Transferred

I live in an apartment complex, there is a lot that is different about it from where I have been living. But some things are similar, I once again live with zone leaders, so in all of my mission, I have only lived with other missionaries and have only not lived with the zone leaders for 2 transfers.

My new companions name is Elder Kearns, he is a hard working dedicated servant of the Lord, which is really great because I never have to worry about trying to go out and work, we just do.

I was called to be a District Leader in this new area. It is the Higley Zone, we technically live in Gilbert, right on the East border (Power rd), our area is technically in Mesa, Arizona. We live on the very North boundary of the mission (Base line), so I am as far North as you can be in the mission, but not so far North as to even think about buying a jacket, haha. In my district there are only Sisters and a senior couple, which is really weird because I haven't had Sisters in the same district as I have been in since my first transfer, so as you can imagine I am pretty nervous about that, but not terribly. In my last zone there was only one companionship of Sisters, and now there are 5! Add to them, 3 sets of Elders including the zone leaders, they joke that we make up a Relief Society Presidency. So, even though we are in an apartment, we still have access to our own washer and dryer which is really nice. And we have a ton of different facilities, like a gym and vending machines. We are pretty close to a Walmart and other things, we e-mail from the Stake center computers which is different as well. A lot has changed but missionary work is virtually the same just different people.

I'm Being Transferred

So we got calls really late, in fact they were supposed to come last night around 10pm but we just got them at 2:30 today. Not really a problem. I am getting transferred and don't know exactly where yet, I will find out on Wednesday, which is transfer day.

The senior missionaries in our zone set up a movie night at one of the church buildings that we could invite investigators to.   Nolan, one of the more solid investigators came. We watched "Meet the Mormons" it was pretty good, I had never seen it before.

Nolan flew home on Saturday last week, home being Washington. He was living with his aunt and was supposed to be here for a little while longer but he has agreed to keep meeting with the missionaries when he returns.

I am not sure what I am going to do, but hopefully I will adjust to a new ward well enough to work effectively right away, and if not, I guess I will have to at some point.

So Much Learning

To start off, Elder Meyer and I had the opportunity to bless the sacrament yesterday, because all the priests were on vacation except for one, and that was one of the most spiritual experiences of my mission, for whatever reason. We even messed up and prepared only 9 trays of bread so, one of the Deacons didn't get to pass the bread which I felt terrible for, but it worked out anyways. Bishop Brown trusted Elder Meyer and I enough to ask for help with the accounting of tithing and fast offerings, because one of his councilors was gone. I learned a ton about how the Church works, it was a great learning experience.

We also taught Blake on Sunday, the kid who actually lives outside the Stake but attends our ward because the youth in our ward invited him. We also found out that we are not allowed to teach him even though he would attend this ward after his baptism so we handed him off to the Queen Creek zone leaders and they will take care of him. We found out that Nolan, the Relief Society's nephew is leaving this Saturday so that will be two investigators down in one week.

We went on exchanges with the District leader and I went to Johnson Ranch with his companion Elder Feusner and I learned a ton from him. We worked hard all day and literally talked to EVERYONE we saw which was kinda tough because some people were obviously too busy or too distracted to talk with us, but it made me want to change more and give everyone an opportunity to learn about the Restored Gospel of Jesus Christ. We also made it a goal to leave our testimony with everyone we talked to and that made everybody we talked to a little nicer in most of all the cases. Elder Feusner has been out for about 5 weeks now and is just such a great missionary. He also came out with Elder Tomlinson who lives at the Gold Dust house with me and is being trained by Elder Breneman, it still amazes me how great this transfer was because both Elder Tomlinson and Feusner both have increased my desire to serve others by how good they are at missionary work.

 Love you guys and want you to have a good week.

 -Elder Throckmorton