First Letter From Sanford, Maine!!

MOM!!!!,

So much to say after only one week and yet it feels like I have been out here for over a year and it should be about time to go home!

So having only really been with the mission president for maybe five hours before being shipped to Sanford Maine, I can tell you I love him. He is an amazing man, his spirit and testimony of the gospel is so incredible. Sadly he leaves in four months.

It’s been ok here in the mission; it’s hard, but ok. We don’t teach people that often, it feels like we spend more time planning then teaching. Often people don’t answer the doors or say they don’t want to hear anything and just shut the door. OR they say that they are Roman Catholic and are fine as long as they follow god or something along those lines. The people are nice just very hard to reach. In one week I only met with two investigators. This is extremely low. We hardly ever make our key indicators for the days and aren’t even close to the weekly ones. It’s been frustrating.

I feel like I am an awful teacher I am scared when we knock on doors, I feel stupid when I start to talk and I’m afraid I’ll say something that I shouldn't, or whatever.

I miss home I am really trying hard not to think about it… the days here are so long and cold, yesterday it snowed over a foot, so we needed to shovel snow for most of the day. Even Church was cut short because of the snow.

My trainer is good and I like him. He’s from Utah (one good thing about being from Georgia is everyone loves that it’s not just another person from Utah) and has been out here six months he is very good at teaching. He knows the area and the all of the members; he has been in Sanford for all six months he has been on his mission.

We start our day at 6:30 am we study and plan till about 11. After that we go out and do whatever we have planned. One of the challenges about the days here is that the sun will set between 5:00 to 5:30pm and the people seem to live their lives around that. It seems like they all go to bed around 7:00pm and we knock on doors and try and teach way past that.

The ward it’s very good. The members are super nice people and they are all very warm and friendly, I loved church. There were forty or fifty people there so that was awesome. I was called on to give a talk because the person who was supposed to talk wasn’t able to make it. So could you send me those other talks I wrote? I forgot them at home and now I think I will need them. It was all good though! Luckily I had my talk on trials with me; I just had to stretch it out since there was only me and one other guy talking.

I’ve had good food from the members who have fed us , which has happened twice so far, we were lucky they gave us the left over’s to take home.

I have been taking as much pictures as I can. I won’t be able to use shutterfly since it is not an approved site I will buy a flash drives from Wal-Mart upload all my pictures on it and send it to you.

I love this place and I love the people and everything. The spirit that I feel tells me I am doing the right thing but it doesn’t make the days go any faster or make serving a mission any easier.

I love you and I miss you tell everyone I love them. Tell Joel hi and that I miss him. I hope Christine goes to BYU - tell her how awesome it is that she got accepted and that I love her, and tell Lochlan and Alexander that I love them and I miss them. I really miss everyone, hope you are all safe and doing well.

I love you.

Love, Elder Dean