Caring for People, Caring for Plants

Hey everybody!

Well I'm in Naperville now -- so long to St. Charles. My new companion's name is Elder Sonzini, and he's from Kaysville, UT. He went to Davis High. He's pretty cool, it should be a fun transfer working with him! 

Our new apartment is super nice! The sisters that we whitewashed moved in about a month and a half ago, so it doesn't have a lot of the furnishings that other apartments do, but it's a lot bigger, and a lot nicer. I will send pictures of it next week! And you better believe that I'm one of the cleanest missionaries, I've got to do everything I can to keep the #WifeMe status up, haha.

Elders Sonzini and Anderson

The ward here is fantastic! At transfer meeting, President Fenn told us that he thinks it's the ward that's the closest thing you can get to a Utah ward, and I would say that's probably true! There are a ton of active members, and the ward has the smallest boundaries in the mission (about 5-7 square miles), but it is one of the strongest wards in the mission as well. Our bishop is Bishop Boswell, and he and Brother Gutierrez, our ward mission leader, are both awesome! It was a little hard to leave the last area just because there were a lot of great members there.

I feel like I did okay with Elder Sonzini on his first day here, especially because neither of us knew anything about the area or knew any members of the ward. We were able to attend the baptism of four 8-year-olds on his first day here, which gave us a chance to introduce ourselves and meet a lot of the ward members, which was really good! I took him shopping to get bedding and a few more basic supplies, but there weren't any good stories that came out of that.

So the interesting things that have happened this week: 

1) On the first door that Elder Sonzini took the lead on for the door approach, and I'm not even kidding, it was the VERY FIRST DOOR, the lady let us come right into the house to share a message. HOW DOES THAT EVEN HAPPEN!? 

2) We have a super nice ward building that we meet in, it's actually the Naperville stake center (I'll try to send pictures of it too), but the chapel is spectacular, because there are live plants up on the stand, behind all of the seats (and it's not just a few, there are a lot). The history behind the plants is that Elder Oaks from the Quorum of the Twelve served in this area either in the stake presidency or as an area authority, and he had the idea to put these plants in. Now this was before the Church came out and said not to have live plants in the buildings any more, so nowadays you can't just put plants in the church, but since these plants were in place before that rule was made, we are allowed to keep them in the church building. But if they die, we can't replace them. Our assignment from the ward is to make sure that Elder Oaks' plants don't die, so once a week, we have to water and take care of them, so that's pretty cool!

Anyways, we're working hard, and we've been able to set up a few appointments over the next weeks, so we're excited to teach those! I'll let you know how it goes!

I hope that everything is going well for you at home, I love you guys!

Love,

Elder Dallas Anderson
#BRBConvertingDRose