On Mon, Apr 23, 2012 at 2:57 PM, Roland Wood <roland.wood@myldsmail.net> wrote:
Dear Family,
Welcome Michael! Wow, I can't
believe I have another nephew! That's amazing! At least it won't be
too long before I see him right? If you could email me some pictures
that would be great because I'm using the church computer which has a filter
that doesn't let me see the family blog. Lame, I know.
Well, let me get off some of the basic info from this last week. Just to make sure it's right, the address here is 3333 S. Alameda Apt 4H, Corpus Christi, TX, 78411.
I'm in the Corpus Christi central area. We have a car here in this
area, but the other elders that live with us are on bikes. I'm kind of
sad to be back in a car right before the end of my mission. I really
like the bike experience, but sadly it looks like that won't be coming
back. I like the car as well, don't get me wrong, but the bike just
gets you more stories.
The weather
up here in Corpus Christi is just amazing. We're averaging between 75 and
85, sunny, with a light breeze. We've only had one day so far when it
rained, and it wasn't even really that bad. We live just four or five
blocks from the Gulf, which is pretty cool. We run out to the Gulf in
the mornings sometimes. It's quite a pretty sight in the morning with
the sunrise and all.
We've been
having a great time here in Corpus Christi so far. We've seen a great
amount of success here in the wards. We have a small English ward and
an even smaller Spanish branch. The average attendance for the English
ward is about 70 to 80 people, and the Spanish branch normally is about
30 people. It turns out that I'm whitewashing the area as well with my
new companion, Elder Mejia. He's from Arizona and is a really good
elder, A hardworker for sure, which is something really great. There are
four elders in our district and three of the four of us all got here a
week ago, so things in the ward are very new. I had meetings with both
the bishop and the branch president. We talked to them about some of
the goals that they had for the units here. Both meetings went well and
I think that we did a lot to gain the trust of the leaders here. Just
in the last week we saw a big improvement in the work and we should be
seeing even more success this week. We have received a lot of referrals
from the members here, which I think is a good sign. There are a large
number of part member families here, and we've got appointments with
quite a few of them, to try and get things moving with some of those
families.
We've been
working a lot to clean our apartment since we got here. It was left
pretty messy and we've been trying to clean it as best we can. It'll be
a pretty intense job, but the number of bugs has gone down
already. I think I've managed to take pictures of all my apartments so
far, except for maybe one, which was my first apartment in Laredo. But,
other than that, I'm pretty sure that I have photos of all of them.
On a random
note, I just remembered something that happened last week on Monday
night. So you haven't heard about it. We were visiting our
members and recent converts before I left, and that day, there was a big
thunderstorm. We got caught out in the thunderstorm on the bikes, and
there was lightning hitting around us, so we took cover in a
member's home. When the storm was clearing up, we went over to Zulma's
house so I could say my goodbyes and give her an exhortation to stay
active. When we got to Zulma's house, there was a giant DOUBLE rainbow
that went right over her house! We got a picture with her and her
family outside the house with the rainbows going over it. Cool stuff. I
also got some really good sunset pictures that day as well.
I sent an
email and a text off to President Trayner asking him to make the
recommendation so you all can sign me up for the classes. Hopefully
that can happen today. I had an interview with him on Thursday, and I
brought it up, so I imagine it will be taken care of soon.
I'm the
district leader here for the North district of Corpus. It's a small
district of just two companionships, but I know soon some great things
will be coming out of it.
We had a great first week here in Corpus, and next week is gonna be great too! Let me know how Michael is doing!
Love you,
Elder Wood
