Email Received June 4

Hi Family,

Well, transfers happened this week and I was able to see most of the members and have a picture and have them write in my journal one last time. So at transfer meeting, I got to see Elder Beck and he had changed from my last encounter with him. He seemed down. The new guy taking over the area with elder Pickup is from Canada so they will have a fun time there making fun of him. So I went to Powhatan and it took an hour drive to get down there with all my luggage in a red truck. Pretty cool and we had a fun time making the move.

Well, Powhatan is an even more rural area than Wakefield. So our few days here were driving around and seeing a few LAs and members. One of the less actives has a potty mouth and a knack for offensive jokes and he had the grossest cat with fleas and mange all over it. They called it Max. Go figure. We were also able to find some new people to teach which has been really hard here according to Elder Corey. Two of them are brothers we talk to outside their house.  We gave them a Book of Mormon and scheduled a return appointment. Another was this guy named Don and he lives in a trailer and is physically disabled. He has been down from his wife leaving him out of the blue and doesn’t really understand why she left. So I came in with the Book of Mormon and gave him a copy and told him about all the struggles they had gone thru in there. He was pretty interested and had lived above missionaries in the past. So pretty cool.

Church was fun. The ward consists of more older people than young. Our ward mission leader tried to convince us to stop Exchanges with other missionaries, but it’s been enforced for it to happen so we had to tell him that it was necessary for it to happen. The people were really nice and open with me. They have more priesthood here and they play basketball every Saturday, so that’s cool. One of them reminded me of Braden and he was wearing a black shirt with tennis shoes. He had the floppiest hair I have ever seen. He was cool though.

Elder Corey is a pretty chill guy, but he’s from Utah so he thinks he has to be living out his purpose to its fullest extent or he feels completely worthless or like a total bad guy. But he doesn’t really follow the smaller rules all the time. He’s really good at playing the guitar and we have two guitars at the apartment; one was lent by a member who’s also good. E. Corey is a good singer but pushes it a little too hard sometimes. Just a good time/ bad time kind of feeling I have about him. Oh he’s the district leader, but I’m the senior companion so we are equals in the companionship. The people in our district are the Assistants to the Mission President and the zone leaders so nobody is really under Elder Corey’s supreme authority.

Well, I’m learning the guitar by chords and also the Coldplay music I have but it’s still a little complicated. Right now we are going to have a tri-zone basketball game. Really fun!  The apartment really is a Bachelor pad from it being a converted Verizon store. I’ll send pictures of it so you can get a good idea about it. Hope to hear from you soon! 

Love you all,

Elder McClure