New Companion!

Hey everybody! Well, the call came on Monday night. Elder Muniz got transferred to South Tucson and my new companion is Elder Cuevas. He came in from El Paso on Wednesday afternoon and we're off to a good start. The transfer has put a lot of pressure on me to learn the area well, but it's going fine so far. Elder Cuevas is awesome and I'm looking forward to working with him. He is originally from Chile, and he moved to Washington when he was 13. Aside from Elder Muniz, he is the only other native spanish speaker in the mission that has been out longer than me. I feel pretty lucky to have my first two companions be the only natives here. It's a really good learning opportunity.

This week has been pretty crazy to say the least. Not only did we have the transition of switching companions to go through, but our area got split in half. Two other elders came in to take it over but their apartment wasn't ready until Saturday. That meant that they stayed with us for the first three nights in our tiny apartment. It was crazy but we had a good time. It also meant that I spent a good portion of the week showing all three of them a brand new area that I'm not exactly comfortable with myself yet. It has gone about as well as I could ask for though.

Well, the Garcia family (Ivan and Anayeli) had interviews for their baptisms on Saturday. It all went really well but they still don't feel quite ready. We're going to continue to work with them and hopefully it happens in a few weeks.

Ricardo made it to church again yesterday and had his interview as well. Unfortunately, we found out that the woman that he's been calling his wife for the last two months isn't his wife yet. They live together and have a two-month-old baby but they're not actually married. Apparently, he's asked her several times but she's pretty non-committal. Hopefully we can get this situation worked out soon.

Things with everyone else are kind of at a stand still. I think things are going to start to pick up though. Elder Cuevas is a really good missionary and we're going to continue working hard. I really like the direction things are going.

I love you all!

Elder Olsen