Week #33 - Minced Ice and Building Blocks

Hello from Benicia!
And a very Happy Valentines Day, especially to friends who didn't send me anything (guilt trip...). Thanks to the family though for sending me stuff! The chocolate covered strawberries were an excellent surprise, as well as the cookies. Transfer information is out in the open. I'm pretty excited- Elder Shaw's headed to Santa Rosa and I'll be sticking around Benicia. My new companion will be a brand new greenie so I don't even know his name yet. I kinda had a feeling I'd be training this transfer so I'm pretty pumped but still a bit nervous. They're splitting my area into two so we're getting two more missionaries, which means fourteen total in the zone. I'm not really sure why they aren't splitting the zone up into two districts (right now I'll be a solo district leader for the zone) but it'll be cool. Our zone's awesome. So, I guess it's high time I started following the rules so I can teach my greenie how to be a stellar missionary. I might even start waking up before noon and going to church every so often. Just so everyone is aware, though, this is important: Odds are, because he is brand new, he'll get mail just about every day. Unless you want me to feel small and insignificant, feel free to send me TONS of mail this transfer. TONS.

Anyway, this was quite the weekend. On Valentine's Day, I was fortunate to get to play piano for someone's funeral, and then two hours later I got to play for someone's wedding. It was quite the contrast. I played a lot of Jon Schmidt so I really enjoyed myself. I didn't know the man who died and I also didn't know the couple who got married but they seemed in love which was good.

Not that we didn't have other pressing appointments with investigators and families who REALLY wanted to meet on Valentine's Night, but Saturday night Elder Shaw and I were invited to a singles ward social that was in Benicia. Some nonmembers were expected to be there anyway but I was expecting this to be WAY awkward given that it was Valentine's Day in a SINGLES ward and everyone wanted to be married. However, it was actually really fun. Elder Shaw knew them because he served in their ward when he was in Napa (we're in the Napa Stake) and it was really fun. There was a guy there who knew some insane card tricks that I had nightmares about later and at the end we were asked to serenade everyone by singing to guitar and piano stuff. It was awesome.

Anyway, I'm excited for the new transfer. We've got a lot of potential work at this point, so hopefully we'll start seeing some things happen soon.

Have a good week (and cross your fingers that I won't get a weird companion)!

Elder B