Elder Corbin Morre-- Oct 31, 2011

Hola mi familia y amigos,

Where to begin, I dont really know, jajaja. Well I flew in to Los Angeles on wednesday, we had a good flight here. When we arrived the mission president and his wife were there to pick us up. So I met them and then we loaded up all our bags and headed to the mission home. We got to the mission home and they started making lunch for us, while we did some orientation things. We ate dinner and then were assigned to a temporary companion for the first day. My first day trainer was Elder Conlin, his is a good mission and has been in the mission for like almost 2 years. I was also with another missionary from the MTC because we were "white-washing", where all the missionaries put there are new to the area. So us three went out and began to tract, because we hadn't recieved an area book because it was a new area. So we went make the appartment and dropped off our stuff and then looked at a map. My trainer had us, each pick one street and then we drove to those streets. We arrived on the street that choose, and my trainer turned to me and said okay, this whole street is yours. Wow I was taken my surprise. So I proceeded to start knocking all the doors that were on the street. I went to the first door and knocked. No came to the door so we just moved to the next door. The next house was looking like we might find someone who would listen. So I approached the door feeling like this one was going to be good. Well I knocked on the door and then we heard a bunch of dogs start barking. There was two doors a metal gate type door and the wood door behind it. The door opened and the three dogs pushed open the metal door. The man started screaming way loud and kicked the dogs back inside the house. He slammed to metal door and then turned back to me, and said I DONT WANT YOU GUYS AROUND HERE, I DONT WANT TO SEE YOU AROUND HERE, and then slammed the other door. Who would have thought that my first door would have been the worst and the funniest at the same time. jajaja. So I continued to knock the rest of the doors, and we went to some of the other streets the other Elders had chosen. Then night ended quite fast and we returned to the apartment for the night. We woke up the next morning and traveled back up to the mission home, for more and lunch and more training. We had lunch which was way nice to have and then we had Pres Baker talk to us, and filled out some worksheets, had interviews, and talked with the APs about the zones that they have here. They have 9 zones, 2 of which are brand new zones from like 2 months ago. After we had talked with them for awhile, Brother Olsen, the vehicle coordinator, came and pulled me out to go on a driving test. He gave me the keys to the car and we went driving in the city of LA. I was absolutely
absurd. There are so many people in LA, and so many cars. People drive so differently than what I am used to back home. But no accidents happens so that was good. He had me do some parking test and what not, and that was it. We went back to the mission home where they assigned us our permanent companions for the next 12 weeks. Turned out that I was going to be staying with Elder Conlin to white wash the area. We also receieved another companion because there isn't enough spanish speaking trainers so they had to double up some companionships, and since my area was being white washed they gave us one more missionary. The missionary that we recieved was my companion from the MTC, Elder Boyd. So those are my companions, Elder Conlin, Elder Boyd, and Elder Moore. Elder Conlin is from New Orleans, and is a very hard working missionary he is pretty awesome. So we got our companions and out we went again. And since we didn't have an area book, we just went and did some more tracting. Knocked on a bunch of doors, and then we had correlation meeting. Which is with the ward mission leader, the bishop, and the elders quarom president. I was difficult to report on anything because all three of us were new to the area, and 2 of us were right out of the MTC. Not to mention that the meeting was only spanish, and I couldn't really understand what was going on. Jajaja. We returned to our appartment and the APs dropped my bike off at our appartment, which (was and is) still in the box. I haven't really had need for the bike yet, because Elder Conlin the is the district leader and so we have one of the brand new cars in the mission. So not really sure about the bike yet. Our main goal right now is to find some people to teach. When have a bunch of return appointments hopefully they won't fall through. I went to church yesterday, and man was it so crazy. We arrived and there were so many people that came up to us and started rattling out thier spanish, I could basically understand what they were saying and even responded with some of them. The bishop came up to us when we arrived and told us that we would be singing in sacrament meeting wow that took us by surprise. So we hurried and went into another room and practice. The whole day was pretty crazy in Spanish but Im learning more ever day. Well thats about it for this week, hope everyone is having a good time back home. Talk to you all soon

Con Amor
Elder Moore