Missionary Monday - Week 1 in DC

This has been absolutely incredible. Tuesday we arrived and took the metro from the airport and did some "contacting" right away. That was crazy. Everyone on that train was in a bad mood. Went to the mission home and had our interviews, President and sister Johnson are some of the most incredible people I've met. President Johnson basically lives his life by the following the spirit. We stayed the night there, that was the best nights sleep I've had in 6 weeks haha. 

Next day was "transfer day" we all went to the stake center by the temple and there were tons of missionaries there. I got assigned my trainer Elder Stolk he is awesome he's been out a year and a half and so far has seemed just about perfect. We got assigned the DC area, I didn't think much of it until Elder Stolk said this was the first time he's been assigned to actual DC and that his whole time here he had been in Maryland. So I guess this is a big deal and I'm thankful for it, this city is crazy. We don't have cars since we are in the city so we either bike or take the metro. The missionaries before us didn't really do anything, no investigators had been taught in weeks. Their main investigator was a super old lady that couldn't read so according to the area book they had been teaching her the alphabet.... So we've been doing a lot of contacting. The first day we had some crazy bad and crazy good experiences, the bad has been being sworn at and rejected over and over, but the worst was a black guy talking about us to us while we were teaching a lady from Ethiopia, we started to ignore him so he took off his shirt and started doing pull ups on the bus stop. We ended up teaching her for 45 minutes because she didn't want us to leave her alone with him haha. The good has been we were contacting on the way to an appointment (the appointment didn't even happen) and we were talking to this Hispanic guy that said he doesn't believe in God, he believes in nature... Then got on his bike and rode away. Then this black guy says "he don't wanna listen to you, no one does" so at first I was like freak, here we go with another looney. Cause usually when someone initiates a conversation with you in that kind of way its never good. We start talking to him and find out his name is Tim and that he has a lot of beliefs for why Christian churches aren't true and has been searching for himself to find the truth, he basically believes exactly what we do, that Christian churches lost their authority after Christ died and they changed things and that's why they are all different. So we told him that we believe that too and that the authority has been restored. He was super interested and went to church on Sunday. Another good thing is we went to visit hermana Guatelupe (the alphabet lady) and to tell her our expectations and give the first lesson and it went great, she had a baptismal date and came to church. 

Some other notable events, met Elder Bailey who is also Thorough Bailey's son (I don't know how to spell it) and he is going to Marquette for basketball when he gets home, he's pretty cool. OH, we also went to the sketchiest place I've ever been twice in one day, "Anacostia" I think Fredrick Douglas lived there. It's 99% black and the other 1% was us. It's one of the poorest places in the US. Everyone hangs out on the sidewalk high drunk and smoking. The second time it was at night so that was even crazier. But we got some good contacts heading there and back. 

I've met more people of different backgrounds here in less than a week, than I have in my whole life. I've met Ethiopians, black Buddhists, black Muslims, white Hindus, black Israelites, atheists from everywhere, and a whole lot of Hispanics from Guatemala and el Salvador, I guess 15ish years ago there was a revolution there so everyone peaced out and came here. 

Church was great, the ward is awesome and gave us calzones that will last a few days, rides home, and some bomb referrals. Priesthood was also all about home teaching, they've got it figured out. We took one of the referrals to the temple's visitors center and the hermanas that serve there really nailed a lesson and both are going to prepare for baptism. This week has been exhausting but it has all been worth it, I see the Lord's hand helping us in everything we do. 

Pictures, 

hasta la vista ccm
Airplane ride

Companion /the capitol

Views from the apartment

Also, adiós ocho b