California Dreaming

Hola from the Anaheim public library! Well here is my first super official e-mail del mission. I suppose I have muchas cosas to say. And I have more time here to do it, so hopefully I will get it all out. I'll go day by day a little and yeah, here goes! So Thursday. As we talked about mom, a little bit frustrating and sudden, but I got here in CA after I think about a 15 minute flight. It was a very open flight, so that's probably why they booked me so fast.
When I got in it looked cloudy and President and Sister Watrous were right at the bottom of the escalator to pick me up. No problems there, drove to their house and started business. (oh yeah, I also wrote a letter the first day, like in the MTC, to let you know I'm here, but of course it didn't get finished until later, so I'm sending it today, ha ha!) President and Sister Watrous are still very sweet-like in the MTC-and they're grandparently and quieter. S. Watrous fixed me some breakfast at their home; picked me some avocadoes from their tree in the backyard (they're just getting ready to eat now) and soon the APs came over. Everyone likes to ask me if I'm okay and if I feel better. I always feel good, thank you very much. They took some pictures, gave me a notebook full of stuff and after talking to the President about various things, the APs drove me over to the mission office to meet me new companions. I basically had to jump into doing it all because they couldn't really give me a day of hanging around and learning new stuff. So I went back to the apt with the companeras, put my stuff down, and basically we took off. There is only one Spanish stake here-the Santa Ana. There are 120 or something missionaries here and I got lucky enough to be able to serve right off in the Spanish area. Apparently some people leave this mission not having learned Spanish so well because they didn't get to serve very much in these areas. That's really annoying. So I've pretty much decided that I will not leave the mission until I am fluent. I didn't realize that leaving and not knowing Spanish was an option, so I'm going to pretend like I don't know better, and I will know the language. Ummm, probably in like 3 months. That's the goal. We'll see. My two companeras are H. Ochoa from Vancouver (thought she's fluent in Spanish b/c her parents are from El Salvador) and H. Fatkin from Baltimore. H. Ochoa has been here a year and H. Fatkin for 6 months-and she's only been serving in English areas so far. They just got put together the week I would've come out, so I'm not too far behind them in terms of this area. Crazy, another threesome! It's the way I know how to work, so I really enjoy and I think they do to. So far they're not quite as crazy as H. Chriswell and Brown were-but then we had time to get to know each other and get comfortable. So that will probably happen again. I really really like them though. They're both pretty easy going, but at the same time they just do the work. The first day honestly was pretty hard. You have to remind yourself again why you're there and what you're doing because it's all brand new again. And here were my complaints for the day-I had a nasty sinus cold, one ear hadn't popped from the pressure on the plane and I pretty much felt nauseous (?) every time we were in the car and I was absolutely exhausted. We first went and visited an inactive woman who was crazy. Her house was dirty so we sat outside in the blazing sun. She talked and talked and gave us sees candy and I struggled sooo hard to stay awake. And I failed. I fell asleep and next thing I new they were all laughing at me. But they all understood and thought it was funny. Yeah, running on zero hours of sleep-except for the 15 minute plane nap. So there I am being a complainer. What else. Um, we went and visited some more people and went and taught a sort of progressing investigator with some recent converts and I bore my testimony in Spanish. It seemed like a long night. But eventually we got back and I did some unpacking and we went to bed. I'm on the top of a bunk bed again-so close to the ceiling that I can't sit up. I don't remember falling asleep, but I remember waking up 30 seconds later. We are in an apt with another companionship and they walk to a park every morning to go running. So that's good. Wake up a little. Companionship and personal study every morning and then we're off. The rest of the days got progressively better-as expected! Sleep always helps improve your perspective I think. Every day we contact people in parks and on streets and usually do door knocking as well. I'm slowly figuring out where we are (I need to study a map for a bit) and it's all making more sense. We've visited lots of potentials and some inactives and some progressers. Fun stuff! It feels like I've been here longer than 4 or 5 days. Crazy. Friday we knocked on the door of a really nice man who said that all his family are members, even had a sister who she and her husband were mission presidents somewhere in South A. But he just didn't know what he was looking for and wasn't finding it. A shirtless old 75 year old telling us that he really admired us for what we were doing and that he hoped that after we served our missions and got back home that we would find nice young men who had also served missions and we could have families. Yeah, he was really nice, even if he didn't want the message. Then later that night in a park, a cigar-smoking, frappucinno drinking man told us that he got a distinct feeling that we were from a cult and that the name of our church didn't mean that we believed in Christ. I guess he had a point, just using the name doesn't mean that we're serious. But uh, yeah. H. Fatkin was good and was just like, okay, sorry you feel that way, and we walked away. No point in dealing with that. Oh well. Que mas. We speak as much espanol to each other as possible, and then most of our contacting and lessons are in Spanish. It's fun! It's crazy. It really feels just like the MTC. Wow, they really prepare you there. I feel like everything I learned and everything I practiced there I've already used here. Good thing for my extra week! We've taught the first lesson a couple of times and the second lesson, and the third lesson, and taught a new member about missionary work. I've heard Peruvian and Guatemalan and Salvadorian and muchas Mexican accents. I'm a fan of the Salvadorian I think. We dropped in on some inactives on Saturday and ended up teaching 4 inactive women the first lesson. I got to do the part about the restoration and got to recite my memorized Santiago 1:5 and the vision! Hooray! One of the ladies was crying-I definitely consider that an accomplishment somehow. And they were all at church the next day. My companeras said that Sundays are usually hard because they're hectic. I really liked it. It was a nice change. We had our meeting with the ward mission leader in the morning with the two other companionships in our ward-both elders. And church was good too. I will be the relief society piano player I think. I'm happy about that. There's an elder who plays for sacrament, but we will probably switch off now. I saw H. Brown last night and she's actually in a new Samoan companionship. They're going to actual poly wards. That's fun for her-except that she'll lose her Spanish. H. Chriswell is in Irvine (H. Fatkin went there first too) and apparently that area is a little like a Pleasantville and it's all basically English except that you teach LOTS of middle easterners and Asians. Fun! I want to go there! But they say that you can't teach Muslims now. Too bad. E. Grange is apparently in my zone, also doing Spanish. And I don't know where the other two elders are. It was fun to see H. Brown last night, like a little piece of home (home is the MTC)? I do really miss everyone from the MTC. It's weird to think they're all still they're doing the normal stuff. But probably I won't see them again! It's all way different than what I expected here-even though I knew it would be different, you still can't help imagining everything being a certain way. But I love the Hispanic culture. I love that they're always out partying and barbecuing and playing handball and listening to their funky carnival music in and eating together with all their friends and neighbors. Its' great! We ate last night with a member family from Peru. It was good basic food-rice, beans and some piece of meat with Indian-like spices on it. And we had tacquitos and lentil soup the other night with another family. The sisters say they haven't had to worry about people feeding them too much so far, and it hasn't been weird food either. Though apparently the people don't usually eat with you. You eat and they watch you while you talk to them. The language is coming along. I understand a lot of it-but it also depends on the person too. But I can't always speak it. I think I've kind of come to depend on H. Ochoa, so that's too bad. But I'm trying to push myself and hey, it's only been a couple of days! Like I said, I'm not coming home until I'm fluent. We pass by the Angel stadium basically every day (though I hear we're not allowed to go to games. Sad) and Disneyland is just northwest of us. At night we either can see fireworks from the Angel stadium, or from Disneyland. They're both really close. That's crazy. And then there's Crystal Cathedral, or the abominable church as people call it. It's always looming from some point of the city.
Also, I mentioned this in the letter, but I'll say it here-I was told that you can still use dear elder, but you have to pay the price of the stamp. I don't know how that works.And you all might want to start e-mailing me because apparently no one wants to do that. But it will probably be easiest for some of you at this point. I think I can get e-mail pictures here, so send those too. I would love to one day open up the e-mail and actually have something here.

It's warm here. A little more humid than Provo, but mostly just consistently really warm-high 90s. It's always cloudy in the morning-the marine layer. Keeps it a little cooler. I always hope it will stay. And then it always burns off by noon and it's pretty warm all day long. Sweaty fun! Just trying to improve my watch and neck line. The hermanas have tans lines on their feet, even through the nylons, so I'm looking forward to that. I'm hoping that I can stay in this area a least a couple of transfers (it would be great to have Christmas with the Hispanics) to really get used to everything and also to just learn the language. But who knows! I could be out in 5 weeks! We have zone conference this week and we're doing some senior Olympics tomorrow, so lots of fun up in the future! We got our laundry done today right next door to Disneyland. Isn't that weird? You can hardly even tell it's there-you can just see the top of the Matterhorn and space mountain. Crazy. Someday. I hear we go there our last p-day on the mission. So for me it will be in December-just like the very first time we went! Things are going really well here. I'm expecting to like it more and more everyday and I'm sure I will fall in love with everything. For now it's still new and I'm adjusting, but hey, doesn't everyone love this? I'm sure I wont' be any different. So I love you all! E-mail me, write me, tell me lots of fun stuff and send me pictures! I'll be 24 the next time I write, so I'll try to sound different. Ha ha ha, yeah right. Thanks for the love and support and prayers and todo! "talk to you later!" Love Hermana Emily!