Welcome to Jasper!
Dad
would hate it here. There are trees everywhere, very green. Jasper is a
small town, but it does have a Walmart so that makes it a little
better, I guess. Our area actually covers 3 or 4 more little towns, but
I've only been to one other so far. We do have a car, but despite being
one of the largest areas in the mission, we dont have as many miles as
some other areas, so we try to bike when we can and when it isn't
raining.
Our apartment
is nice, at least. It is a clean complex, a nice area, a little fishing
pond/park just down the road. And it's one of the few apartments with
two bathrooms, so that is a nice thing. Doesn't feel too cramped, and we
have a washer/dryer in the apartment so we dont have to go anywhere.
Elder
Lloyd is quiet and reserved generally, so we get along pretty well.
He's been out about 14 months, and is our district leader right now
too.
So I talked about the park near our apartment. Apparently Christmas is really
important in Jasper. The whole park is filled with lifelike
silhouettes of Christmassy things and what not, and it's on the light
poles and everything. Well, where there are light poles.
Other
than that, Jasper is just a small and relatively poor town. The Jasper
branch is 289 members strong, but has a 70% inactive rate so it's really
just like 60 members. We do have a building, although the chapel is
only like six rows long, and the gym is only half court. So it's small,
but works for the small branch. Our branch president is President
B__, he seems like a good guy. Our ward mission leader, Brother M__,
is great, took us out for lunch on Wednesday to get to know me. Also in
the branch is the R__ family.
The
R__ family is important for several reasons. First off, at least
three people we've contacted say they've talked about the gospel with
C__ R__. He apparently knows everyone in Jasper and surrounding
territories. The second is that the R__'s have some soon-to-be
missionaries. So on Wednesday night we attended a mission call opening,
and it was the full party, standing room only type of thing. L__ got
called to the Yakima, Washington mission, so we'll be swapping places.
Now, the second R__ thing is that we had a R__ missionary
farewell on Sunday. And they went all out. 4 talks, 3 musical numbers,
and doubled the size of the branch with family from the area, and then a
party/linger-longer afterwards that was as elaborate as I've ever seen.
That's just how the R__s are, I guess. But with the musical
numbers, we got a text on Thursday asking "that new elder plays the
piano, right?" So long story short, I played for one of the solo's, and
sang in a group for another song. I'm glad the piano part wasn't too
hard. Sorry I don't have a recording, I didn't think about it until
afterwards. I'm also speaking next week, so the branch is eager to use
me.
Okay, about the
actual missionary work. When I got here, we had two people on date. An
hour later, we only had one. Our good, progressing person dropped us
because her inactive member boyfriend by which she has two children
cheated on her. So then we only had F__ on date. So our week was spent
tracting, tracting, tracting to find new people. When I got here on
Monday-Wednesday, it was 80 degrees outside and absolutely terrible. By
Friday it was down in the 40's and 50's and felt really cold. The time
we're supposed to be out working is from 10-12, afternoon, and 6-9.
Great. Well, it gets dark at 6, so we do a lot of tracting and knocking
doors in the dark. And cold. And downpour, the last couple of nights.
But things are going well. We found 8 people who were at least willing
to have us come back, including one deaf lady who could read our lips.
We're trying to get the ASL missionaries to video chat in so we can teach
her. We also met a Brother G__, not a member but has been taught on
and off for a long time. As we talked with him, he opened up to us in a
way that he said that he never had before with missionaries, and both Elder Lloyd and I felt prompted that we needed to get him to baptism. So
were going to try to get back there this week.
President
Hewlett wants all new missionaries to read the Book of Mormon in 11
weeks, at which point they have a thing called "new missionary
certification" where a new elder, like me, has to teach five lessons solo,
and have scripture references for certain topics memorized, and stuff.
So I'm working on that, actually trying to finish the Book of Mormon by
the end of the year.
Okay,
well, I feel like I've written a lot. There are more stories I could
tell, obviously, but I think I'll stop there for today. Also, I can have
a backpack in this mission, just like we guessed. I was going to get one
today, but I got a little handle-bar bag for my bike instead, which
should fit the bill.
Signing out,
Elder DeFord
P.s. I realize I'm not in any of the pictures. I'll try and do a better job of picture taking.
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