I made it

Well I made it out here to the field, my first week was brutal and strenuous but lots of fun. First off here is my address of where I am now so you can start sending food and stuff to me:

1101 Wilson Road #509
Conroe TX 77301

The mission is divided up into about 5 or 6 areas. My area is the Woodlands area which is quite a ways north of Houston. My proselyting area is this city called Conroe. It's almost the size of Orem, I think. Demographically it's a lot like Orem but population wise not as much I think. Anyway, it's pretty diverse, lots of hispanics, whites with their thick Texan accents and lots of Blacks too. It's an interesting place. Oh and I found out that this mission, the Houston Texas mission is pretty much one of the best missions. Do you want to know why? Well I think Austin will especially like this but Chuck Norris lives in our mission. That's right, no joke, he lives somewhere north of here in the College Station area, but yeah, isn't that neat? Chuck Norris lives in our mission. I'm gonna go baptize him eventually.

So anyway let me talk about what's happened. And I have pretty much all the time I want to e-mail so that's good. So the flight was okay, it the smallest plane I had ever been on. Only four seats wide, we flew in through some rain and finally landed. There were about 14 of us, 7 were spanish elders and the others were English Elders, one of them was Ryan Shaw, who I went to high school with. Anyway we met President and Sister Hanson along with the AP's (assistants to the president, meaning two missionaries who assist the president). President and Sister Hanson are real nice, I like them. So we left the airport and the moment I stepped outside the humidity hit me like a wet towel, it wasn't that bad, in fact it reminded me a lot of Georgia, only a little bit hotter. We piled into numerous vehicles with our luggage and went to the mission office which is somewhere south of where I am now in another area. We met the senior missionary couples who run the office and they gave us a little introduction and run down of things go around here. Then we went across the street to a chapel to eat. Some member owns some BBQ restaurant and he brought some food and after 9 weeks of MTC gruel it was the nicest food I'd ever eaten. It was some BBQ brisket with potato salad and baked beans. It was delicious. Oh! And guess what they had for dessert? Go ahead and guess...... Texas Sheet cake. I'm serious, they had Texas Sheet cake. I was incredulous at first, I remember when I had asked you, dad, if they actually had Texas Sheet cake in Texas, and you didn't think so. Well they do. And it was really good, I couldn't decided if it was better than Mom's or not, it was more moist, that's for sure but I still couldn't decide.

So then it was like 7:00 and a bunch of veteran missionaries came to go on splits with us to go do appointments and tracting and whatnot. I was a little nervous, we were finally going to do the real thing now, no more fake investigators, we were going to see actual people. So Elder Manship and I went with 3 elders, Elders Frost, Barret, and someone else. As we were driving there we stopped at this one intersection and I looked around and noticed that there were thousands of crows, on the power lines, the signs, the buildings, everywhere. It looked just like that Alfred Hitchcock movie with all those birds, though fortunately they were all squawking to each other, rather than sitting there silently, that was kinda creepy.

So we got to this apartment complex place and we split up and went a tracting. We knocked on doors and talked to all sorts of people, mostly hispanics, some blacks, and even one white person. Since there were 5 of us we split in 3 and two, and I was one of the 3 so I didn't have to do much but it was still a little nerve wracking. I did some of them to, in english and spanish, I'd say the little spiel and then they'd ask me something and I'd look at one of my companions and they'd take it from there.

It was kind of fun. Anyway, the english missionaries went back to the office for the night and us spanish missionaries got to spend the night at President Hanson's home. That was nice, after 9 weeks on a lumpy MTC bed of rocks, sleeping on a real mattress, a real CLEAN mattress was great, I fell asleep almost instantly.

The next we had a big breakfast in the President's home and then the companionships were announced. My trainer is Elder Astin, he's from Salt Lake, and has been out about 15 months now. He's a good trainer, speaks spanish fluently and always knows what to do. Then we went to the Houston Temple to do a session. That was neat, the Houston Temple looks a lot cooler than the Provo Temple, like castle. It's a lot smaller but looks a lot more new.

Then we had a training meeting thing in a chapel where we had some chili and cornbread, made by the same guy from the day before. It was also really good. Anyway during the training meeting I was sitting there and noticed a pass along card on a piano, it had the salt lake temple on it and I remembered that on the night before when were tracting we had given out lots of pass along cards and stuck them in people doors and what not so I grabbed it and put it in my pocket.

So the meeting ended and we were off to go to our area. We were picked up by Elder Brown and Elder Nelson, two english elders who we share our apartment with. Then we went to a place called bike world to get a bike. Dad, if you've been keeping on top of my bank account you will notice that about $400 and a bit more are no longer there. I bought the cheapest bike in the store, a black and white mountain bike and a helmet. So yeah, keep on top of that checking account.

Uh oh, I have like 8 minutes left. We are in a library and you get like an hour to each computer session but I think I can just log back in again so there should hopefully be another email directly after this one. So I got the bike, we went shopping so I could get some food. So I found out how the whole money thing works. We have our own little credit card things. At the beginning of each month we get $100 from the mission put onto our card. That represents our food for that month. I got a few things, I was afraid to spend to much. So anyway, Mom, this is your area of expertise, so if you want to mail me some ideas on food and stuff I can make that's really cheap but will keep me healthy that would be great.

Woah, two minutes left, so in case I can't do another e-mail here is some stuff I need:
-my camel back, if it's still intact, and I don't need the actual water sack thing, just the bag. (my backpack isn't the most biking friendly bag)
- my bike chain, I think one of the boys has it.
-hair gel (my hair is coming back)
- a sharpie (the other elders are very territorial over who's food is who's so we all label our food)

30 seconds. Love y'all, bye. I should hopefully get to do another one in a minute.