I'm in Wakefield now. This place is pretty barren. We live in the city (?) of Wakefield which is pretty small itself (one stoplight) but we also cover all of Sussex county and Surry county. It's at least an hour trip to go from the top of the area to the bottom. The city of Waverly is probably the biggest city in the area (which is not saying much) with Dendron and Surry and others also in the area. Definitely less populated. Which makes us more mile-conscious than ever. But yeah it's definitely a branch here and they meet in one of the coolest church buildings I've seen. It was an old Quaker church so it has stain-glass windows and everything. Pretty cool. The branch has an attendance of about 60 each week which isn't terrible. The roster is 4.1 pages long which is a far cry from the 22 page roster in Waynesboro. It's fun though. The branch seems more united and they all know that we need miles so they're willing to drive us around this whale of an area. They had us go up to the stand and introduce ourselves which didn't happen in either of my other 2 areas. The church is in walking distance of our house (which is about 100 years old) so that's cool. And our apartment is pretty big even if it's very very old. The kitchen is kinda dumpy but it's alright. We have a washer and dryer. That is a victory. I would send pictures of stuff but I don't think I can upload them with this computer at this library. I can't get it to work.
But yeah this is definitely a new experience. Being shotgunned is not fun. There were missionaries here right before us so it's not like it was closed or anything. We've done a lot of just meeting our investigators and members and stuff. The area is very much country country country, moreso than Waynesboro which I thought was very country too. We didn't know where anything was at first but our first person we taught offered us his GPS for a little bit so that helped out a ton. We also spent our first day walking around cause the last missionaries forgot to give us the car key and apartment key (they gave it to our branch president cause he works in Richmond which is where they were) so that was fun. Elder Christensen is a goober. He's from Albany, Oregon which was not at all what I had predicted. He's really nice and is one of those "laugh at all your jokes whether they're funny or not" and "apologize for everything that may inconvenience you" kind of guys. Those aren't complaints, by the way. It's a far cry from...previous...experiences. Yeah. He's been out over a year and is the District Leader here which makes for more fun waiting-around-while-my-companion-does-numbers time. Could be worse though. I know that for a fact.
The work should be good too. We had 3 people come to church Sunday which is nuts for us only having met 2 of them and barely inviting them to come for the first time the day before. One of them is this cool old guy who used to be a catcher in the Orioles minor league system. He didn't play too long but come on. That's cool, right? Plus he said his life has been changed since the last missionaries gave him a Book of Mormon. That's cool too, right?
I think that's about it. I'm probably forgetting stuff but I always do. I'm still writing in my journal everyday. It's getting harder but I'm doing it.
-Elder Ryan Parker
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