SPANISH LAND

Sister Alex Solomon:

My first week in Spanish Land has happened and it has been so great! Unfortunately I have had a pretty bad cold the whole time though so I've just been coughing and dying everywhere. But that's okay!

About the area: I'm over one ward and on full bike which is awesome! BUT, our Ward is maybe like 6 square miles and if you looked at it on a map, you could see that's it's pretty much just a 5 mile long vertical strip so sometimes we bike from the top to the bottom in like 20 minutes and it busts my butt! Anyway, the missionary that I replaced in this area is Sister Young, my good ol' MTC companion...and she was here for 11 months....so basically, I get to hear about Sister Young A LOT from ALL of the Ward members. It's all good though; and I'm trying to do my best at thinking of this as MY area and making it my own. I've already gone through a bunch of the old stuff in the apartment and have pretty much cleaned everything from top to bottom so I can have a fresh start and I think my roommates think I'm crazy.

ANYWAY, I love my companion! Sister Christley is from Roanoke, Virginia and has only been out for 3 months. We really do have similar personalities and everything seems to be going fine. She told me she has laughed more this week than she has the whole first 3 months of her mission so I'm taking that as a good sign.

Biking in the POURING rain

Weird/Interesting things:  One of our first dinner appointments was a little old couple who proceeded to tell us about every rape/murder/shooting/crime that has happened in our area over the last 2 years. It's not THAT bad of an area but man, they had a pretty good list. They told us the last rape was just a couple weeks ago. Thank you, ward members..... We watched General Conference at the stake center and it was quite a different experience than what I'm used to! We walked in the chapel and walked right back out because the big screen was reserved for Spanish conference....yep, they were showing it in English in the relief society room off of someone's computer so that's how we watched it. In between sessions they had a HUGE lunch for everyone in the gym. I was so full of awesome authentic Mexican food. #fatandhappy Honestly, I don't even know what it was that I was eating but it was all great!

Conference was amazing, as usual, and I was pretty happy because some of our investigators here have been having doubts and questions about Joseph Smith. I'm hoping they were all addressed. My favorite talk was given by J. Devn Cornish and was basically a recap of Elder Holland's talk last conference.

Let's see, overall, I'm doing pretty well. This area is WAY different from my last and I'm really having to adjust. I miss my last wards like a TON #northvalley4life because I felt like I just fit in with the people there. So far, I've only met a few families but I'm not really feeling the click yet. PRAY FOR ME  I'm hoping I can love these people just as much.

LOVES

P.S. I don't have wifi in my apartment anymore and we have to travel back and forth to it so I won't be as good at emailing anymore....that's why this is so long...