Andrew's new mailing address:
25 South Main St apt B
Cloverdale CA 95425

This has been an alright week, full of adjustments to a new companion and area. The work here is going good. My new companion, Elder Stevens, is a good guy - kind of quiet and interesting. The first few days we were together walking around was really awakward and uneventful I would try to start a conversation but I would get a short response and nothing else. I,t is always quiet in the apartment cause at lunch and breakfast he will finish eating and then read Jesus the Christ and not say anything. Then during lessons, he talks really quiet and in a strange manner, and then I would teach and he would have this blank stare, like there is no life in him, kind of creepy. Most of the lessons I have to start the teaching and make all the comments. So I have been leading the lessons and he gets us around town. The worst of it is we have a car but we walk all day long. It is understandable since we have meetings in Ukiah every Tuesday which is an hour round trip and we go up there for P-Day's and we use it for church. So a lot of traveling but little time to use a car during the day. Things with Elder Stevens are getting better now. He is staring to talk more but he is still not very out going and he has no emotion, doesn't show excitement when he talks to people or to anyone. He is getting better, but this is going to be a long transfer.
On to the week's news: we had a slow week since we were getting use to each other and the area so not a lot of amazing stories but we had some really good lessons. We had two youth come out with us from Santa Rosa because their stake was putting on a missionary activity where they stay with the missionaries for three days and go out with them and teach people. There were not enough missionaries in Santa Rosa so we went to help and we had two come with us. They were really cool kids and were willling to get out there and teach and talk to people. So they were with us and that kind of slowed the area down since I don't know it well enough to go out on my own to see people and Elder Stevens has only been here for one transfer. It was really hard to be productive. But we did it. They learned a lot, I hope, and they had a good time.
We had a lesson with one of our investigators named Jonathan and he has been coming to church for the past 2 months and is practically Mormon and wants to get baptized and die a Mormon. But he has issues with the Book of Mormon and baptism. He doesn't understand why he needs to be baptized again, so we try to explain that you need the preisthood authority and the gift of the Holy Ghost to complete it. So he took it that we were saying that our church is the only church that can make it into heaven and that' his mothers baptism was wrong, and we tried to explain it to him but he would not let us get a word in edge wise. He thinks Joseph Smith is just a guy who wrote a book and I think he does not know why we have the Book of Mormon but he won't let us give him the true answer cause he thinks we are proving his mother's teaching wrong. He just wants us to give him the answers and we said if you pray and ask God he will give you the right answer but he won't pray for some reason. He is really interesting.
This area did not have anyone with a date but had a bunch of solid people that want to get baptised and are willing to meet with us, and we just have to invite them. So we had a lesson with this guy named Andy who they picked up before I was here. We saw him riding home and so we stopped and talked with him and invited him out to church. He said he would be there if we could get him a ride to church. So we got him a ride and the night before church, he tried to cancel on us because he wanted to shave and look nice. But I would not let him get off that easy. I told him no one will care what you look like and there are people at the church that have beards. He said alright and he came to church. We asked if we could meet with him some time after church and he told us to come by around 6. So when we got there, we taught him in a park next to where he was staying and we talked about the Plan of Salvation and he loved it all. We asked him to pray to know if it was true and he said he already knew it was true, along with the Book of Mormon, so we invited him to be baptized and he said yes for July 2nd. So he is a poor man that lives behind his friend's house. He is very humble.
Love you all, Andrew