Elder Brandon Richmond's Mission Blog: Brandon's Fifty Ninth Email! September 19th, 2016

HEY!

I'm very excited about my new area!!! So it's Estación Florida, if you want to look it up and a ward locator online to see my area on google maps (through the church's site) IT'S HUGE!! We have a lot of little campo houses and one pueblito called 25 de mayo. We have a small slice of the city, but the sisters have most of it. There are 4 sisters and 4 elders here. The 4 elders live together, then in our zone there are two more small elder areas in the middle of nowhere.

I live with Elder Villacillos (my comp, SUPER rad and fun and funny and a good teacher and everything), and Elder Valqui (from Peru) and Elder Teixeira (from Brazil). It's funny because Elder Teixeira is in his second transfer and speaks half Portuguese still. Like always says, "Está me hablando?" Instead of, "Está hablándome?" It's funny. And despois instead of despues... He is really crazy and funny. I like the house.

The branch has about 40 in attendance. My companion and I gave talks this Sunday, it went well! Some member's son lives in San Clemente, and he totally knows San Diego, so that was cool! We have counselors and a secretary, so that's awesome!!

Dad, could you send me the before picture of my XS 400 please?

And the date of your marriage for my family pamphlet?

So we were in a lesson with this guy and I said, "Cool well, do you still use it?" And he said, "No we closed it off." And I asked why and he said, "Oh, some lady killed herself in it before we moved in. Hold on a sec."

So then he went inside and had a shoebox full of the lady's photos and showed them to us and we were like terrified like why do you have these? And he said he even had the note she left... we were like okay that'ssss enough... Super crazy how he described it so detailed and we were like why are you telling us this. I don't get why some people are so random... it was so sad the story.

Well I don't have much to say. I packed and everything and changed areas. My area is exciting, and my comp is great, he has been here two transfers so it's likely that he will go, but maybe not!

We had that meeting on Friday with Elder Teixeira and it was really cool. I learned a lot from some of the ideas we talked about. My companion and I were giving an accounting of the progress of the zone and he pulls out this huge cannon and took photos and we were like ummm... it was funny because it was just of ours. He speaks Port, Spanish, and was throwing in funny english sentences too. He must be very very smart. That was an all day thing.

I'm excited, we have our zone conference tomorrow and then we'll have divisions where Elder Peterson and his trainee will come to our area.

Well, that's pretty much all I have to say for now, hopefully I'll have cool stories for next week! We're really excited to find people to teach in the fields sort of, and always use the Book of Mormon!

Top Ten (not in order)

-The AWESOME gaucho store here. They have soo much stuff, like cool leather things.

-They have like chocolate mate pretty much; It's like cocoa shells that you put hot milk into and use a bombilla and everything, super tasty.

-My new area seems really full of potential

-My new comp is really cool, easy going, hardworking. I'm excited

-WE HAVE LUNCH ALMOST EVERY DAY!!!!!!

-Our area is large! Kind of overwhelming, but less constrained than Rocha.

-Using the Book of Mormon reminds me why I need to be here, to help others learn of all of the truths we know thanks to the Book of Mormon. And the fact that they can know Joseph Smith is a prophet, and that our church has a true prophet!

-We went in the morning to these random hills in the grass fields we could see from the outskirts, none of them had talked to missionaries, and we gave all of them copies of the Book of Mormon!

-We can drink mate in our house now. My comp likes it too so in the morning we just heat up water and have our mate.

-I'm really excited to meet all the people in my area and zone and just try and work my very hardest so that everything progresses!

I love this work! Elder Richmond