January 5, 2009

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!

Things are going great here in Portsmouth. The New Year has begun and I look forward to what lies ahead. We had the same schedule as usual on New Years Eve, so we didn’t stay up late, but we did celebrate a little. President Swinton didn’t want us out proselyting past six or even in the morning (for obvious reasons) so our weekly schedule got changed a bit. We had District meeting New Years Eve and I got to know a couple more missionaries. Their are six Elders in our district, but only four of us were there because two live on the Isle of Wyght and just stayed in. In the morning we did our weekly planning a little early considering most people would still be recovering from the night before. I hope you all had a good New Years. Since I didn’t stay up late here, I decided I would celebrate with all of you and shouted Happy New Years at 7 in the morning.

If i send half of an email in a couple minutes its because I do my emailing in a library now and we can only use the computers for 30 min at a time. If it isn’t busy we can just ask for an extension, but if there is someone in line then i will have to wait a while and get back on. If that ever happens in the future, you'll know why.

The rest of this week was pretty normal. We have taught a few people, but over the holidays everyone seemed to drop of the map and we lost contact. I think it happened all over the place because that’s how it was leaving my last area too. Things are starting to pick up again, but we've done a lot of finding to get it there. There is a high street here that is really good to talk to people on. It reminds me of an outdoor mall back home and even has an indoor part that is exactly like a mall. There is definitely a difference in cultures here.

The ward is great. I met loads of the members even before my first Sunday. A couple came on teaches with us and we had a couple dinner appointments too. The first was with The Honour Family who play a big role in the ward and whose dad is in the Stake Presidency and the second was with The Stokes Family. Both went really well and the on at the Stokes was really cool because the have to kids that are YSA age and most of the YSA came over to have dinner with us. Many of them are RM's and are a big help to the ward and to us as missionaries. Saturday Morning we helped clean the grounds around the church and I met a lot more people especially since the Primary was having a breakfast activity at the same time.

Sunday went really well. I took the place of another Elder from Mesa AZ that the ward really liked, so hopefully I made a good first impression. His name is Elder Barnwell. I actually met him at ASU before i came out. We have some of the same friends back home and they were the ones that realized we were called to the same place. I talked to him at the mission home as we crossed paths on moves day, but don’t know him very well. We had a couple come to church this week. One is Richard who we have only taught once now and the other we haven’t even taught yet, but came with a member family that is actually from London. His name is Anesu. The only other person we are teaching right now is a guy named Nick that has to work every Sunday. We are working on that :)

I don’t think I described my living arrangements last week, but we have it pretty nice here. We live on the top floor of a member’s home. Her name is Margaret Mitchel and she is an older lady. She has been living here for ages and a lot of the ward is related to her. It’s funny because it is a large ward, but there are a lot of repeated last names. We'll see how it goes trying to remember who is who. Sister Mitchel's daughter lives next door and apparently cooks us dinner every Sunday night and leaved it on the bottom stair for us. Up stairs we have our own bedroom, kitchen, bathroom, and living room/study room. I really like how it is all set up. In the attic there is even a little room to exercise in.

I think I also forgot to mention that Portsmouth is a bike area, so I'm an official missionary now!! We ride everywhere. It is a big city, so it has buses, but not like London. It can get tiring, but i actually like it a lot. Hopefully it will keep me in shape after sitting on buses all day the last five months.

Well my time is about up so I gotta go, but I love you all and hope you have a great week.

Love,

Elder Kade Karges