So first things first, I was able to go to the baptism on Saturday (back in Romeo) and it was awesome! President Holmes came and personally picked me up. It was about an hour drive but it was totally worth it. There is nothing like a baptism to make you feel like a missionary. She was pretty nervous at the service though. It took a lot of encouragement from Elder Ragle (my former mission companion) and I to get her to finally go and sit down for all the pre-baptismal service talks and events. It turned out to be a really good service though. I’ll send pictures home today…hopefully.
Howell has been a pretty good area to me so far. My new companion’s name is Elder Loutensock (lot-en-sock; people sure have a hard time saying it) and he is a pretty cool guy. He’s an acoustic guitar player too but doesn’t have one out here. He’s a big change from Elder Ragle though that’s for sure. Elder Ragle was more a lot more free spirited and Eldler Loutensock is more a by-the-book kind of guy.
Howell is the first ward I’ve served in and it’s been a pretty big change. I got up to bear my testimony yesterday in church and the first thing I said was “Woah, there’s a lot of people here,” and of course everyone laughed when I told them I’m only used to serving in branches. Howell has maybe…150ish members that were at church yesterday. So it’s a pretty big change from Romeo where we had 40ish people at church and in Detroit where we had anywhere from 10-30 people at church every week. It’s been tough learning everyone’s names. I’m still no good at it so far. Plus it doesn’t help that people have such weird last names in Michigan. I guess a lot of people here are of Polish decent so there are a lot of random weird last names out here that I can’t pronounce.
It has been hard leaving Romeo behind. A lot harder than I thought it would be at least. Like I said in my last letter, it’s like leaving your family again, but this time I’m leaving 40 instead of 7. I had a really hard time my first 2 or 3 days in Howell and the days seemed to stretch on for forever. I was homesick all over again both for Utah and for Romeo. But I’ve met some cool people out here now and I’m doing better. Plus I got to see everyone in the Romeo Branch again at the baptism on Saturday which was good.
So far the biggest change I’ve seen in this area is the amount of dinners we get. Not that the Romeo branch never fed us, there just wasn’t a lot of people around. But last week we got fed every day but 3 I think. And two of those dinners had a non-member or less-active there too which was awesome. The area itself isn’t much different from Romeo. There’s more people, but the area isn’t as rich. There’s a lot more ghetto areas around. But just like Romeo, I’ve only met one black person out here.
Teaching wise we have about the same amount of investigators here that I had in Romeo… So not much. But we have a lot more people we can stop in on so we’re not tracting for 5 hours a day like I was in Romeo. I’m so tired of tracting so much!! I want an area where all we do is have teaching appointments every hour of the day but I’m pretty sure they don’t exist here.
Right now we have a couple investigators that have baptism dates. One of them is really cool. She is about 23 and has a 4 year old daughter and a 2 year old daughter. She’s come to church twice now. Her kids were pretty crazy yesterday in church and she ended up having to leave after Sunday school because they both were having a hard time in Primary. But she’s pretty cool and hopefully will be baptized soon.
Well I’m running out of time so I’ll have to be off soon.
Love you guys! I’m glad Luke liked his present.
-Erik