1st Letter from California

June 1, 2010

Hey Guys its tuesday afternoon here in California... it has been so crazy here the first week. when i first got her i was very nervous about everything that was to come... and i actually got sick and then it didnt help that the homesickness set in. Being at the MTC was wierd because when i was there i still felt really close to you guys... ya know because i was always going down that way to hang out with people. Here in California i just feel so far away its crazy, and the thing is... i really am not too far from home.

My companions name is Elder Weenig he is from Grand Junction Colorado. He is a great trainer... i am learning alot from him. he is a really nice guy... so i am doing good.

We only cover one ward but the boundaries are so spread out... its insane! We have dinner appointments almost every night, so that is pretty nice, but i will probably be huge when i get back... just saying. Now that i think about it i probably wont be to much bigger because we ride our bikes almost everyday.. so that is kind of nice.

On Sunday we had to speak in sacrament Meeting... On something from Preach My Gospel... That was very interesting and i was pretty nervous. Everyone was so nice after and told us how good we did... i really like the ward alot bunch of great people.

Ok so the teaching... kind of frustrating. Our Mission is the "Pilot" mission for "teaching in chapels"... you probably are undure what that is.... let me explain. So when we contact someone on the street and they are interested in learning more we ask them if we could set up another time to meet and share a lesson with them... the way we ask is by saying something like " How would you like to learn more about what we teach and about our beliefs?? we are actually taking people who are interested in our religion through a tour of our church... it should only take about 20 minutes." So we take people through a tour of our church and we stop at like 5 different stations you could say... and teach them about what we know. thats just the first lesson... the other lessons still have to be in the church too. i am not going to lie... its very frustrating i am not a fan of it yet... because the way i was just barely taught in the MTC is totally different from what we are suppose to do now, not to mention its also hard to get people to the church which is forever away. hopefully we can get more people doing it... cause right now we only have 1 person set up to tour this week.

Their are so many asian people around... its Nuts. honestly when people think of california... i can tell you this much... they dont think of where i am at which is Temple City its right next to Arcadia and it is rundown. the place we stay is gross but theres nothing i can do about it ya know?? i am going to be sending a package home it will have my shoes that are coming apart and also my CF card... i took a video on it and it is kind of hard to hear and its not the best recording ... My Bad, but it works pretty good, it was just my test run of how the video portion of my camera worked haha.

Any way i enjoy the letters from home... they always brighten my day! But i would just like say thank you Mom and Dad for everything you have done and will do for me... i appreciate it so much you guys mean so much to me and i also lopve you so much i miss you all like crazy. Something that didnt help was when we were at an investigators... their next door neighbor had their radio going and a U2 song came on and i started to tear up a little... and then we were at luch yesterday and the place we were in was playing IZ so it made me think about home. The week was really slow and people say it will speed up... so we will see haha but i am enjoying it here. we have a few investigators that we teach and also some less actives. Door knocking is hard... some people (mostly Asian) dont even open their door... instead they just yell through it... Sooooo lame i hate it, but again their is nothing i can do about it.

well i have to go... if you could send some family addresses and connors and davis address to... that would be great. love you all thanks for everything it means alot to me!!

Love Elder Emery