Biggest Rat Ever

Howdy

The new area is so coolness. I live in the nice area of Houston, Summerwood. We live outside our area and have to commute a tad to get into Spanish areas. We live in the nicest Spanish apartments in the mission too so that is soooo cool. My area is Houston 7. My last ward, Pine trails covered this area so really I already know my way around. I'm still in the same area really just Spanish now. My new companion is Elder... Stringfellow!!!! He's soooo awesome! I've served around him before and we were already good friends. We are having a blast. He is from Bountiful. President Eyring is in his home ward.... he's such a goon too. So funny. Yes I got Audrey's package! Facebook mission, meaning we will be getting Facebook on our iPads and will be online proselyting. So I'll have a Facebook profile and communicate with people and even have online lessons. But it'll be a few months till we actually get it. Should be cool. Yes I'm doing service still!! Mucking out houses like crazy! During the week we proselyte and on weekends we serve all day. Area still looks wrecked. You go down a neighborhood and piles of trash everywhere... crazy stuff.

Last Monday was super fun. We had a mission wide conference that was cool. It was about service and the hurricane. They gave us all these nice work boots and gloves too so that was awesome. Elder Stringfellow
and I went back to the apartment and unpacked a bit.

Tuesday was soooooooo legitness. We bought groceries and Stringfellow bought me lunch. We had chick fil a. It's right by our apartment. We had a bomb lesson too and taught lots of people Tuesday. Ended up putting three people on date. Tuesday nights we all get together, us and the Galena Park Spanish ward, and play soccer!! It's so fun because all the missionaries go, members, and investigators. We play a ton! It's so fun! I missed soccer so much. I was killing it. They were all pretty good too, lots of good members. But I wrecked some kids!

Wednesday was good! We ate with a member in Galena Park and had lots of tacos. Really good homemade tortillas... yum. We tried some referrals and had some more good lessons.

Thursday nothing really happened. Tried lots of people and had our weekly planning. We had to drive a lot, and pick things up for the APs.

Friday we had district meeting, and since my last area covers this area, I saw Elder Gill at the church! We had Bonfire wings afterwards. It's a wing place. Sooooo good! Better than BWW. we had a good lesson with the Villarreal family. They are a family we are teaching. They asked lots of good questions and it was great.

Saturday was a service day! We got to the church early ready to go...and no one from our ward was there haha. We can only do service if there is a member with us so we had to wait for a bit and we called some people to try and come out with us. We finally got someone and we went and helped a few people. We had a super good lesson with Marina that day. We were able to address her concerns and she understood everything perfectly. It was awesome!

(READERS DISCRETION IS ADVISED!! MOM THIS MEANS YOU! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED)
So Sunday was the day of the week with my big story! So we had church (which was only 40 minutes again) and we went straight to work!! We went to a house, and boy It was the worst house I've worked on so far. (and btw I'm a professional now. I can tear down a house faster than anyone.) The water flooded about six feet into this house
so everything was trashed. We tore out all the carpet, destroyed the walls, and threw out all the trash. We got to the last room.... and piles and piles of junk. So much junk you couldn't get in. Mountains of it. So we had to careful pile things in wheelbarrows and haul them away. We finally whittled it down to the last corner and there was still a hill of junk, shoes clothes and other junk. Suddenly... out of nowhere... as we where putting trash away.... a huge rat jumps from under the pile and starts running around the room!!! This thing was ginormous! Bigger than my iPad, almost as big as a basketball!! Huge! It was running around and all of us were trying to kill it! We were all trying to kick it and smash it! Finally a member kicked it and I swear it was like slow motion! This thing flew in the area and landed in the corner. It crawled out this hole but got stuck!! So I went outside and could see it half stuck out of the house. So I started poking it with a stick trying to kill it and this thing was freaking out!!! It was like screaming and wiggling so I finally found a scraper and killed it. Cut its head cleeeeeean off. Sorry mom for the horrific story!

"Our Squad"

Service

Hey guys

So I am getting transferred and put back into Spanish. Hurray! I'm really excited. I'll find out my companion later today. We have a mission wide meeting today about the hurricane and about Facebook. We are going to be a Facebook mission here in the near future. It'll be good to see everyone today. Good to hear you enjoyed the trip and got a taste of some terrible humidity. It's the worst when you're biking and it's really humid and feels like 120 degrees. It gets too hot here.. this week we got the change so that we had to proselyte during the week and only do service on the weekends.

Tuesday was good, we had a fun pday. We played lots of games and played some pool. I beat everyone and am 8-0. No losses. We had Chick-fil-A a too so that was a win. Other than that not much happened.

Wednesday was good. We had a busy day, and since our car is out of commission we had to bike all over. We had lots of really good lessons though. I got pretty sunburnt but what was cool is the next day I woke up and it was gone! I was just darker. We had our Book of Mormon class and that went well. It was fun to teach I'll miss it.

Thursday was also really good. We had quite a few lessons in the morning so we were running around really quick. We weekly planned and everything and other than that we just taught people and biked around
all day.

Friday went by really fast. We had district meeting which was really good. The other elders brought brownie cookie hybrid thingys. They were so good! After that we ate lunch and biked across town to visit a guy. He was working on his house so we didn't really get to talk much with him. Friday night was really good, we had a lesson with Tiana who was baptized before the storm but never confirmed because church was canceled. It went well and Brother Partsch picked us up after and took us out to eat.

Saturday we were on exchanges. I was with Elder Bowers. He is a greenie and has just over a month in the mission. We were doing service most of the day. We tore apart all this tile with sledgehammers and it was so hard and tiring. Shards would fly everywhere too so I got a few stuck into my leg haha. We mucked four houses that day. We cleaned up and had dinner and went to work after we were done.

Sunday Tiana was confirmed. There was a good turnout and most people came in service clothes. Lots of yellow helping hands shirts. An investigator came and did service with us too. He had fun. His name is Jerry. We cleaned a bunch and after the other elders had a baptism. It was a good turnout. We all ate with Brother Fontillas. He is from the Philippines and cooks so well. He made us lots of food and a fancy desert. He is rich and has a big house full of artwork. It was pretty fancy, and he is really proper too so we had to use extra good manners.

This week was a good one. Hopefully my new area and companion are good. It'll be cool how everything goes with Spanish again! Love y'all