MY FIRST AREA -- VALDOSTA, GA . . .

August 1, 2016

Hello Ya’all!

SO where in the State of Georgia am I? I live in Valdosta and yes we are the furthest area south of Macon. It’s about 2.5 hours away.

Me and Elder Benesh, my trainer

Well first off, President Greyson and his wife are super kind and awesome and sweet. Pretty much everything that I was told about them is true. Monday we stayed at the Mission home and had dinner there as well as our first interview with President.

Tuesday: Today was a pretty awesome day besides the fact that the humidity sucks and I need more short sleeve shirts! Today was the day that we found out our trainers and our areas. There were 19 missionaries who were new. My Comp is Elder Benesh and he is from Colorado. A member told us the other day that we looked like we could be brothers J. I did see Elder Rollins and Elder Lane as well and it was awesome to talk to them. I will probably not be comps with Elder Rollins since he doesn’t have too much time left in the mission. We got back to our apartment and I got to unpack but I didn’t really want to. We had the car for the first day I was here and it was nice. We went shopping and then went to visit some people. It was interesting when we got to our first person because a guy came up and started talking to us about how we NEEDED to give him a ride but we told him we couldn’t. I started getting a bad feeling about this guy and looked at him and he had this weird case sticking out of his pocket and then he left. I told Elder Benesh that we too needed to leave and as soon as we did a cop came pulling down the street and stopped by that guys house. I am never going to think I can do this mission on my own again.

Elder McEwan and the Poulsen Family.
Parker and Taj went to school together and they
have been our neighbors until a few weeks ago.
Parker found them in Valdosta, Georgia!

Wednesday we had a service opportunity with helping at a soup kitchen and a storage area with handing out teacher supplies because down here they start school on Wednesday. Then we went out to lunch to a Chinese restaurant. We had a meeting with the ward mission leader and as the other elders came to pick us up, since me and my comp had bikes, they started talking about a kid named Taj who was going to Vietnam on his mission. I said, "Hey, I know a kid who is going to that mission and his name is Taj. They said, “Well is his last name Poulsen?”  Yes! On Saturday we went and saw him and his family and they were so surprised that I was here in my first area and saw them in Valdosta.

Our apartment in Valdosta

Thank you for the package you sent. It was waiting for me when I arrived. It was VERY green J. So dad is in the bishopric now? That’s cool. Sounds like you’re back in the ward we started in on campus.

My bears like my bed

I love this work that I am doing. We have met a few people that are recent converts and they are still wondering if I am really 18 but who are they to judge. I have been peed on twice now in the same day by members animals so that was great :) Good luck on school and weddings and remember that I’m still out here and it’s so freezing cold;) It’s like 105 was the highest last week and that came with a rain storm on Friday. The lowest was 85 and that was last night. We split the car with the other set of Elders, so biking is what we do the last part of the week (Thursday to Saturday).

Love Elder M (They can't pronounce my last name our here) 😂

A water tower outside our apartment. It's also the think I
look for at the end of the day when we have bikes because it's
so HOTTT out here :).

CHALLENGE FOR EVERYONE: Read the entire Book of Mormon and write your thoughts down as you go. Then when you finish look back at your thoughts and reread sections again :)