Dear Family,
This week has been a pretty interesting week out here in Edinburg. This is the first area for me after leaving the area where I was "born" in the mission. It's a different experience to leave an area that you've been in for so long and to have to start off with new streets, new members and new investigators.
The biggest struggle for this area I believe is that we are so far out of the way. Our area is at the very northern tip of Edinburg and most of the little pueblitos are so far apart that it's a considerable mile/gas drain on the car to just go try and visit someone off the cuff. The distance of our area from most of the members in the ward is making having members present at lessons a little hard for us. And it didn't help that my companion has only been here six weeks and I just arrived. I spent Sunday getting to know a lot of the members better so that I could call them and not just be a no-name missionary asking them to drive 25 miles. Hopefully, we'll see some fruit from all these labors this week as we call members to see if they can come out with us.
My new companion is Elder Arens, who comes from Arizona. he's been out in the mission just under a year and is a good hard-working elder. The area that we work in is probably about 80% Spanish, which is nice because I'm getting a lot of practice with the language. A few days ago I had a day where I didn't speak any English during the day to my companion or anyone that could speak Spanish. It may not seem that fantastic of a story for some of the missionaries in foreign countries like *cough, Peru, cough*, but it took quite a bit of effort when you have another gringo missionary and most people will get what you're saying if you speak in English. Elder Arens has good Spanish, but I've found myself translating for him a few times during the lessons, so hopefully soon we'll be able to have some good studies together and get him rolling his erres.
Not too much this week has happened in the way of investigators, just a couple of good lessons and a couple sessions of damage control with some baptismal dates and their impatient parents that want them to decide if they're going to go through with it or not already. Anyway, the work is going well here and I'm excited to start doing my part to help the work of the Lord in the northern part of Edinburg, Texas.
By the way, my new address is: Elder Roland David Spencer Wood, 1313 Denver St., Edinburg, Texas, 78541
I was very happy to receive a lot of emails from the family this week. It was great to hear from all of you and I hope that even though I didn't have the time to respond, I'll be graced with more updates on how the family is doing!
Love and best wishes,
Elder Wood
