First Area, Drum Roll Please

Hi family!

My Pdays are Monday now. We check our emails at a member's home, so hopefully I'll get to bring my camera hookup so I can send pictures sometime--we'll see. My companion checks and writes her emails pretty quickly so I don't want to lag.

On Tuesday we got off the plane, went to the mission office on Deseret Avenue in Fair Oaks :) and met all the wonderful office missionaries there, grabbed a sack lunch and headed over to the Sacramento temple where we got to eat lunch, walk around the temple, and hear from President and Sister Lewis. It was weird getting to listen to music in the car--haven't gotten to listen to music for the last 2 months. The APs are great, we were the first transfer that President and Sister Lewis, and everyone was really excited to see us. I came in a group of about 7 white people, 2 Samoans, 1 Vietnamese, 2 from Kiribasti (sp?), and I'm blanking on the last one, oh yes he's Tongan from Australia. My new zone is really diverse, too. We have 3 Tongans, 3 Hispanics (one of which is albino so he wears these big sunglasses everywhere and doesn't speak much--he's English speaking but is still learning English. I try to talk to him all the time in Spanish. I think he's really sensitive about being albino--he gets a lot of attention from everyone and no one believes he's from Mexico.), and then there are like 7 white people. Oh yeah, I'm in Stockton, by the way. Supposedly this is every missionary's favorite place to come in the mission. It is very culturally diverse, and I love it. :)

But back to the first few days. After we went to the temple, we went to President's home and the senior couples were making dinner, we took pictures in his back yard (I look really disgusting in the pictures, if they sent those to you), we had interviews with president, ate a Thanksgiving feast (amazing), stood up and told about ourselves, and then President had 4 of us share our testimonies--you got it right, he called on me. The APs told us about our mission goals (standards of excellence) and taught us how to contact. We stayed the night at the Seamons' home. Dad, do you remember Seamons from Southern California? Anyway, he's Aunt Kris's age--he said that his mom was best friends with Grandma. They said, "Brinkerhoff... do you know..." and I was thinking, oh boy--I got that all the time at the MTC and never knew the Brinkerhoff they were talking about. "Billie Brinkerhoff?" Yes! My grandma! Bill and Jessie? Seamons. I can't remember her first name--the one who was friends with Grandma. Anyway, fun fact. We stayed the night at their house and Sister Seamons gave me a Vera Bradley curling iron cover--I knew you'd like that, Mom. It reminds me of you--it's so cute. She saw that I left my curling iron out to cool down and gave it to me. They're a great couple.

The next morning we had some training about cars, apartments, credit cards, and encourage from the Lewises. Then we went into the chapel to be sorted and I met my companion--Sister Carlos. She was born in the states, moved to Mexico when she was 6, was baptized at 12, and moved to Indiana after that. She goes to Purdue and is studying physical therapy but wants to transfer to BYU to meet her husband--yep, there you have it. She's actually been proposed to at least twice so she'll have to problem with that. We're serving in the Delta Pacific region of the Stockton area. Our area is divided into 3 regions (or whatever you call it) because it's so big. Well--three Spanish companionships make up the Spanish ward. You're gonna like this--there's not a pianist (the elder who just left played the piano), so they called me a blessing. I play in Sacrament Meeting, Primary, and Sunday School. That's right. I am THE pianist--gotta love it. My book completely closed during the last hymn in Sacrament Meeting so I was doing a magic trick trying to work with that one. The ward is pretty small--12 Melchizedek Priesthood holders. It needs a lot of work. We don't have any new investigators right now and the investigators we have didn't come to church even though we visited each of them multiple times last week.

I invited people to be baptized in Spanish on my first day and bore my testimony. Yesterday we met a Philippino guy (early 30s) who said he was Muslim and Catholic and all sorts of things and just wanted to pick a fight basically. After answering his questions (with him making comments the whole time) I said that I could do was testify--so I did. About the restoration. It was amazing--I had a bad feeling while answering his questions and it went away when I started to testify and he fell silent. I know he was touched by the Spirit. We speak in English a lot of the time because you have to find the Spanish-speakers. It's going to be harder to learn Spanish because of that and because I think my companion wants to practice her English more because she's from Mexico, called here English-speaking but she can speak English almost perfectly. I have to tell her every day that I want to speak more Spanish. I can understand what she says in Spanish but it's so hard to understand the people we met. I catch a lot of what they're saying but formulating sentences quickly in my head is what I need to work on.

I've met some really great people while contacting/tracting. I was a little discouraged last week because I just want to speak Spanish instead of standing/sitting there relying on my companion. She's good about letting me testify and setting it up for me to talk. There's a lot of work to do in strengthening the ward members and keeping the recent converts strong. We have a baptismal goal of 7 baptisms in August. We're looking for a Hispanic family to teach--that's our main goal. The biggest problems we're seeing is people either don't have jobs or they work too much. We meet a lot of Jehovah's Witnesses too, and it's hard to consistently find Spanish speakers. We drive a car, so my feet are doing just fine--the shoes I have are perfect. I think I got bed bugs (surprise!) in the MTC but I think the bites are going away. I can't google what bed bugs are all about so I'm not sure if that's what I have (sick, I know). I have my handy mattress cover now, though. The bed box arrived just fine.

I should probably go. I love you! Weather is great here. I'm learning a lot and still have a lot more to learn.

Love you,

kates