Off to see Hell Sparks

Got an email from Matt today!  Right on time this week, too!  :)  He's got some changes coming his way...

Well, well, well.  I am getting transferred after a wonderful 4.5 months in Dayton, NV which is probably my favorite small town in America... besides maybe Gig Harbor.  But Gig Harbor is a bustling metropolis now, so Dayton is now my favorite small town.  Turns out that I am getting DTed (Double Transferred- 2 missionaries being sent to an area with no experience in that area) into a new area in Sparks which is a suburb of Reno.  They have a joke that Reno is so close to Hell that you can see Sparks.  So goody.  I leave tomorrow evening so i get to do my 2 favorite activities today and tomorrow: pack, and say goodbye to everybody that I love here... which is everybody.  :P  Yuck.  So Tami, when we take a trip to Nevada to visit all our old haunts, we have to stop in Dayton for sure.

My new area is just being opened because the mission is getting really young really fast (all the experienced missionaries are being replaced with new unexperienced ones) and we are just getting a batch of 20-something brand new missionaries from the MTC.  So they are opening like 10 new areas in the mission and I'm getting sent to one of them.  I think I'm still in a car which will be good because it's (supposedly) going to start getting cold... maybe... I don't know if it ever gets cold in NV.  At least I know that I won't ever have to deal with the humungo freeze that happened in MO last year.  5 deg. F for a week.  Sheesh!  My new companion's name is Elder Mussetter.  I don't know anything about him.

Elder Meldrum is getting a brand new greenie to train, so that will be fun for him.  He says that he wants to train only once so he can give away his posterity tie (tie passed down from his trainer and his trainer's trainer and so forth... mine is ugly) and that's it.

Rules for ties and music.  Ties can be just about anything as long as it isn't off the wall crazy, but if it is, then I'll wear it once a month like the tie Emily gave me. :)  Music is supposed to be anything that you can play at a baptism  (Most missionaries extend that to popular music instrumentals, EFY music, mellow apostate music and so forth, but MoTab and good classical music (classic rock is classical right?) are good for me.  OBEDIENCE!).  What I really would want are talks (General Conference on CD, John Bytheway, and so forth).  Anyway.  I love you all.  I am excited to meet new people (weird for me to be excited about that) and to have a new companion (I love Elder Meldrum).  Try recognizing your blessings more.  Heavenly Father loves hearing gratitude.

-Elder Matthew Blakemore