06-15-09

Edgewood is like working in Cortez, CO but without having the additional Mancos Ward.
It's really spread out. We have 44 miles to use a day.

We did double transfers into the area so its been kind of slow this first week finding out where everything is and meeting people. We didn't meet the Bishop and Ward Mission Leader until Sunday b/c the Bishop was on the Stake youth trek all last week and the Ward mission leader was on business in Boston. Unfortunately, the previous Elders didn't leave that great of notes, but we are beginning to get a good idea of the area. We have been way busy.

We live with members of the church called the Somerville's. We live in a corner of their huge garage where Bro. Somerville had built a two story office-like space that we now occupy.

The District consists of the City View Spanish speaking Elders, the Estancia Elders, the Cedar Crest Sisters and us. We meet for District Meeting at our Edgewood building. For church services Estancia has their own branch building but Cedar Crest meets in our building. City View meets at the Indian School Rd. building in Albq. Yep.

The truck is way nice. Her name is Claire and she is a tan color. She runs great and only has some 2000 miles on her.

It turns out I am Senior Companion. My new comp. is Elder Ben C Thompson from
Syracuse, UT. He arrived in the mission in Dec. '08 and had been serving in Thoreau, NM on the Navajo Indian Reservation.

(additional notes provided by Elder Thompson)
"Edgewood is mostly white or Hispanic people. The area is full of upper middle class white people who live on acres of land and are very content with what they have both temporally and spiritually...so finding new people to teach is going to be challenging."

"The ward is good sized, ea sly about 150 people. We are being fed almost every night (which is good seeing) we have no kitchen. However we do have a microwave and a camp stove."