Welcome to the Mid-West

Hey there!

So ya'll lucked out (English could really use an ustedes like Spanish so I don’t sound so hick saying that).  The mission here allows us an hour to be on the computers, so after the 15 minutes it takes to write Pres. Kunz I then have 45 to write home.  So let’s get the big news out of the way first. 

The last couple days at the MTC were pretty hectic.  Elder Howard left the day before the rest of us, so he woke us up at 4 in the morning with his final packing and goodbyes.  Classes had the same feel as the last day of school so not a whole lot got done.  Essentially it was filled with goodbyes and packing.  I was hoping to teach on the plane here but didn’t have the opportunity since I was sitting with a bunch of elders - though Elder Mickel and I were able to make a brief contact in the terminal prior. 

We got here and were welcomed by President & Sister Kunz.  They're both fantastic people and they made sure to make all of us with the 'deer in the headlights look on our faces' feel comfortable.  We had dinner at the mission home in Omaha, went to see some of the sights in downtown Omaha, and slept in a hotel that first night.  There is a park that takes a whole city block where they have tons of statues of a wagon train and pioneers going along in that park.  It really was a beautiful place.  There are also statues of bison, birds, etc all throughout downtown.

The next day was all about pumping us up for the field.  We started the day by going to the Winter Quarters Visitor Center and Temple.  We met the sister missionaries and senior couple that work there and then got the tour.  The temple was beautiful!  It's about the size of Medford but it has tons of stained glass windows and exquisite craftsmanship on the doors.  I was actually able to go there a couple days later because the Omaha zone had a temple trip so that was fun.

Before we walked the temple grounds, we visited the pioneer graveyard above it.  It's one of many sites that the saints used to bury their dead in Winter Quarters, and there aren't many existing marks of their graves, but the place was absolutely gorgeous.

After lunch we went tracting for the first time.  I was actually put with Elders Samuel and Boyer without knowing they would be my companions.  We went to Council Bluffs and tried a pretty sketchy area (that's the main theme for most of the places we tract).  There were a couple stray rottweilers running around that we were a little cautious of.  That night was a testimony meeting and then the assignments.  They gave us a letter with the assignments and I felt like I was opening the mission call all over again.

My trainer if Elder Samuel and I'm co-junior companion with Elder Boyer.  For some reason I got placed in a tri-companionship so that makes things pretty interesting.  I'm serving in Council Bluffs, Iowa, just over the Missouri river from Omaha.

Since then I've been doing the normal missionary work.  This area has only been opened for 6 weeks so the work is kind of slow.  Our biggest obstacle is trying to find where the Latinos live.  It's easy in Omaha because South Omaha is like Mexico, but here it's kinda difficult, so we tract a lot.  There have been some interesting people we've run into!  There are a couple investigators that show promise.  One gentleman is our best bet for conversion but I haven't had the opportunity to speak with him much.  We did teach a woman and her son yesterday that seemed really interested.

Church was definitely a new experience.  We go to the ward in Omaha and I could barely understand anything that was said.  The problem is I'm used to people really emphasizing words and speaking slowly, so with native speakers I'm lost at the moment.  They had the majority of their speakers cancel so at the last minute they had all the missionaries (7 of us from places all around the area) go up and bear testimony, focusing on how our moms helped raise us with that testimony).  I feel like it went over pretty well, I'm not that great but at least I didn't make any mistakes like saying estoy embarrasado (right dad;)

Afterwords we got some food to take home from our ward mission leader Brother Pacheco (tamales, pasta & cookies).  He then sent us to a donut shop where his wife was working and she gave us breakfast bagel sandwiches and donuts for dessert and to take home.  Man do I love them!  They were actually Elder Samuel's first converts.  I really love working with the Latinos.  They're so humble and willing to talk about the gospel.  Well I gotta go, talk to ustedes later.

Elder Harker