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)