The crazy elders who came to see Me and
Sister Byrne off when we left at 4:30am! 

 God knows where I belong...

Left the MTC and headed for California:)

Cool column in Sacramento airport

I am assigned to Gridley, California right now. I will stay here for at least a full transfer (6 weeks). If my visa comes in that time I will leave for Brazil. If not, I will stay in California. Gridley is way cool! It's an orchard town. SO MANY ORCHARDS! Have you ever had fresh picked walnuts before? They taste like butter. They're wicked greasy, but very delicious. My companion and I live in the home of some members of the church. They are so nice, and right now they have fresh walnuts, persimmons (I didn't know what this was until I came), and mandarin oranges. The locals are freezing in the 30-60 degree weather we are having. Oh, Californians. It's supposed to get up to 70 this week. What is this? Haha. It's great here. I love being out in the countryside! God knows where I belong. That's why he sent me to Gridley. Here's a little fun fact: EVERYONE has at least one dog. Most people have somewhere between 3 and 8. It's  a little crazy, but whatever floats your boat. I guess when you live in the middle of nowhere, it works. The people who don't farm usually have little dogs. The people who do farm have field/orchard guarding dogs.

My new companion Sister Haupeikui

My companion's name is Sister Haupeikui. Her parents are from Tonga, she was born in New Zealand, and she grew up in Southern California. I didn't know you could get sent on a mission in your own state, but I guess New England states are too small for that. Anyways, she's very cool, and we get a long great. I wanted to look her up on Mormon.org the other day, but she wouldn't tell me how to spell her first name, so I just kept searching pacific islanders in her age group. We both got a kick out of that. 

We don't have a lot of investigators, so we've been doing a bit of tracting. It's amazing the people you can find who are looking for the truth. Just when it seems  like everyone is "all set," we knock on a door and the person who answers just happened to be searching for something more. We tracted into two of these people the other day, and we're so excited to meet with them again.

Cool story: We were looking for someone we were supposed to meet and asked some of their neighbors, who were Mexicans and most of them didn't speak English. I was like hmm....I used to speak Spanish before it got killed by Portuguese, so I guess I'll give it a go. All previous attempts to speak Spanish have been absolute failures, but I totally spoke Spanish! Maybe it doesn't sound that cool, but it's seriously so cool! There are a lot of Mexicans here, because of the orchards, so the Spanish elders and sisters have a lot of work to do!

Sister Haupeikui and I are over a ward and also the Young Single Adults branch. In YSA sacrament meeting, one of the speakers said this:

     "Don't chart your course by the nearest lost person."

I hope everyone's having a great week! 

Love,

Sister Arthur