3rd Letter! (Sanford Maine)

Mom,

How is everything going? I hope everyone is safe and healthy and all is well. It has been a long week.

We have very few investigators that are actually interested in us teaching them, unfortunately  two of them decided that they are no longer interested. So now we get to tract even more. Hopefully we will find some more people who are interested. Its hard here.

People in this area are not very religious, and nobody wants to talk or listen to anything about religion. A member showed us an article about religion in the USA, it showed Utah and Mississippi as the top two most religious states, (Utah was number 2). It showed all of the states in New England as being the bottom ten least religious states. So the work here is really difficult.

We drive most places, it’s a lot like Georgia – there are no sidewalks and its 5 miles to the next house. When the new missionaries come to the area next month this area will be a car share which means we will spend most of our time walking on small little back roads with doors far apart from each other. It’ll be nice to walk more, I will like the exercise.

We drove down to the Wells/Kennebunk part of our area earlier this week We were able to visit with a less active member. We went to the beach to eat lunch.

We spent a lot of this week tracting. We also spent a lot of time this week in meetings and studying. Missionary work is kind of a lot different than I thought it would be. Tracting really doesn’t get you anywhere, in order to find people you have to do a lot more. Who knew that we would spend the first like 5 hours of every day just studying and sitting? On some days it is even longer because of meetings. We have district meeting every Wednesday and that lasts from ten until one and then by the time we get back eat lunch and actually start working it’s like 3.

I love this ward I know it is the first ward I have been in out here on my mission but I think it is one of the best wards. It’s crazy we are only allowed three member meals a week but with leftovers we often times don’t actually have to make dinner on the other nights. The members are so nice. Lunch is always ramen….

Funny story! We were out tracting on Tuesday and we knocked on a door, it was the last one that we were knocking on before returning to our car to drive and meet a less active member. Anyway an old guy from inside calls out for us to come in - so we open the door and say we are missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He said to come in. We walk in and see that he has a full ash tray, the air is thick with smoke and in front of him and like ten finished beer cans, and he is so obviously drunk…. VERY drunk. We start talking about why we are there, he stops us and asks us a few questions about our bible knowledge, and then starts telling how whatever we believe about the bible is true  and how he believes not all the bible is true but some if it is and that is the truth…. but whatever we believe is also the truth, weird. He then starts to tell us that we have to believe in ourselves, in the middle of that he stands up… and he is only wearing RED whitey tighties! It was super weird! At one point I thought he was going to give us his truck.

I have realized in the three weeks I have been here with the snow piled up to above your head that I am NEVER living somewhere with snow, I love Georgia, even though the summers in Georgia suck with the humidity the rest of the year makes up for that. I miss the warmth and the sun of Georgia, it’s so cold here.

I know I am forgetting something I wanted to tell you, I always do. I can’t remember right now though (I will 5 minutes after 6:00pm)



I love you mom. I miss my family and friends.

I miss every one hope you are all good and happy



Love Elder Dean