Greetings from Seattle

Well family and friends I have finally arrived in Seattle!!!  It is so beautiful here, where ever I look there is an evergreen tree.  Someone was joking that it reminded them of the Twilight movie (and seriously it does). The back yard of the mission home just is so dense of forest I think you could walk back and get lost in it. The first day we meet our mission president at the airport and went to the mission home to have lunch and the first interviews with him.   Lets just say the food was amazing!!!!  There were 21 other Elders/Sisters in my travel group, President Larkin said it was the largest group of missionaries to ever come into the mission at one time.  During the afternoon we had our orientation meeting, were told about mission car safety, and met our trainers.  My trainer is Elder Wilkins from Provo (I think that about 3/4 of the missionaries here are from Utah).  He has been in the mission field 9 months so far and so he was surprised when they made him a trainer.  He actually went home for 3 months (to get healed) after only being in the field a week....I guess something about him playing rugby with some Samoans...ya still haven't heard the whole story on that one.  He is a hard worker though, and that I like.   My first area is in Burien(?) which is the southern part of Seattle.  I actually live just a stones through away from the airport so there is always airplanes coming in to land. 

 Last night we went out and visited some investigators, no surprise I only understood about 35% of the conversation, but I was able to speak what Spanish I could with them.  Hopefully my vocabulary will continue to expand so I can speak more. 

Today we had a 4 hour zone meeting so we have yet to get out and do some teaching.  Tonight we have a couple of appointments though and an area to start tracting in, so I am looking forward to that.

My hopes were not answered though with getting a bike area though.  Come to find out Spanish elders always get a car so no biking for me.  I guess someday I will look back and be grateful for this, but I has hoping to bike off some of the weight I gained in the MTC.  Not that I'm really worried about my weight out here, just would be nice to fit into the same suit pants for all 2 years. :)

Well I have to go. I believe that our p-days will be on a Tuesday here but I could be wrong....I will write then.

 

Elder Howell