Samuel's Mission E-mail June 30, 2008

Everyone:
Well, we had transfers on Wednesday. I'm back to just covering Downey 1st with one companion. His name is Elder Bird, and he's from Orem, Utah. I've been joking around a bit with him about how I'll just go over from BYU and pester him after the mission.
As for our week, Tuesday was a very strange day. Elder Chadwick and Elder Gathro were helping with moving everything out of Elder Gathro's old apartment because they were closing it (Elder Gathro is in a different apartment now, but still covers Bell Gardens). While they did that, I was with Elder Otis and Elder Roark, the bike Elders in our district. Fortunately I had the car, which they appreciated greatly, so I didn't have to try to keep up with their bikes on foot. In the evening we made preparations for transfers. Elder Chadwick went over to the Inglewood/Hawthorne area (If you want to know where that is, a map is probably better than any discription I could attempt).
Wednesday was spent in getting several different elders settled into their new companionships. We also tracted for a bit and had our normal correlation meeting.
On Thursday we had weekly planning, we tracted, and we stopped by a couple members and less-actives to introduce Elder Bird. On Friday we had our zone meeting, we helped some neighbors of our district leader (who lives in our area) move apartments, and we gave a blessing to the non-member friend of one of the members of the ward because she was in the hospital after falling down and breaking some bones. That was an interesting experience, especially given how thankful she was for us coming over. We also visited Lir because she had been ill.
On Saturday we decided to try a bit of an experiment by walking to all of the places we wanted to go and talking to people in the street on the way. Elder Bird ended up with some blisters on his feet, so we decided against doing quite so much walking in the future. We did, however, do some tracting and teach Rosie (who is still doing great).
On Sunday, we introduced the revised Downey 1st Ward Mission Plan during the 5th Sunday combined Priesthood/Relief Society meeting, tracted, and had dinner with the Bishop, which ended up turning into a conversation about people we might be able to visit.
Well, I believe that's everything. Elder Bird and I get along very well (he's another fantasy/sci fi guy, so I may actually drop by his house after we get back home. Mariana would be interested to know that he also likes to draw.), and we're hoping to be able to do some good here.
Elder Samuel Stephens