Here I am in Loveland, CO!
First, a couple things about the area. There are lakes everywhere here! It is like everywhere you go there is another lake. AND there are people building houses everywhere. It's pretty crazy. In the place I'm at there is construction in the subdivision and all the neighboring ones and in lots of other subdivisions around the area. AND they are really nice places. Clearly, it is not in California because I saw a sign that said new homes (or 5-6 yr old) selling in the $300,000s and they are all 2-3 story with ample space and more. Not a bad area to live! Though I am here at the end of the spring and not in the winter or middle of the summer. I wonder what my opinion of the weather and more will be at that time. The area kinda reminds me of where I grew up or in the outskirts of San Jose due to the very low density suburbia. Laramie on the other hand was a lot closer to Davis where it is a concentrated development surrounded by space. I'm not sure which one I like more.
So my companion, Elder Hendrix, is pretty awesome. I'm excited. He is awesome in different ways than my last companion. He is from somewhere in Iowa not really near any large city. He is 20 meaning he has a little bit of life experience post high school. He went to college for 2 years at Northern Iowa. Fortunately he likes running - did half marathons in his senior year of high school - so we have been able to go running in the neighborhood (Our neighborhood is super amazing; there is a country golf-tennis club 0.5 mi away, there are green belts and paths and open space for great running). And he has been out 4.5 months in this mission (the whole time in this Bison Ridge ward) while waiting for his visa to Brazil.
Our week started off REALLY painfully. I forgot how frustrating my first couple days in Laramie were when we didn't know what we were doing or who to see. I was not enjoying it for sure with appointments canceling and stuff like that.
Fortunately these last couple days have picked up and we are doing stuff! It's really exciting. On Friday afternoon/evening we went street contacting in our neighborhood walking from our house a mile or two to dinner. We shared a message with a guy walking his dog and got a lady's number. It was sweet since I'd never done that before!
On Saturday, we went to the neighborhood on the other side of our house and saw some people working in their garden. We stopped by to share the Gospel with them and ended up helping them weed their rocks. They had A LOT of weeds - they got a notice from their Home Owners Assoc. to weed. The mom was really receptive and my companion talked to her a lot while I talked to her stepson. After he left, I played a bit with her twin 6 yr old daughters. It was a great time. They somehow persuaded me to run through their sprinklers with them a couple times. All of this was while I was wearing my dress pants, white shirt and tie. So it was an adventure. We didn't even ask if we could help them weed, we just did it. I learned that the week before at a stake conference talk by one of the counselors of our mission. He talked about the need to not ask people to serve them, but find a need and serve them. It felt amazing to do that!
Sadly, I'm on a computer with an actual time limit so I can't share a couple other amazing experiences I had with revelation and meeting people on the street. Suffice to say that you can receive AMAZING revelation in personal scripture study literally any day. I had one of my top 5 yesterday. I can't believe how awesome it has been to get out and talk to people and serve them. Sometimes it is easy to think about all the work I need to do, but playing and serving others can be the right answer!
Hope you are all have a great week!
Elder Campbell
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