hey everyone!!!!
im living on ocean park and cloverflield in santa monica (2410 ocean park #7) to be exact...
haha about the restaurants! i wish!
yes we have a car because our area (malibu and the pacific palisades and topanga- but our area is called malibu) is literally a third of our mission...! its like almsost 30 miles of coastline/canyons! so yeah pepperdine U is like a little over half way through our area.... the PCH is crazy! haha
my comp is elder bigler- i was comps with him for 4 days in the MTC before i was moved to intermediate spanish! so thats funny. he is from blackfoot idaho! (small town near pocatello and idaho falls....) he sounds EXACTLY like elder harper did... hahaha his job was a potato farmer (not for his dad though he was a doctor....) so yeah a little diff than lifeguarding!
it is just elder bigler and i in our ward (pacific palisades ward) and just us in our apartment. our district is us and another companionship of elders and the rest (3-4 companionships of sisters) becayuse the sisters are in venice and santa monica etc. elder dahle is my district leader and he was my first DL before elder cooley downtown! fun
im living on ocean park and cloverflield in santa monica (2410 ocean park #7) to be exact...
haha about the restaurants! i wish!
yes we have a car because our area (malibu and the pacific palisades and topanga- but our area is called malibu) is literally a third of our mission...! its like almsost 30 miles of coastline/canyons! so yeah pepperdine U is like a little over half way through our area.... the PCH is crazy! haha
my comp is elder bigler- i was comps with him for 4 days in the MTC before i was moved to intermediate spanish! so thats funny. he is from blackfoot idaho! (small town near pocatello and idaho falls....) he sounds EXACTLY like elder harper did... hahaha his job was a potato farmer (not for his dad though he was a doctor....) so yeah a little diff than lifeguarding!
it is just elder bigler and i in our ward (pacific palisades ward) and just us in our apartment. our district is us and another companionship of elders and the rest (3-4 companionships of sisters) becayuse the sisters are in venice and santa monica etc. elder dahle is my district leader and he was my first DL before elder cooley downtown! fun
oh and this was elder cooleys first area of the mission before he came to his second area to train me! so he gave me a lot of names and info....
so yeah the area is very very different we will be working a lot with the ward. president told elder bigler at the baptism of bilguun from mongolia that i got to go to yesterday! (he is senior comp) that we were kind of on clean up crew essentially because the last companionship didnt get along with the ward at all and so we have to be very social and work hard and SERVE the ward. so we had a long meeting with the bishop on sunday. bishop bolander is hilarious! i love him. he is an architect and he lives way up this canyon and he might be designing and edit house building in river north downtown! i told him dad might go there! haha
anyway yeah elder ellet (one of our APs who i am really good friends ever since he worked with elder cooley and me for a day and who has one arm but that is another story...) anyway he said that i was put in malibu because i am very social and iteligent and that is what the members need. i think the fact that i am from the equivilant of malibu except minus the hills and palm trees and plus more houses has more to do with it.... i relate really well to the ward (put it this way elder bigler had NO IDEA what a linger longer was and has never seen a country club...) so yeah. i love being the only missionaries in the ward its so much simpler and more organized and its also good only covering one ward- that makes it simplier too that way elder bigler and i dont need to go on splits to cover two wards.... there is so much potential in the ward though! there are a TON of part member families! some of the non members even attend church regularly. and there is this one muslim/iranian former taht elder cooley ALMOST babtized that we are tryinhg to get a hold of but his mom HATES the missionaries but his niece who is alos a nonmember comes to church 100% faithfully but doesnt want to get baptized just yet due to her wanting to get iranian citizenship to be an heir to some of the billions of dollars they have (navid- the guys dad is a real estate mogul in iran....) anyway yeah thats the kind of people we are dealing with. and then their is a huge surf scene! its funny. there is a priest in the ward who is sponsered by quicksilver and pamela anderson paid him to go tour around the world(she is their family friend haha) also rick schroeder is in the ward too- he is a guy from 24 and michael mclane- famous mormon muscisian- they are both on extended vacation though so i havent seen them... the schroeders are in spain! haha) anyway our area is crazy huge!!!!!!!! it took us like an hour to get to our dinner appoinment last night! and up topanga is so funny! its like trailer trash mixed with millionaires living way out in the middle of no where!- there is a part member family that lives ON a state park.... haha oh and the double wide trailers that are off the Pacific Coast Highway (PCH) are literally 2-3 million and then you have to pay rent --its some funky law thing like you dont actually own the land... its super weird... but yes we do do a ton of tracting! we did 5 hours in one day but hopefully we will be able to do some more "networking" and work through the ward though but we couldnt do much before sunday.... but anyway we tracted this street that overlooked the ocean and it was gorgeous!!!! it was like the mediterranian (SP) according to elder cooley who has been there... but yeah all in all i feel at home just more nature influence and open space ahah but elder bigler is utterly amazed! coming from my old area and going here (and driving through beverley hills one day on the way to the temple...) make me realize how insanely blessed i am/was growing up!!!! holy cow! i have a billion times more opportunities than almost everyone in my last area and even elder bigler and stuff its really sad and unfair but its true... i was very fortunate to grow up where i did.... oh and we went to dinner with these amazing family and john mayer used to live next door to them! haha
we are both very excited to see how this all turns out, its hard because we both feel frusterated because in some ways the work is so less efficient (taking 1-2 hours sometimes to get to dinner appointments for example...) and that both the bishop and the president said that we would be working a lot through the ward reactivating people and getting priests to go on missions etc (the world class surfer will be hard but he wants to go but he is getting a lot of pressure from his friends and from his sponsers to not go....) but its more effective in other ways- its way more organized in terms of PEC (i think thats what it is) but ward meetings etc... but its frusterating because tracting is super ineffiecent- no one is really rude persay but they dont listen to us more than hello, good afternoon! haha but i am not discouraged, i feel like this area is a good match for me- im happy and i know how to network... but yeah we both are struggling because compared to each of our last areas (he was near watts in an all spanish area) we feel like we are not as DIRECTLY fulfilling our purpose of converting new converts, because you can def convert people that have been members for years.... and service to the ward etc etc.... i just hope that the beach isnt too much of a temptation for me and distract me! speaking of which we have beach p day next monday!!!!!!!!! i think its next monday,... so i am super excited for that!
until next time!
Love!
William
ps i will be busy writing letters today! so everyone* expect a letter soon!
*as many as i can get to! haha
