Letter #38

Well, this week was pretty busy.  With our new building opening up, our weekend was pretty packed, which was super good.  And next week, we have zone conferences, a mission fast, and then an apostle coming to visit us, so it's only going to get busier this coming week.

First of all, transfers went well.  My new companion is Elder Pope, and he has been in the mission for a little over a year now, which makes him my oldest companion that I've ever had by a little more than 4 months.  So that's a little weird.  He's from Salt Lake, and he's really cool.  Somehow we're still in that awkward phase with a new companion that is supposed to only last a day.  And we've been together for like a week now.  So that's sorta funny.  Also, I have heard so many Pope jokes since we got transfer calls that I cannot even handle them anymore.

Also, our toilet broke, and so we spent a while trying to fix that.  Ha.

The open house of our new building was super cool.  It's a little funny, because it looks exactly like so many other church buildings, but this one was different, because it is ours.  Everything smells super new still (especially the gym floor, since it isn't even done curing yet), and we had a huge turnout.  We had probably 10 or 15 less-actives/investigators that we specifically invited come and tour during the open house.  And then we had a bunch of other non-members and members there besides.  And it was really cool, because we got a bunch of questions that you've always heard about, but that people don't really ask (i.e. "Why aren't there any crosses in your chapel?", "Why are Mormons so interested in family history?", &c.), and so that was a lot better than hearing, "How many wives do you have?" again.  And then the next day, we had the dedication, which was also pretty awesome.  The stake presidency said that we were expecting about 1000-1100 people, and we had a turnout of about 1500 people.  So it was pretty packed in there.  We sat with Aaric and had a pretty good time together.  They had a super good choir that sang a bunch of awesome songs that weren't in the hymn book, so that was a special treat.  They sang some Brahms at one point, so that was really awesome.  It was kinda a weird meeting, because it wasn't like a normal sacrament meeting.  The highlight was when one of the deacons passed out a couple of rows behind me.  Also when the dedication prayer was over.  It was so long.  Haha, but really the best part was when we all sang The Spirit of God together at the end.  It felt like we were at the dedication of the Kirtland temple.  It was super cool.  That night, we had a general priesthood meeting that was really great as well in the same building, and it was all about missionary work.  So that was cool.

Anyway, that was the majority of this week.  It's going pretty great here in Washington.  We even got some sun one morning this week, so that was nice.  And yeah, things are going great here.