First Transfer: Surprise!

I GOT TRANSFERRED! That's right. I got transferred, not Elder Mortimer. It came as a surprise (tee hee, you'll see why I'm laughing in a minute) to all of us. Speaking of surpise that's where I got transferred to: the Surprise North zone within the city of Surprise, Arizona. Surprise is way different than Cottonwood. Cottonwood is a small mountain town with only 30,000 people and a lot of dogs. Surprise is significantly bigger (though I don't know the size of the population) seeing as how it's got two zones in it. Surprise is also a much more affluent area with significantly less dogs and all of the houses in our assigned area are boxy suburban homes. Surprise is also in the western border of my mission and is supposedly a warmer place than Cottonwood. So I moved from the northern boder to the western one. 

 

      My new step-trainer is Elder Bell. He's from Lacy, Washington which is a small town just north of Olympia. He's been out for 20 months and he's lactose intolerant. The weird thing about that is that he claimed that he got it on his mission. There are six kids in his family and he is number four. He loves musicals (his school did Les Mis and he was Monsieur Thenardier) and he says that he wants to write as a hobby. He and I are getting along great and I'm very happy to be his companion.

 

   I am currently living in an apartment with my companion and another companionship: Elder Beard and Elder Kelley. Elder Beard is our district leader, he's from Blackfoot Idaho and he's been out on his mission for about as long as Elder Bell has. They've both been in the Surprise North area for a very long time so it's hilarious to see how they interact with each other. Elder Beard likes to sing, play football and motor sports, motor sports and more motor sports. He also claims that my mannerisms are eerily similar to a companion he served with for 10 1/2 months. He's awesome and it's great being able to bounce jokes around with him and Elder Bell.

 

   Elder Kelley is from Spokane, Washington (half of the missionaries in our district are from Washington) and he's even greener than I am! Seriously it was weird seeing all the new greenies (that's the name for inexperienced missionaries who come straight from the MTC) during the transfer meeting. That used to be me eight weeks ago! Anyway Elder Kelley is a self-professed "clean freak" (I'm not insulting him. He called himself a clean freak so I don't feel bad about quoting him) who launched a crusade to rid our apartment of filth. Our apartment's clean now since it got inspected today so he's pretty happy about that. Elder Kelley is also a great cook and he frequently talks about budgeting his money and always looks for the best deals when shopping so I feel confident in saying that he's good with money.

 

   We started off the new year with a baptism! Her name is Liz Collum and I didn't get to see her until the day of her baptism. Right now we don't have a lot of firm appointments so we're trying a lot of different things to increase the number of people to teach. As of now we are currently teaching a single mother named Cyndi Hargis and her three children Cody (12), Rebecca (10) and Tanner (8). All four have a baptismal date for January 15th. We're fairly excited!

 

      Speaking of baptismal dates I am going to miss Francis Valdez's baptism for the 8th! :( I'm really not happy about that since both Francis and I have come a long way since I first met her. I will also be missing the baptism for Ally Aeschliman who was a 13 year old girl with a baptismal date for the 15th. I'm also going to be missing Angela and Aussie (Aussie is the girl we baptized on December 18th). They were so awesome and I have a lot of good memories with them. I got to say good-bye to them both, which was kind of sad. I forgot to bring my camera with me so you won't be able to see the pictures I took until next week.

 

    Surprise is a car riding area but since Elder Bell and his previous companion (who is now in Cottonwood where I was) Elder Vaughan already used up their miles we had to walk, ride bikes and get rides from members. For those who don't know what I'm talking about missionaries who ride in cars have a certain amount of miles alloted to them every month. If we go over the alloted mileage then next month's allotment decreases. In our area we get 600 miles alloted every month. Since Elder Bell already used up his miles we walked a lot.

 

           The weather here in Surprise has been pretty bad. It rained for three days in a row! I even had to buy a rain jacket which is something I thought I'd never have to do in Arizona. We even rode our bikes in the rain. Fortunately two of my Christmas gifts consisted of a hand-knitted scarf and gloves (thank you Grandma and Grandpa Boothe) plus a member loaned us leather jackets so I've been keeping warm. Now that the New Year has come we can use our car again so now we're riding in the car again which is really nice.

 

        Just like in Cottonwood I'm covering two wards: The Willow Canyon ward and the Sierra Montana ward. Willow Canyon meets at 8:00 AM and Sierra Montana begins at 2 PM. Yeah that's a lot of church. Elder Bell and I had to take naps between wards.

 

In case you're wondering why I didn't e-mail yesterday it's because I'm using a public library computer and the library's computers were "down" yesterday.

 

Love you all,

Elder Boothe