Dear Family-
Wow that week went by fast! Elder Tienda is really cool. He was born in Mexico in the state of Chihuahah but has lived in Arizona for the last ten years. He lived in Avondale. It has been cool having a companion that knows all about Arizona. He has the same amount of time in the mission as me( 4 1/2) months and we are both new to the area so we dont know hardly any members or know anybody to teach. That means that there is a lot of work to do! To make matters more interesting, the elders that have been there for like the last 8 months have done like no work. That means we have alot of finding to do! We have been going through the area book and trying to find which past investigators seemed promising. We made a list of like 30 potentials and visited them all. Most of them had moved and alot of them no longer seemed interested, but there are a few that we found that we are going to start teaching the lessons to again. Elder Tienda and I are knocking alot of doors and passing out alot of pass along cards but not a whole lot of luck just yert. I think tomorrow we are going to set up a table with DVDs, BOMs, and other material to pass out and teach. There are alot of parks around here so we will probably just pick one. We have one investigator that we are going to commit to baptism this week so we will see how that goes. Because we have to do alot of finding, I have been studying in ch 9 of Preach my Gospel alot. That chapter is all about how to find people to teach. It talks about not having fear to talk to everyone you know or see and to stress that to the members that we visit. I definitely agree with that. Members are a key in bringing somebdy into the gospel and retaining them. Hmmm.. what else... Oh, being on bike isnt that bad. It doesnt get near as hot here in Panorama City as it does in PHX. Plus our area is very small( like 1 1/2 square miles) so its fine. The bike that they gave me is kind of lame though. My first day of riding it the pedal fell off. A couple days later the chain fell off, and now saturday, the tire went flat lol. Luckily dad showed me how to fix all that so im ok. Anyways, I am allowed to email other people and i know that there were people interested in that, so if you could write my email address like on my FB wall or something, that would be great. My mailing address right now is 14690 Nordhoff st. Apt # 108 Panorama City 91402 so if you or anybody wants to write letters, they can do that as well. I did spend about two hours with President Martin when i arrived and he is a very neat guy. I had a 7 hour training session with all the other new missionaries last wednesday as well. Maybe next week i will have some pictures to email you as well. Is Courtney doing a blog thing for me as well ? Any news from Elder Montez lately ? I sure do miss him. Elder Tienda reminds me of him in some ways. I did hear from Elder Gray( MTC companion) and he is doing well. I also heard from Dylan and Elder Welker. Dylan seems very excited for the field. I have yet to see Elder Ackley but i probably will sometime in the future. I love you all !
- Elder Dutson
