Dear Family and Friends,

Well it is my first week in the mission field, and it has been pretty crazy. My trainer is 19 has been out for 3 transfers and is training as the new district leader and we are both new to the area that I am starting in. (they call it being doubled in) so it has been really crazy.

I hope that it calms down a little bit by this week so i can start getting into a regular schedule, like actually getting personal study in the mornings. (crossing fingers) The two wards that we cover are great, very friendly and we have a full feeding calender. but i think just like everywhere they could be doing more missionary work to help us out. The ward leadership has spent a lot of time coming up with some really good ideas but it is getting the members to really get those ideas moving that is falling short. I am really excited to find ways to get the fire moving with these members if they could all be as focused as the mission leaders this place wouldn’t even need missionaries except to teacher lessons and baptize.

I am currently trying to come up with new ways of getting ourselves into new investigators homes because i feel that tracting is not the most effective way of doing things. So if anyone has ideas i am open to hearing them.

The area in which i am serving (the Tri-Cities) has quite the history that i had no idea about. This whole area started from a military compound that was one of the sites of the Manhattan Project. (made the bombs dropped in WWII) And they are pretty proud of it, a nearby high school has the mascot of “The Bombers.” I got a really good laugh when I heard that, and with graduations this weekend banners of the Richland Bombers were draped all over town. Well hopefully next week I will have more to say I will have been here twice as long so hopefully.

Elder Steven Cordon