Hi Kids,
I thought you might be wondering what it is like
where Grandma and I are serving our mission, so I am writing to tell you a
little about our area in Colorado.
The town we live in is called Lamar. It is where the ward church building is
located but our boundaries are gianormous.
If our ward was a state in the 50 United States like (Arkansas or
Arizona), it is larger than eight of the other states. That is just our ward
boundaries - not our stake! Our town of Lamar is not very big. It would take
almost NINE Lamars to make one Rogers.
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| A Typical (nice) house in Lamar |
Everything here is really old. A house people
would call new would still be over 20
years old. Our house is called a four-plex. That means it is a building divided
into four living areas. We are upstairs
but only six steps up. The one below us is mostly underground. We think
this building is about 50 years old, but it is pretty clean - just old. So
maybe we won’t get cooties or anything.
:>)
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| Main Street in Lamar |
All of the streets are really wide in town. Most
of the other little towns around in our ward boundaries have DIRT streets, and
they look SO poor. We can’t figure out why people want to live here by choice.
Maybe they got hypnotized on accident by staring at a windmill or something.
We travel on a LOT of dirt roads.
The land is really flat. Really, really flat. We
see tumbleweeds, and jackrabbits, and prairie dogs, and coyotes. The clouds are
really low to the ground here. It is not because the clouds are low, but the
land is higher. We are about a half mile higher here than in Arkansas. We thought it would be really cold and snowy,
but it is not any different than home really. Everyone says is doesn’t rain
very much here. That’s good, I guess, because all those dirt roads would be
very muddy.
We get to travel a lot and see the
scenery. It ALL looks just like this!
When we drive to the South part of our ward we
pass two big windmill farms. They are so huge. If the windmill blades were
propellers on an airplane, the plane would be too big to land at the airport!
We have been drinking bottled water, since the
water from the faucet doesn’t taste very good. That is because it has so many
minerals in it. There are cows here, but they don’t graze in the pastures. I
guess it is because there isn’t enough water for them to drink or grass to eat.
So they raise cattle on feed lots. Those
are big fenced-in pens where all the cows are grouped together, and they feed
them in the pens until they are big enough to go to McDonalds. The bad part is
that feed lots stink really, really bad because there is a WHOLE BUNCH of cow
poo all in one place. When the wind blows you can smell them all over town.
That is not the best thing.
Grandma likes to walk every morning, and she
takes me, too. We go to a gym in the community center building, and we walk
around the halls. She walks very fast. I try to keep up, but it is almost
impossible. Sometimes other people are walking, too. She walks faster than all
of them. I like to tell other people about the church while we are walking.
Hey, Grandma, wait for me!
We have been meeting lots of good people. Many
people in our ward don’t come to church. Some of them live 30 miles or 50 miles
or 80 miles from our chapel. Part of our job is to get them to come back again.
We already got one couple to come back, and we are working with several others.
We are also teaching a non-member about the church. That is really fun. She and
her new husband live very far away. Yesterday we had an appointment with them,
but they overslept and could not hear the door from their bedroom in the
basement. Our trip there and back was about 150 miles, and took about 3 hours
of driving. We don t mind driving far to teach people, but it isn’t real fun
when they aren’t there.
Grandma looked pretty on Valentines Day.
Two
weeks ago both of us spoke in sacrament meeting. Last Sunday I taught a
priesthood class. Tonight we are teaching a class to prepare people who are
going to the temple for the first time. Also the bishop has asked me to help
him start a Boy Scout troop (because we do not have one yet). Grandma is
helping with some things in Primary, too.
I
saw a boy at the gym that looked just like me when I was a kid!
We took a day off to Pueblo Colorado at a nice Riverwalk.
We have been visiting one man and lady in our
ward who have not come to church for about 5 years. She hurt her back real bad
and needs a big operation. She has not been able to walk except a little at
home sometimes, and she hurts a lot. She has not been able to get the operation
she needs to fix her back because her doctor can’t get the insurance to pay for
it. She has been trying since last Thanksgiving. She asked me for a blessing to
help her. I blessed her to stop hurting so much. I promised her the operation
would get approved and everything would be okay. She told me she slept well
that night for the first time in a long time. She doesn’t hurt so much, and she
has been to church for the last two weeks now. The next Tuesday after the
blessing, the hospital called and her surgery operation is scheduled for next
week in Wichita. Priesthood blessings can heal people if they just ask for it
with faith. Grandma and I are going to go to Wichita with them when she goes to
the hospital.
You could jump across the Arkansas River at Lamar.
Do you remember how big the Arkansas River is?
When it comes through our state of Arkansas at Little Rock, big ships carry
cargo all the way to and from the Mississippi River and to the Gulf of Mexico.
The same Arkansas River comes right though Lamar Colorado, too. But here it is
so small you could not even float a canoe in it.
I hope you all are saying your prayers and
reading your scriptures and having family night and wearing your seatbelts and
brushing your teeth and keeping your shoes tied so you don t fall down when you
walk. Those are the main things to
always do. But, don t get gum in your hair and don t put mashed potatoes in
your ears. And most of all - don t sing with your mouth full. Except for those
things, everything else is okay to do.
Write
us a letter soon. I love you very much!
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