Book of Mormon,
challenge,
letters home,
teaching,
Washington Kennewick Mission,
year one
First P-Day in the field
1:20 PM
Well, this week sucked, well maybe sucked isn't the right
word, because it did have good parts, but being a missionary sucks
sometimes. Like when you get stuck on a bike. Yup a bike. I'm tired, I'm
sore and annoyed most of the time. We have an area just as large as the
other areas and yet we ride bikes, no idea why. So yes Mom, please
please send me those timberland boots (but not the insulated ones) and
some wool socks! I'm gonna need them. Apparently when we can't
ride because of the weather we walk, at least that's what my zone
leaders say (we live with them).
Thankfully my area is Pasco 5th
central, which means not a lot of snow to walk through, although
apparently it can get down to 0 degrees Fahrenheit. So yeah that'll be
fun. Apparently that is almost worse than actually having snow, but I
guess I'll find out.
My companion is a native speaker named Elder
Sanchez, he's from Mexico and he's been out for over 18 months, oh and
he's about 9 years my senior. I went out when I was as young as
you can be, and him as late, so that creates a little wedge, but we do
work well together.
Basically I got stuck in a bad area, with a hard
trainer, and riding bikes. But there's a reason for that. On the plain
ride over to the mission I got a referral from the elderly lady who I
sat by. I taught her the first lesson and got her address and promised
to have some missionaries sent to her home with a Book of Mormon. She was
very kind, and receptive, and I doubt I will ever have an experience
quite like it. It was wonderful. But let's just say that after
discovering that I had done that before even reaching our mission
President Ware was very excited. And I made the "mistake" in my
interview with him by saying I would go where ever he told me to, with
whom ever he told me, no matter how hard, I wasn't a coward, and that if I was going to be a missionary I wanted to be the best missionary that I
could. So he told me right there, that he was going to give me a
difficult one.
My first day in the mission was interesting to say the
least.
Oh we had a baptism the first Saturday I was here. And although
it can be difficult out here, it's fun too. The people are friendly. My
only complaint is the food, we only get 130 dollars a month for food,
necessities and everything, I guess they expect the members to feed us,
but our area is very very poor, so we live on PB&J for lunch, dinner,
and occasionally breakfast, if we don't have milk. The biking is hard
too, Pasco is basically a run down ghetto, so only a few of the main
roads have real lights, everywhere else we're riding on gravel in the
dark, so we just wait to fall. My companion has bandages up his arm and
holes in pants from falling. But my mission is going well, it just
takes some getting used too.
Oh and hey if you start now, and read about
7 pages a day, you can finish the Book of Mormon on Christmas. I've
read over 100 pages in the last 3 days because missionaries has nothing
else to do! It's fun to read when all you have to do is read and ponder
and not worry about marking, or studying a particular topic (not that
those aren't fun as well)
I love you all.
-Elder Jonathan Myers
