October 23, 2017: First E-Mail from Nic from Washington

First E-Mail from Nic from Washington:

"First off I want to start off by saying this area that I'm in, is apparently where the show "cops" originally started so that should tell you something. I'm in the straight ghetto, but like my trainer Elder M said, "Gangsters love Jesus" I actually have two trainers, Elders M and B. I also have Elder S who was in my district in the MTC.

We have a car, so that's nice to have, especially with all this rain. When we first got here, we were met by President and Sister Leishman and they're very nice, they took us back to a church where we met our trainers and we instantly went out and started knockin doors. We knock A LOT in this mission, according to our trainers it's the most effective way of finding people. Some dude our first night screamed at us to never come to his house saying "y'all are called Mormon because you eat more men" and I didn't think cannibalism was a part of our church, but this man proved me wrong lol. On Sat, our trainers dropped Elder S and I off to do a "9 to 9" aka we were knocking from 9 am to 9 pm. We had a small break to eat sandwiches we made. Our first house that day we got bible bashed pretty hard and we had no idea what to say since we are so new lol.

I have one story to tell. Elder B and I were knocking in a trailer park and one man opened his door, he's a little scary lookin because he has a tumor in his head and he's missing some of his skull, but when we told him we were Mormon missionaries he said "No way I was just talking about you guys earlier today! I'm Mormon too!" Turns out he was born in Utah so he just considers himself Mormon and he hasn't been baptized and knows nothing about the church because he moved from Utah when he was 2. We were having a great discussion and then his friend walks in swearing and holding alcohol so we were like "oh no there goes our lesson." This guy looks at us and says "Hey Elders!" I was so lost, turns out that he was baptized in 2014 and is just very inactive but he ended up helping a lot with the lesson. William and his daughter Jayda seem very eager to be baptized, but they missed church Sunday so that made me kinda sad. That just shows that the Lord really does prepare people and William seems excited to be baptized, it's sad though because he told us he doesn't have much time because of his health issues. All in all I love it here!"