Arriving to the mission field!

What a week! It's been so crazy and amazing. Its weird, but I'm actually emailing this from my iPad. It's crazy. Thanks for all the emails, I can actually see them throughout the week, but I can only respond on Mondays. So I've been seeing all your emails come through and its awesome, so thanks 😀

My trainer is indeed Elder Farnes, like you heard from President Brown. Elder Farnes is the best. He's a hard worker, follows all the rules and is excited about missionary work. I'm learning a lot from him. This area is interesting because it's a new are for both of us. When we first got here, neither of us knew where anything was, we didn't have a GPS, and our LDS tools app hadn't synced yet, so we didn't know who anyone was... 

But it was great, we figured it out and now everything is rolling. We found 2 new investigators on Saturday through an amazing experience- we were praying to find new people to teach, but nothing was happening. In fact, we hadn't taught a lesson to an investigator the whole week! But we continued to work hard and have faith and on Saturday afternoon we talked to two people in one hour and gave them both copies of the Book of Mormon, prayed and set up return appointments. That really testified to me that this is the Lords work, not ours. We are just privileged to be instruments in His hands as we strive to serve and love in a Christlike way. It was a really cool experience. Since then we haven't taught any more lessons to investigators but we have a lot of lessons set up this next week. If all goes well, we will have about 10 lessons taught! The Lord is definitely the one guiding His work, not us. 

Church is fun because we are covering two wards- so Elder Farnes and I attended about 8 hours of church yesterday- including the meetings before church started. It was a cool experience to take the sacrament twice and I look forward to it even more now. The members are excited about the work and they are really helping us. We haven't had a single night without dinner and we are scheduled every night for the next 3 weeks so no worries about me going hungry mom. Of course you already knew that, you're probably worried about me gaining a bajillion pounds. Me too. The food is always delicious and the Spirit in the homes is always good. 

My testimony is growing and I'm learning so much. It's amazing to be serving the Lord, and for me, I've made a goal that from the moment the name tag goes on my chest to the moment I take it off at night to not think about myself, but to only try to think about how I can help others. It feels great. 

Things are crazy in the world but the most important thing we can do to help is serve and love others and invite them to Christ. The gospel is the solution to everything in life. 

By the way, we are living with the members, as you know, but this transfer we are living in a mansion practically. I'll send you pictures.

(They have a Dalmatian!)

Now for some pictures:::

Soooooo.... That was a first for me. I met another Elder Bush at the MTC 

We thought about being rebels and switching nametags for a day but we decided we were both too attached to our nametags to give them to someone else, even for a day

The FOCO group (Fort Collins CO group)

We took some good pictures as a district before we left the MTC

Us in front of the temple

This was our class at the MTC.  

Brother Balzer is the guy with the red hair and sister Johnson is the teacher.

Both of them are super awesome!

               
Longmont, CO


                                  
                                       President Brown, Elder Bush, Sister Brown

This is where we live. That's my favorite part about this whole place with the goofy grin on his face. 

Oh and my trainer is standing next to him. They are both super cool tho 

Another view of this ginormous house.

So one of the families we had dinner with had like 12 snakes. We got to feed them and hold them. They were just slithering around while we had dinner. Super cool.

Just kidding they were in cages. But still cool. (12 snakes!) 

This is a video of Elder Farnes feeding one of the snakes. 

Elder Farnes and me in the bathroom on the way to an appointment.