Aug 6, 2012

Hey mom,

Whewy. What a week. I feel like i've spent the week tumbling around in the dryer ha I don't know where to start so i reckon i'll just start from the beginning. We got all our departing missionaries sent of on wed. That was pretty sad. It was really really sad to see elder Brown go especially. I'm gonna miss him like crazy. There wasn't too much time to be sad though cause as soon as they left the new ones arrived. We got them all to the stake center and fed and the office staff debriefed them on a bunch of stuff for a couple hours while president interviewed each of them one by one and while we trained the trainers. It was weird to train the trainers this time knowing that i was really training myself too. But finally the time came when we got to meet our trainees. We all go into the same room and President has the new missionaries stand up one by one and introduce themselves, then he calls the trainer up and he meets his new companion yada yada. Of course i was the very last one ha But i already knew which one i was getting so it was ok. So then we got all loaded up on the transfer van and were taken up to our new areas.

My new comps name is Elder Larsen from Washington state. He's coming straight from the MTC and he's really, really good. I'm very happy with him. I love being in Ephraim. I'm suprised it's only 3 1/2 squar miles too ha it seems alot bigger. But maybe that's cause we are walking. I love being in a walk/biking area :) You can talk to sso many more people and you just feel like a missionary. Our house is 2 miles outside of town up a 1 1/2 mile hill so that's no fun, but usually the elders we live with give us a ride home. Our house right now is only temporary for us until they find us something in town. We're living with elder pedersen and his new trainee. We both were in st. george until we came here and he was one of our zone leaders so i know him really well. I was his zone leader when he came into the mission actually.

Our area right now is really rough. We cover just the college, so both the YSA stakes in town, and there is no one here because it's still summer break. The work is gonna explode in two weeks though when everyone comes back. Someone told us there will be 800 more people when they move in for school, 200-300 of which will be non-members. I like those numbers. My goal is to have atleast 10 baptisms before i go home but we'll see how that goes. Elder Larsen is a good asset already. The only problems he has come from not knowing enoughyet but other than that he's willing to talk to everyone and doesn't get nervous and is just really really good. I'm really grateful for that because the knowledge he'll learn but those instincts are alot harder to teach.

 It is pretty weird not being an assistant anymore but not as weird as i thought it'd be. I have no idea what's going on in the mission and i really miss st. george but i'm happy where i'm at too. The Lord is helping me focuse on what i'm to do to build up snow college and i realize that i've had my time to be an assistant and learn from that calling and now my calling is to train elder larsen the best i can and learn here. So i'm happy. :) very very happy. 

Well, not too much more to report on my end. Lots of fun and exciting things ahead. Ha ok one more thing, last night somehow we ended up in the common room of the dorms where the football players are staying right now and taught a group of about 10 big burly non- member players from all over the east,the restoration. It was so stinkin fun. I don't think i've ever had so much fun teaching. We were able to quell alot of the common things they'd learned about mormons. Typical stuff from the east like we believe in aliens, horns, etc. Sooooo fun.

Love you!

Elder Spurlin

Oh! we also got to go to the castle valley pageant this last week. Kinda random but you should look it up. Elder zwick from the 70 was there and long story short i got to co-teach a non-member with him afterwards. It was AWESOME. If i could bear testimony like that...