Hey y'all!
So... I was going to start this email with "It's so hot here!" (just for you mom ;) ) but it's not actually that hot, surprisingly enough... very humid, but not too hot. Yet. All the locals say that we're in the middle of a weird cool-ish spell... and that August should be MUCH hotter. I'm not looking forward to that... but right now is good. :) Anyway... I made it to Texas, safe and sound! We had an hour and a half delay on our flight from Dallas to Houston... not so much fun... so our layover ended up being about 4 and a half hours long. But, eventually, we all made it to Houston. :) There were 34 missionaries in my travel group - all going to the Houston mission. Crazy stuff!! The wave of missionaries is turning into more of a
tsunami... and I'm so glad that I'm a part of it! President Pingree and his family were waiting at the airport, and everything good that I had heard about him is true - he's an amazing mission president, and made each of us feel like we were at home as soon as he met us. I'm so excited to work with him and get to know him better.
So, about my new companion... Sister Wahlen (pronounced Wall-en) is great. She's been out for 4 months, and I'm her second trainee... just goes to show how many missionaries are coming out! We're supposed to be with our trainer for 12 weeks, but there just aren't enough experienced missionaries to train the new ones. But she's great - I'm learning so much from her! She's from North Ogden Utah, and has been serving in the Montgomery area since she got out into the field. ...until now, that is. Yep, we're whitewashing. (For those of you that don't know, whitewashing is where neither companion has served in the area before, so you're basically starting from scratch in building relationships and such.) Not only are we whitewashing, we're opening a new area for sisters. So we don't even have an area book to work with. Yep. And, we don't have a map of the area. Yeah... we're struggling a bit. Thank goodness we have an awesome ward mission leader who printed off the ward directory from lds.org and a few partial maps of the area from google maps for us. So basically for the past few days we've been trying to get to know the area and some of the members. There are elders in our area, Elder Bartholomew and Elder Pauga. Elder Bartholomew has been in the area for the past several months and really knows his way around. they have been helping us out with finding our way to dinner appointments and church and meetings and such. We've kind of been playing tag-along with them for the past few days... not to all their appointments - we've been doing some of our own contacting. But as soon as the families from their dinner appointments found out that there were going to be sisters in the area, they invited us to come with the elders to dinner. So we haven't been starving, don't worry. :)
We also joined them on an... interesting... service project Friday evening. One of the recent converts in the ward asked the elders to help her and her husband build a fence for her mom who lives in the area. Sounds simple enough, right? Wrong - we were using wood from an old fence that had been torn down... so most of it was well worn and some of it was broken or breaking. And we only had one hammer to work with at the beginning and it ended up breaking (Someone went to the store and bought a few more). And the posts had been put in all crooked, so the fence ended up being somewhat zig-zagged... and VERY uneven on the top... but all she wanted was a fence to keep her dogs in, and she said that it would work perfectly, so... I guess that works. It was, like I said, interesting work. But we had a good time and got to know the elders better as well as the family we were helping.
We are living in an apartment complex, in a brand new apartment - so new that they were finishing the tiling in the kitchen and bathroom when we were moving in. All of the supplies from the mission home got kinda jumbled around in translation... somehow we ended up with 3 sets of pots and pans, 2 irons, and no plates or bowls, and no bed frames.
We're working with our district leader to get the extras that we have back to the mission home and what we still need up here to us.
Oh, I guess I should probably tell you what area I'm in - I'm in the Westlake ward in Katy, Houston. It's just west of Houston, so half the addresses in our ward are in Houston and half are in Katy. There are a lot of apartment complexes in the ward, some older neighborhoods, and some newer neighborhoods. It's a pretty area, very green. Also, there are palm trees. Yes, palm trees in Texas - who would have thought! But there are no mountains... I miss the mountains, everything is so flat! I also miss the grid system of Utah - It would be so much easier to find our way around! But I think I finally know the main streets at least. Sister Wahlen said that her parents said it's ok for her to buy a GPS, so hopefully we'll be able to get that today.
As far as mail goes, you should send it to me at this address:
Sister Megan Ririe
Stone Creek Apartments #3104
20000 Saums Road
Katy, TX 77449
It will get to me quicker if you send it that way - there is no one that really goes between the mission home and my area that regularly... I will eventually get anything you send to the mission home, but this is my address, for the next 6 weeks at least. :)
Sunday was great - we finally got to put faces to some of the names that we had talked about in meetings with our ward mission leader and the elders. We got to meet a lot of the ward members and even some of the elder's investigators who were at church this Sunday. Since we're opening up a new area for sisters, the ward members were so excited when they learned that we're not just visiting - that we'll be staying in the ward. I'm hoping that their enthusiasm for sister missionaries will mean that they're super willing to help out! So far, everyone we've met has been very friendly and helpful. Our ward has a lot of inactive/less-active members, (there are 635 people in our ward records, but only about 220 actually come to church...) so I feel like we'll be making a lot of
re-activation efforts in the coming weeks.
We met an awesome family - the Schoenbecks. They had us (Sister Wahlen and I, we have a dinner calendar separate from the elders now :) ) over for dinner yesterday. They recently moved from New York, where they re-activated themselves. Since they have started coming back to church, they have been really involved with the missionaries -
they would feed the missionaries twice a week when they were in New York, and their two kids LOVED having them over. They moved out to Houston a couple months ago, and we were the first missionaries they've had over since they moved, so their kids were so excited to see us. They made us feel very welcome, and made sure that we knew that they could come over any time - they said that if we ever had investigators we could bring them over to their house for FHE. I love them! They are trying to get rid of some of the bad habits that they started while inactive in New York so that they can go to the temple and be sealed as a family - their goal is this December. And Sister Wahlen and I are going to do everything we can to see them there. :)
So.. Houston is great, I'm doing well, and I love to hear from all of you! I'm glad that everything is going well, from what I've heard, at home and in your respective missions. Elder Michael Ruesch, welcome to the group - I would love to continue getting your letters! I love you all so much!! Have a great week!
Sister Ririe
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