On Foot....IN Wilmington.....

Hello mother and everyone,
Did I already tell you that I got transferred? Well, kinda. My old
area just got split because it was way too big. We were over south
carson and wilmington and now i'm just over wilmington. Elder sung
stayed in the old apartment and I moved to a different one in
wilmington. Elder Hirshberg is my companion, he's been out for about
17 months and is from Holliday UT. He's a really funny guy. So we're
over 'little mexico' english speaking. It's considered a new area and
we're the first elders to open it up. Hard stuff to find people
speaking our language out here. We move by bike and foot - hard not to
have a car anymore but i'll get used to it.

Monday - went to Macaroni Grill with the Lopez's for Gerardo's
birthday. I don't know if I told you but i'm pretty close with that
family - my home away from home. Later that night back at their home I
was asked to give a blessing to Kazandra who will be starting up
school again here shortly. I was brought back to the memory of Dad
giving us all blessings before school started and then how he'd always
give you one as well so I explained that to Ampelia and gave her one.
It was such a good experience.. Not very describable.

Tuesday- Elder Sung and I went to visit Daniel in Scottsdale.. good
old scottsdale. Something always interesting happens when we're in
there. This time, as we were leaving Daniels place, 4 sherriffs came
speeding around the corner and jumped the speed bumps. The all went to
different spots on the street but surrounded a couple of houses. We,
being the curious kids that we are, went over to check it out and I
snuck a picture of a guy getting arrested - nice. There was a huge
drug bust. Guess it's not too uncommon there because they were
throwing 'brotha's' in the cop cars like candy in a basket. We were
walking back to the car and saw a middle aged latino poke his head
around the corner of a house and say 'oh nooo they are coming again!'
and then sort of scurried off with a limp to tell his buddies. We
turned around to see more cops coming our way. That was a good laugh.
I wish people would just NOT do drugs or illegal things. That'd be
nice.

Wednesday-
Went to my new apartment and got cleaning. It was a big mess for sure
but after a few hours we made it look alright. We went to Costco and
bought some groceries for the week , made some goals and planned out
the week. Elder Hirshberg and I have alot in common - all except for
one thing. He's a U of U fan... lame. We'll work through our
differences im sure. It was nice to hear that both byu and utah won
their season openers.

Thursday-
We ate lunch at the Hannemans and worked out a new plan to attack
wilmington and smoke out all of the inactive english speakers in the
area. We're doing our best. We went to visit Theo one last time and
had him tune up my bike - in return we bought him an ice cream from
Fosters Freeze down the road. I really hope Elder Sung keeps on him
about Church and quitting all his bad habits. Elder Hirshberg and I
have a balcony that looks over the street - we play guitar after
planning at night and 'howl at the moon' - it's real nice.

Friday-
I got up from saying my prayers and turned around only to see Elder
Hirshberg wearing a sombrero, a mexican shirt and holding a baseball
bat - standing behind me. He's a morning person - as you know, i'm
not. We'll see how that goes. I got a good laugh out of that random
act though. We did alot of tracting that day and turned out with some
luck. 2 new investigators i'm pretty excited about. Hopefully they
pull through.

Saturday-
We watched "Together Forever" with the Nickel family and talked about
being united with one another. We did some more tracting without as
much luck as we had the day before. We went over to the Lopez's and
cut their grass again with a weed wacker. That's a tough job if you
haven't done it before. Kazandra made us some super good chile relleno
while we were working - I was real happy about that as you know how
much I like food. You'll definitely have to meet this family after my
mission - they mean alot to me.

Sunday -
We had a family show up at church, it was way good to see them there.
All of the testimonies were just what they needed to hear. Elder Sung
is teaching that family now so I hope they keep on it. We went with
Ampelia, Kazandra and Gerardo to the new visitors center at the
temple. It was way way good. There is so much to do there and so many
things to help people that don't know about the church to understand
what it's really about. You should do some research on it, its
amazing. We had dinner with the romos later and had tamales that were
way good, they're such a cool family.
Monday-
I'm out of time so I'll tell you next week. Love you!
Elder cottrell