Monday, July 21, 2014

Whacking a Cat and an Emergency Transfer

Hey Mom!

This week absolutely flew by.... I don't even know where all the time went! Novato is really nice and I am so excited to be here! There are so many interesting places to go and explore here. Elder Meiners and I cover the south part of Novato, and there's all sorts of extremes here. We have really nice areas, we have ghetto areas, (according to Elder Meiners, but after being in Fairfield and living on Dana Street, I know it's really not THAT ghetto,) we have rich neighborhoods that are built on a lake and can launch a boat from their backyards, and we have some trailer parks. We have it all! Well there's not a lot going on in my area as far as investigators go. Apparently the missionaries before us didn't really do much work so our area needs some fixing. Hopefully I can assist with that while I'm here.

So being companions with a district leader normally means I go on a lot more exchanges. Thing is, we only have two companionships in my distinct besides us, and one of them is a sister companionship and of course we can't go on exchanges with them. So the Elders in my district are Elder Chan, who is from Hong Kong, and Elder Slaughter (not the best name to have when talking to strangers who already are hesitant to talk to us,) and he came out to the mission field at the same time as me. Well we were on exchanges with them and I was with Elder Slaughter in his area, and we were hanging out with the other two who live with him, Elder Choffin and Hansen, and getting ready for bed since it was already 9:00 pm. Well we just got done planning and Elder Choffin realized he got a missed call from President Alba, which is terrifying by the way. President Alba is a busy man, so he only calls when he has to, and 9 times out of 10 it's bad news. It's never "Hello Elders, this is President Alba, I was just calling to let you know that I found a big bag of money and was wondering if you wanted to go halfsies on it?" No, nothing like that ever happens. So we were a little nervous when we called him back. When we called him we were told that Elder Slaughter was getting ET'd (emergency transferred) to North San Rafael zone to replace a missionary who was going home for medical reasons. It's sad since I know the missionary who is going home - he was in my district in Fairfield and he definitely was struggling out here, so it's good he can go home and get things sorted out but it's sad to see him go. Elder Slaughter wasn't super happy to go, especially at the beginning of the transfer. I can't blame him - I can't imagine the craziness that comes with an ET - they hardly ever happen.

So the next day while we were on exchanges we had dinner with a member and there were 6 missionaries there which is pretty crazy. There was the 4 of us and 2 sisters. Well we had a really nice dinner and we were heading back to our cars when we saw this black cat creeping towards us, like it was about to pounce on us. We were wondering what the deal with this cat was when we saw a bird in front of it. The cat swooped it up and started heading back to its house. One of the Sisters lost it. "NOOO! You cant do that!! That is so mean!! Leave it alone!" She chased that cat down all the while one of the Elders with us was trying to explain the food chain to her and the circle of life and whatnot. When she caught the cat she proceeded to whack it on the head till it let the bird go.

Well the work is going really well here, although people are really not interested in talking to us for the most part since they already have everything they need. They are all pretty well off so they think they don't need God in their lives so talking people is pretty hard when they always brush us off, but we love it here and I'm enjoying every moment of it!

Love, Elder Hayden Ellis

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