Email January 29, 2013 P-Days Tuesday's "I forgot my CARD READER!!"

Subject: Mommy

you are just only supposed to send mail to my mission home,

dear mom,

I am in Laguna Hills! it is a city in between laguna beach and Laguna Niguel. my area is one ward, the Laguna Hills 2nd Ward. It is an awesome ward where the members love missionary work. we really do eat a dinner every night at the members house. and saturday night I was leading an exchange, which means I was the Elder who stayed in his area, and I was with Elder Deyoung, he is from Morgan Utah, and he is my Zone Leader. anyways, saturday night we had a very fancy 3 course meal with a sister who was the BEST COOK IN THE WORLD. she should have a TV show. she is from Italy, and it shows indefinately. 

I live in a one bedroom apartment, with a living room and kitchen, I have heard that it is one of the bigger apartments in the area, the mission spends over 100,000 a month on rent alone! that is crazy! I wish I could see the ocean while I walked around, since I am so close, but the Laguna Beach Elders get that to themselves. the area has alot of hills and we get a good run in every morning. probably close to a 5k every morning.

I forgot my CARD READER!! at the apartment so I cant send home my pictures this week. sorry! but I have been taking good ones for you to see. my niehbor is named Monique, she is like 75-80, and is very french. dont really understand what she says alot of the time, but whatever, she is nice. she is very lonely, and makes up excuses for us to help her, but for some reason everything gets resolved by the time we are done talking to her. 

There is not a lot going on in our area right now. the past companionships here were all pretty ready to go home so not tons of work has been done. alot of our teaching records havent been updated since 2011. which basically sucks. the investigators we do have, have been meeting with the investigators for a long time already, but they still dont know anything (fancy that). so we are basically starting fresh. my companion is Elder Anderson. We have nothing in common. and it is hard to get along with him haha. he misunderstands me and doesnt have the guts to tell me when I am frustrating him untill he cant take it any more, and it always turns out to be something stupid that we resolve instantly after he almost starts crying. but he takes long showers so I get a good amount of time in the morning to myself haha! and he doesnt like spicy food so he doesnt eat any of the fresh salsa I bought. I guess that is a plus too.

But he is a good missionary. he is really excited to have a companion that doesnt 'suck' as he said. we are looking forward to growing the area alot. 

One of the coolest things so far, is that every thursday a catoring company comes to the complex and sells really good tacos for a dollar a piece. everyone from the area shows up and it is a good time, I want to use that time to get with some people that usually hate us haha. 

I am pretty sure there was a man taking a bath in the hot tub this morning. he had a thing of body wash with him... it kindof worried me, so I told the maintenence guys on the way out, they said he has done it before haha.

We get a car wednesday-friday and share one on tuesday. we get alot of rides from members, but we are going to start walking more to contact a lot. 

One of the Investigators we do have is 9 and her name is Natalie xx. she has a single mom named Angelica, who has 5 kids, and works nights. the two boys 16, 13 are baptized and go to church. Natalie has a hard time focusing on things, and learning. so we taught her the plan of salvation with sidewalk chalk. and she realy liked it. we had her walk us threw it. it was AWESOME! haha. Angelica knows that the church is good for her kids. she lets us go over there whenever we want and boss her kids around and tells on them if they didnt do there reading or if they were fighting or not doing their homework. it is cool. she just doesnt really want to change herself yet I dont think. she buys Herbal Tea for us to drink. specifically Lemon Grass. Elder Anderson was really uneasy about it, because he thought it was evil. but I made him drink it haha. she let me pick a lemon off of her tree and  I cut it up and put it in my tea with some sugar so it was like warm lemonade. it was actually pretty good! there is another little girl named Ariana who is 6 and reminds me of Zoe's little sisters. because she is really small and mexican haha. and Erik is 4 and he is special, he reminds me alot of Jaymo, and it is amazing that Angelica can keep up with all of those kids and work nights and she is amazing. Natalie's favorite thing to do is hug us 100 times and steal the stuff out of out pockets and our name tags. she is funny haha. I love this family so much already! it reminds me of my home. 

I love all of you, and hopefully I remember my card reader next time!

Elder Strong