The Freedom to Choose?

Hey,

This email won’t have as much to it as normal, sorry about that, that’s what happens when it hasn’t been a full week from the last letter.

Elder Samuel and I now have a portion of East Omaha to work and it's fantastic!  There is a lot high concentration of Hispanics there, plus now we'll actually have a decent amount of members and less actives to work with and get referrals from so we don't have to tract all day every day.  We have plans to get an apartment over in Omaha but haven't moved yet.  We've been waiting for an apartment to be selected, the contract signed, and the place cleaned before we can move in.  So since last transfer and now we've been 'homeless', living out of our packed suitcases.  We're planning to move in today so we won't be homeless much longer.

We've also got a new car.  Originally we had a Malibu (known affectionately as the maliboat, Shamoo, whale, etc) with poopy acceleration and the world's worst turn radius.  They retired it this last transfer because of its age and mileage (the church will buy new cars, use them for a while, and then sell them and replace in a continuous cycle).  So in exchange we got a brand new silver Corolla with only 19 miles on it.  We love it!  We can finally turn around in a street without no making it and having to get out (the mission rules are that whenever a car is backing up the companion has to get out and help direct).  Also it has a sweet feature where we can connect our phone through the speakers and make calls and talk through the car.  The best part however is there's no 'tiwi' yet installed.  Tisi is a system that the mission vehicles have.  It's a box mounted behind our rearview mirror that records who the logged-in driver is, location, speed, acceleration, etc.  It's the mission's way of making sure elders aren't speeding and doing things they shouldn't be doing.  The annoying this is if you make any violations it will vocally say something like "speeding violation" or what not.  It's like having your permit all over again.  However ours doesn't have one yet so we're free!!!!!

There’s really nothing to report from the work this week.  A lot of our time has been spent trying to find an apartment, drawing the new area lines, trying to meet our new members and less actives, etc; so no cool stories pertaining to the work.  I do however have one from our free time yesterday.  We've had a small spray bottle of pepper spray with us that we found in the maliboat and we wanted to know if there was any left in it or what.  So we sprayed some into our kitchen sink and were kinda disappointed by the lame stream of yellow liquid.  We then proceeded to touch it, seeing if it would burn our skin, and we again disappointed.  So being the responsible and mature young adults that we are, we decided to spray more into the sink to the point that it was no longer a stream but a mist.  We'll our kitchen is pretty small and cramped and when we did that the spores got in the air and started choking us, so we ran from the room coughing and sneezing uncontrollably.  That continued for a good 10 minutes as we opened windows and tried to air out our cave of an apartment.  Fun experience, never doing it again. 

So that’s about it.  I'm sorry to say there’s not much to add.  Hope to hear from everyone soon

Elder Harker