Hi Everyone!
Who would have thought I would have the privilege of serving in Estes Park, Colorado (aka "the base camp for visiting Rocky Mountain National Park")!?! I'm excited. It's a little sad that it is about to be winter and pretty cold up here, but it has been very nice so far! We are living 2 miles outside of town on a dirt road in a 2 bed, 1 bath cabin. Pretty legit. AND the people who own it were just using it as a work office, so no one lives here with us! Pretty awesome.
But more than that, I have an AWESOME companion! We decided that we are pretty much the same person. Both played basketball and ran in high school. He plans to study engineering and I studied engineering. He is my same height, body type, and weight. He also likes to work out and we have already been on 3 runs. We both really want to be out here serving missions and intend on making these 2 years count. And there is more. He is turning 19 tomorrow, so he is definitely younger than me, but he is one of those just out of high school missionaries that are actually prepared. Moral: I'm excited and it has been great thus far.
As far as the work is concerned, the last missionary who was here was SUPER depressed to be leaving because they taught 168 lessons in the 6 weeks they were here. That's like 25/week and they didn't have anything to work with the first week or two! There are lots of people that we are teaching and reactivating. It's pretty exciting. AND they just started a branch here. Instead of having church in Lyons (20 miles, 30 minutes down the canyon), they meet up here. It seems like there is a LOT of excitement since this is the first time in 30 years that there has been church in Estes Park. It will be a lot easier for people to be able to come! It is so new that the only callings are in the branch presidency. It'll be exciting to work with the excited people up here to help build a strong church!
And it is exciting to be a District Leader. Three months ago, our mission instituted a nightly call in where the District Leader is supposed to call all the companionships in his district and then zone leaders call the District Leaders in the Zone and then Assistants call all the zone leaders. It was started because there were a lot of missionaries going home with depression and they wanted to try to talk to them sooner so that wouldn't happen. So now I have the opportunity to talking to some missionaries every day! And it is a lot of fun. It am getting to learn on the fly how to be loving and inspiring so that they want to work harder and don't feel like they are being beat up. Since it is a volunteer army, there isn't anything I can hold over their head to make them do more. I like it because that is definitely like real life, positional authority is not real authority/influence anyway. Like it says in our handbook, "A leader helps other missionaries most when they feel the leader's love. They should feel that the leader is motivated by a sincere concern for their welfare, not by his or her own interests." Now I have a chance to implement it.
Also, this District is pretty awesome. I was SUPER sick a few days ago and they all wanted to come up and try to help me with a blessing or soup! :) I'm not sure if they just wanted an excuse to drive up to Estes, but either way they wanted to help me and were concerned with my health - and I just met all of them a few days before! It's really cool to feel that kind of love from them!
The one other interesting thing is that this is the first time in months that I have been the new missionary in the ward. It is so weird!! The companion I'm "training" knows everyone and can do everything. The first couple days he basically taught all the people we visited because I didn't know anything about them! It is super humbling to be in a different area with someone who knows the area. I didn't realize how hard I probably made it on Elder Harper. It sucks a lot when your companion teaches everything and you don't have anything to say! And it's weird to be the driver in an area you have never driven in and you have never seen a map (still haven't)!
I for sure miss the area that I just was in, but when there is so much going on up here, you don't even have time to think about it!
Hope all of you are doing awesome!
Elder Jeff Campbell :)
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