District leader

As you all know, I got transferred last week. Where to? I got moved to Ramona, a little farming town just up to the north-east of San Diego. It's the furthest north in the mission. It's smaller than Brigham City, yet bigger than Willard. It has a lot of dirt roads, farms, fields, horses, cows, and tons of cats. We're surrounded by what the locals call "mountains", but they're really just hills with massive boulders all over them. Our area is pretty much just one street, (since the rest are dirt roads with farms, typically white-Americans), and we're walking. The English wards around here are booming with the member missionary work, and are having several baptisms. The Spanish branch makes up about 80 members total with about 50 active members. The branch Presidency and ward mission leader are white except for the second counselor in the Presidency. From what I've heard, the member missionary work isn't very strong in the ward, so I'm hoping to take an idea to the stake president to see if we can get things moving. Oh. Right. I've been called as district leader, by the way. Just thought you oughta know.

My companion is Elder V, and he's from Victoria Island up in Canada. It's right next to Vancouver. He's a great missionary, although he had a rough spot in the middle of his mission with an extremely disobedient companion. He's become extremely obedient since then, but he still feels bad about what happened in the past. He says that all of his cousins, uncles, aunts, and siblings are all less-active or inactive, and he says that he's got a lot of work to do when he gets home. The other two Elders are the Zone leaders, Elders I and N. All of the missionaries in the district have been out longer than I have, not to mention the other Elders are Zone leaders. So being a district leader here will be an interesting experience. All of the other Elders have been out for 20 months, so they're already talking trunky. They've been doing that for days.

Elder T is still down in Chula Vista with a trainee, and he's the new district leader. He's got a handful down there. But I think he'll do well.

For the last couple of days, we've been visiting all of the people in our area that we know, and so I've gotten to know a couple of people. Most of the people I've met are actually NOT from Tijuana, (for the first time in my mission). Most of them are actually from Guadalajara, where they have a lot of mariachi bands. And every morning for morning exercise, we go to this park in the city and play a little bit of rugby. It's been pretty fun.

I don't really have much else to talk about. We've been working and working, but there's really not much to be done here since it's all so small. Today, we were talking about going to see Potato-Chip rock, which is this giant rock that's really thin, and looks like a chip. Exciting, right? Since we're in the "mountains", we don't really have much to do on P-days except for sports and hikes.

I'm trying to think of stuff to write, but I'm coming up blank. I was reading in Alma, where Ammon goes to the Lamanites, and I noticed that he was with the Lamanitish servants for three days before the flocks were scattered. Now Ammon, being the missionary that he is, probably talked to those servants and tried to share the gospel with them for those three days. Yet they wouldn't listen. I think that he prayed to the Lord to give him a way to talk to them, and have them listen. Once the flocks were scattered, Ammon saw his opportunity to open up the missionary work. After that, he defended those servants and chopped some limbs, then got summoned to the King's presence. After that, the work started rolling. But I thought it interesting that it doesn't mention any big event in those three days before. But oh well. That's just a little tidbit that I noticed in my studies.

Let everyone know how much I love them.

-Love, Elder Crook