Hey Everyone!
So as I had mentioned in last week's letter, we had transfers this past week! I was sure that I was going to be going to the city. Most likely that meant that I would have been in the most ghetto parts of the city. Well transfers came and I wasn't put in the city! I was put in the Bowie (boo-y) East area, and I also have a new companion! His name is Elder Summit. He's from Wellsville UT, which I guess is up by Logan.
As it turns out, this area has been closed for the past two transfers. So Elder Summit and I are actually reopening the area! At first I was pretty excited, but when we got to the apartment I wasn't too happy. Now I know I should be grateful for what they gave us already, but we got there and all we had was furniture, beds without box springs, old pots, pans, silverware, and lamps. That was it. We had no toilet paper, no missionary pass along cards, no cleaning materials, no rings for the shower curtain, and other things.
So we had to go to the church to get some cleaning supplies. The rest we are just waiting for. Then we found out that the a/c and the garbage disposal don't work. We got one fixed and waiting for the other to be done. It was kinda frustrating to move into a mess, but it's still a really nice apartment and the complex is great! It's very very well kept and the people who work there respond to trouble tickets very quickly. So the good for sure out weighs the bad :)
So our first few days have been pretty busy trying to get the area in order. We're still not quite finished getting everything organized though. We got our map finished and we got started on the ward list of who's active and who's not and who should be marked as "do not contact", etc. When we're done with that then we can start pinning people up on the map and get to work.
The Bowie ward is pretty cool though! A lot of people were pretty excited to have elders back in the area. In fact they printed up a new meal calendar for us and it's already pretty much full for the rest of the month. Ha I have to be careful though because when I received the call to go to Bowie, everyone I talked to said, "Be careful or you'll get the Bowie Belly!"
Haha! This is so true! They food they cook here is fantastic, but I'm going to get so fat if I'm not careful
We went to dinner last night at the W.'s home. Now Sister W. is from Jamaica, so she makes a ton of super good food! How ever her husband asked us lots of strange questions. He kept asking us questions like "do you teach with power and authority?" "Do you teach with the spirit?" He said that we were lucky this time because normally he just would have went off on how much we knew about the scriptures and said he would quiz us next time on the D&C and Pearl of Great Price. So I guess we'll see what happens next time.
From what I can see, people here really like the missionaries. However, from what the sisters have told us though, their idea of doing missionary work is simply just feeding us. Now we obviously haven't been here long enough to know if that's true or not, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.
We were also able to go and visit with the Bishop and the Ward Mission Leader this past week. It actually turns out that Brother W., the WML, actually served as a second counselor in the Glenn Dale ward when I served there. So it was cool to see a familiar face in the ward. Anyway, Brother W. took us out to dinner and we were able to talk to him about the work in the ward and how he thinks it was going. Unfortunately he was just called as WML a couple weeks prior, so he wasn't really sure how the work is going. He did express some frustration that he couldn't work as much with the sisters. We explained that they need to have an additional sister there, and they couldn't ask him to go with them.
When we went to visit with the Bishop, we had a fantastic discussion. We seemed to gain his trust right then and there. He gave us a good four or five people to go check on! So we have been trying to get to those people and do what the bishop asked us to do. His wife is also the nicest lady! She asked if we needed anything for our apartment and we thought it was a prayer answered. We didn't go crazy asking for things though. We just simply asked for a little bit of liquid dish soap to do our dishes. So at the end of our meeting, we said a prayer, she got us our soap and we were out the door. It was really great to get to know them.
Well that's all for the past few days! We hope the upcoming week is just as busy and full of miracles! I love you all and have a great week!
Love,
Elder Gold
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