Training is a Good Experience

Hey everybody,

Sorry this email is late- I had scheduled a lesson with these people we knocked into a month ago for yesterday by accident, and we're now sharing our car with some sister missionaries so we'd had to get a lift from other missionaries (which has been absolutely awful). So we didn't have any time yesterday to get around to the library, but we got permission to come for an hour today to get it done.

Stateside pride is just something I came up with, but I'm sure that it's going to catch on.

Training has definitely been an experience! It's good though, I really enjoy Elder Olsen. He's got a lot of potential to be an excellent missionary so hopefully I can do a good job teaching him the ropes of missionary work. I'll be in the Bethany area for at least twelve more weeks training, but that's okay. We've got a baptismal date for a woman named Linda in our area, and we're super excited about it! She's awesome, and your classic example of somebody that was prepared. We've got some other people that seem really promising too, so it's nice to have some work going on where I'm at.

It's weird to think about how seasoned I am as a missionary now versus how I was just seven months ago. Being the lead missionary is definitely interesting. I've already been learning quite a bit from being a trainer, just watching and observing the rookies take a go at missionary-work. Thinking about how to help teach them to be better missionaries- it's a time to stretch yourself as a missionary for sure, but it's definitely got its stress. I'm a bit daunted by the task of taking a greenie and teaching him what he needs to know to be the best he can be. I just want to do a good job and, being the perfectionist that I am, tend to worry about whether I'm taking care of business or not.

That's exciting about soccer try-outs for Kayleigh. I'm hoping she makes the team- I think she'll do just fine! I'm always really curious about what everybody back home is up to, seeing what Kayleigh and Silas have going on, how Ben's college experience is going, etc. That's crazy about the college tuition fees- hopefully it levels out by the time I'm getting into college.

Well- not much time to write today. I hope everybody is doing well back home! I don't have a card-reader at the moment, so it will have to be next week until I can send y'all some more pictures. Sorry.