Which leads me to the big news: I'm in a car. Not right now of course, but for most of the day. Most of the areas here are car areas, but all-bike spots do exist. Lucky for me I'm not in one of them. Our area is spread out enough where it would be a pain to bike around. Plus it's cold, with a chilling breeze. Not unbearably cold but cold enough. Before I get too far though I'm going to give my address. Apparently you guys already know it from that letter you got. They put that letter together, not me, so I only did the actual written stuff. And another note: I have an hour for e-mails now. Here it is anyway:
11700 Lake Falls Dr. Apt. 401
Chester, VA 23831
Yep, Chester, VA. Although my actual area is Chesterfield, and the ward is the Chesterfield Ward. Either way. It is a pretty nice area, with mid to upper class neighborhoods. There's one area, Chesdin Landing, that has houses worth around 2 million, but the only member we have there is a live-in maid. So yeah.
Otherwise it is pretty good, well-off people, ranging all the way down to trailer parks and some "projects". Our bishop has a nice house, and if you need an image of what it's like just think of Robin Williams' house in Hook. Large, billowy curtains with classic walls and wood flooring. Pretty cool. Plus he kinda looks like Robin Williams in Hook. He's got the same kind of glasses, same hairstyle, and a cool sweater-vest deal going on. All I could think of at his house was him failing to make it to his son's baseball game. Although he's a much better guy than that. He probably made it to his son's baseball games. And took him out for real-fruit smoothies afterwards.
But yeah our ward is pretty awesome. We usually have a dinner appointment every night, and in case you're wondering, yes I've had to eat stuff I didn't like. Last night we got pizza from our members. One was a supreme and the other was Hawaiian. I had 4 pieces. Another night we had hawaiian chicken or something with even more pineapple in it. And yesterday for lunch I ordered a sandwich with lettuce and onions on it that I consequently ate. I'll let you guess how I handled it. We get member referrals all the time, and they're very involved in fellowshipping our investigators, of which we have 7 progressing. I've had to meet a LOT of new people and hear a lot of names, so it's real hard trying to get them all down and have them remember me. The elder I replaced was here for 7 months and all the kids loved him so whenever I show up at a member's house I get some combination of "who are you" and "where's the other one". A lot of disappointing looks from tactless children. But I'm trying to get better at getting to know people and being comfortable with them. Most of the time I let my companion do the talking since he's been here 3 months now.
Which leads me to my companion, Elder Petersen. I think it's funny his name is Petersen because he's a lot like Stephen. Just imagine Stephen talking a whole lot less and you have Elder Petersen. He's a big goof, who's been out 7 months, and is a district leader/senior companion/trainer for the first time, with a strange sense of style. He has at least 2 Looney Tunes ties (worse than the one Jacob had, I'm talking a full on crowd of Looney Tunes on it) and he wore a dinosaur tie to church on Sunday. And I don't think he did it ironically. He's pretty nice though and easy to live with. He's from Pocatello. He likes animals. He likes to shine his laser pointer (which hangs from his belt) at cats so they chase it around for hours. This can be a problem when we're trying to introduce ourselves to members and he's busy playing with his laser. Nevertheless, he knows this area very well and we rarely get lost. He is very quiet though, at least with me, so we often have entire car rides with no words spoken except for the sound of the EFY CD we're listening to for the umpteenth time. I haven't listened to any of my music yet but that's cause I don't want to cause any music battles like I had with Darren. Although they weren't really battles. More like strategic placements.
I don't have a driver's license yet since I have to wait for a letter from the DMV to go get it, but I found out why they're so butt-hurt about getting one. Apparently the terrorists from 9/11 had Virginia drivers licenses so they've had to step it up and screen people better so they can recover from that.
Oh, and our apartment is awesome, by the way. We live on the 4th floor but we have two bathrooms (with 2 showers; yeah I know), a washer and dryer, a dishwasher, a lot of living space, and an entire closet and dresser all for me. I put some of your pictures on the dresser to like, you know, personalize it or something. They all share the common theme of Casen so there you go.
Hm, back to missionary work. We don't do a lot of tracting since we have so many referrals and potential investigators to go see. The very first guy to answer the door though on my first day was wearing a wolfshirt, and not the ironic three wolf moon shirt either. He was sporting the full-blown beauty of the majestic wolf-beast on his shirt, and he looked dang serious about it. He later whipped out a pen with a dorky looking dragon thing on it so I gathered he was more a nerd than a hipster. He wasn't interested though. My very first door approach went good though. I asked if she wanted to hear a message about Christ and she said "Yes, I would". After I changed my pants and picked my mouth up from the floor my companion stepped in and asked when we could do that. He went and visited her on exchanges though yesterday and she didn't answer so whatever. She probably forgot.
We usually teach 3 lessons a day to investigators with a few more short lessons to members filling out the time. I really don't say much which is a problem. I find myself listening to my companion too much instead of thinking of something to say and contribute to the lesson. I'm working on it. I have yet to teach the Restoration since all our people are farther along, and that's the lesson we worked the most on in the MTC. But whatever. I usually fall asleep during personal study time too, so that doesn't help.
I think my time is up. Please write me. I can't print off e-mails, or at least I don't want to.
But yeah, that's that. I think I got it all.
-Elder Parker
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