Eagle Mountain

I ran into Ashley Mitchell yesterday. She had just returned from China where she was teaching English to children. As we chatted she said she had caught up on reading Landon's letters. Her comment after reading the following letter was that she totally understood how he was feeling. It is really really hard to leave the humble hearts of the Asian people. It made me feel a little better to know that it was not really just Landon's attitude but that it is a very real emotion to leave these people behind. I know the Lord will bless him as he desires to serve the people in the Eagle Mountain area. He will serve himself into happiness.

Hey!

So it feels like it has been forever since last Monday... Great week! But looong.... Anyways I love my new companion! He is really funny and we are working and teaching really well together. To answer your question we live in Eagle Mountain. I'll have to send you the home address for quicker mail next week because I forgot it this week. The place we live is really nice and our landlords are super nice too but it’s probably the least independent place I have lived so far, being that we don’t have a separate entrance or a separate kitchen, but the fact that our landlords are so nice makes it really easy. We do pretty much have their whole basement to ourselves, unless their grandkids come over... Then we share the toy room.

But yeah being a zone leader doesn’t feel much different than being a normal missionary except for the fact that we have more meetings and numbers to record. But it has been fun so far. And I can’t think of anything I need right now but if I do I will let you know.

Anyways I know all my emails home are pretty positive for the most part and I never really complain, but I don’t think I can avoid it this week; just because I do not like my new area. After teaching the humble and accepting Asians for 6 months it is just so hard to go back to teaching the hard hearted white people. I want so bad to just meet an apostle and have him tell me that my work here in Utah is finished. Because after these first couple of days it has just been hard to realize that the rest of my mission is going to be downhill from the Asian area. There is honestly not a better area in the mission! And it makes me really sad that I can’t just teach Asians for the rest of my time here. I'm sure I will get used to it, but I think this is going to be a long transfer. Luckily I have a companion who likes to work hard so that should help to make the transition back into teaching white people a bit easier.

But despite all of that this was actually a pretty good week. We had a baptism! A French guy! I didn’t get to teach him anything before the baptism but still exciting none the less! And we got quite a few of our investigators to church this week, and I also gave my first talk in the area. It was crazy because I haven’t had to give a talk in over 6 months, but I've still got it! I didn’t prepare a single note but the spirit helped me speak for about 20 minutes. And it felt good! I had some thoughts beforehand of things I wanted to mention and stories I wanted to tell but when I got up the spirit took my words in a completely different direction and I think it was exactly what that ward needed to hear.

Well, I will talk to you again soon!

Elder Winters