led me to make the choices that I have in my life. A lot here you see people who are recovering from drugs or other bad choices that have ruined their lives. With the gospel we are able to make good choices that bring us closer to Christ and give us lasting peace and happiness that we can't find anywhere else.
Love you all!
Sister Washburn


 


 



1 comment:

  1. I love finding my daughter on other missionary blogs! Sister Decker second from the left holding the cali banner. GO LONG BEACH!

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