La Joya! Population: Cactus
You know, La Joya's a pretty cool place. It's kinda deserty and there's a lot of fields everywhere, kinda like the Deer Park area so I feel right at home. My new companion, Elder Pope, is great. We're both Internet people, and we love to sing and do funny voices. So really the trick is not letting things get out of hand.
We can see the border from our area. We should go to a town tomorrow where I can get a picture of the river. Did you know the only hand-pulled fairy in the US is here in south texas? Think like "Knight's Tale" when they're crossing the English channel and that's what we have.
Also we're now in a 4-man apartment. It's. So. Much. Harder. To. Focus. Today to start off comp study we sang "Book of Mormon Stories" with Elder Pope on the guitar, Elder Shumway on the empty water jug drum, Elder Merril with the pringles can full of rice and me on the ocarina. We sounded so freaking cool and tribal.
We have a member who's a coyote and he goes out to hunt buffalo for a living. Someday I'll let y'all know what that means.
We had a super cool lesson this week. This woman knows that baptism is something important but was worried about not really having enough faith and was just doubting her relationship with Heavenly Father. So we asked her to pray and ask God if he's there, and if she should get baptized. And then after the prayer we asked if she got and answer, she just said, "yes." Plain and simple, no ifs, buts, or i dunnos. That's the power of the spirit, folks.
The bad news is that after 8 months on a bike I dont really remember how to drive. The good news is the owner of the other car said not to worry about it, it's just a scratch.
This library is awful and I can't upload my pictures, maybe next week if you're lucky.
Below are some questions Dylan answered for us:
How did you get all of your stuff from Weslaco to La Joya? We just have normal little cars to move stuff in. It all fit in my backpack and 2 1/2 suitcases, and then there are bike racks on the back.
Tell us about your new companion: Where is he from? How long had he been out? Elder Pope is from Utah and has been out for like 3 or 4 months. He's another ginger like Elder Charles. His last companion was in my MTC district so I'm trying to fill Elder Pyrah's shoes cuz he's super spiritual.
Are you serving in 2 wards again? Spanish & English? The English ward is all the way in mission, but nearly everyone here speaks spanish too so mostly they just come here to spanish. We only drive to English ward if we have investigators or someone over there, and we go on splits when we do so we can cover both. I didn't go last week.
Do you still have a grocery store & a few restaurants? We still have Walmart and the usual, McDonalds and stuff, plus some local ones. Our area also goes over to Sullivan and everything down to the border.
How is your apartment? Are there other missionaries serving in your ward or your area? We have a four man apartment, and it's pretty nice other than my mattress. Elder Shumway and Elder Merril are awesome, Elder Shumway and I started in the Weslaco and Mercedes wards together. It's a ton of fun. And then our Spanish ward has 2 other companionships which make up the district and I don't know who goes to English.
Who's driving the car? Do you still ride your bikes? I have to drive, which I'm not good at anymore. I kind of bumped into someone in the Walmart parking lot, but they said not to worry about the scratch I made. Oops. We still ride bikes a couple days a week, so we drive to a town with the bikes on the bike rack and then park and bike around.
Sounds like you've all been having a ton of fun!!! Thanks for the valentines candy, it was super good. I don't have a ton of time because this library has really slow computers, hopefully next week will be better. Love you!!!!!
~Elder Dylan Young
