Elder Ben Sugden: Week 3 & 4 - Richland Washington

I got arrival package, it was great!

The last couple of days in the MTC were really good and we were able to feel the spirit a lot. Leaving my district was a lot harder than I thought it would be – they are great people who will hopefully be friends for a long time.

MTC district and teachers

On their way to WA

I wanted to thank you and mom for the way you raised me, and the values you instilled in me. I think they have made it easier for me to adapt to life in the MTC and mission because one of the major things here is strict obedience. Some of the people are struggling doing everything, and so I am trying to be an example others can follow.

Elder Sugden and Elder Ayedalotte

I have been assigned to Richland, WA. What I have seen of the area so far is very pretty. My companion is Elder Ayedalotte and he is from Caldwell, Idaho. I like him a lot and he seems like he will be a really good trainer, so we will see how that goes. We cover two wards up here and it would be a biking area but they don’t believe in bikes because they want us to talk to everyone we see and they think that stopping to get off a bike would be a little awkward … so we do a lot of walking. The mission president is in one of the wards we cover so we get to see him often, which is nice. We even gave him a referral to go talk to one of his neighbors down the street. I asked him if he thought he would be able to wear his colorful socks (when we were shopping he really wanted things to be stylish and liked that the fun socks added some personality to his look) The mission president is pretty strict on all the rules and I don’t think I’ll be able to wear colorful socks for 2 years. In a letter he said that his mission president expects them to be exactly obedient – and that is what he expects of himself and his companion. If that is not the case then he guesses he will have to learn patience. I am sending him more plain colored socks :)

President and Sister White

The first couple of days have been good, but it’s been a lot of walking and the area we are in is sort of dead. We have no real investigators so we are doing a lot of finding and the appointments we have had have all canceled on us, which is disappointing.

P-day is going to be on Mondays - and they don’t let us call them p-days, we have to call them preparation days (that’s kind of annoying but I’ll live.) No iPads now but the mission president said the area is moving in that direction so they could be coming soon.

The food here has been pretty good. There hasn’t been anything that I haven’t been able to eat as of yet so that’s been nice - hopefully it stays that way. We go to the members’ houses every night except for preparation days. One of the members owns a Costa Vida and a Subway right next to each other and gives the missionaries a 60% discount. So I will be eating that a lot! We do the laundry in the members house and we use his kitchen for lunch and if we need food later in the night.

We have been trying to do some service for a part member family but every time we go over there they are never there - and yesterday we found out they did the project without us, so that was disappointing. We are going to start to have missionary firesides for members to bring their friends to help the missionary work in the area increase - so hopefully that will work. Instead of sharing a quick message after dinner we like to help members work on a member missionary plan so that they know how to talk to their friends about the church. Hopefully we can start having some lessons to teach next week.

I’m feeling really good and ready to work.

Elder Sugden