Greetings from humid, jungley, alligator-lacking Florida!
Like all of you are experiencing with your plans, I am shocked but not surprised to be here. These days, it seems like anything goes:)
My transfer at home in Idaho was awesome. I was so sad to cut my time in Ukraine short, but I loved spending time with my family. We spent our time hiking, biking, and catching up on movies:) One of the best parts was having my mom as my companion! I miss our drives and talking to her literally 24/7.
I received my call on April 28th and had one week to get ready! We spent that time learning more about my home for the next six months and shopping for *pants! *My mission is a pants only mission while proselytizing because of the bugs.
Saying good bye to my family a second time was hard, but I am so grateful for the time that we had together!
And now I am a missionary in the Florida Tampa mission! Everyone has been so welcoming and supportive. I flew in last Wednesday equipped in a mask and rode with a whole row to myself on both flights:) My mission President and his wife are INCREDIBLE and are so excited to have 180 more missionaries joining their mission throughout the next 18 weeks. Insane.
I flew in with 14 other missionaries who were reassigned from South American countries. I have had to do a lot of explaining as of why I am here when all of the Europen missionaries stayed in their original missions. And I am looking forward to finding the person or the "why" behind it:)
The first day, we were assigned companions and l was not given one or two.. but three! I have three awesome companions! There is Sister Hartshorn from Washington, and Sister Nestman and Sister Vogul from Utah! They are so awesome and I am so bLesSed to serve with them!
We are serving in an area called Palm Harbor. It is so beautiful! Everything is just so... Florida. The trees are so pretty and we are right next to the ocean. Apparently, there are not very many alligators here:( There is an area called Tarpon Springs and it was settled by Greeks and it still has that Greek feel to it. They dive for sponges in the bayou and even have a sponge museum AND factory! What more could you want in an area?!
I have only been here for four days so I have not met all of our friends that we are teaching but we have a lot of potential in this area! I am pUmPeD!
My companions are really passionate about learning Russian so that has been super fun. They have the alphabet down and love the word breakfast (завтрак). So they walk around all day saying breakfast in Russian.
Thanks for the birthday wishes, everyone! It's been a good 20 years. We are going to grab some Mexican food and eat it at the bayou to celebrate. I hope that I can see some manatees. I mean, if I can't see any gators, I HAVE to see some manatees.
I'll keep you all updated.
Love you all!
P.S: Carol Baskins' Big Cat Rescue is a couple miles down the rode from us. Maybe next P day we will check it out;)
I promise that I will take more pictures this week.
(Photo) We put the quad in squad
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