The field is actually pretty green.

Hope you get the reference. Hello from Arkansas! It's been almost a week since I got here, and it has been a blur! So, let's go through the days.

We left the CCM at 2:30 am, and i was not pleased. I had a cold, so I was quite short of breath from pulling luggage all that way. We sat around until customs opened at 4. We got to the plane all right, and we flew to Atlanta. Nothing super eventful on the fight, i just kind of zoned. In atlanta, we said bye to all the other people with us except Sister Norman, who was going to the gate next to us. Georgia was pretty fun, we ate lunch at Five Guys and sat around. Elder Schoenfeld an I met up with four other elders from Provo who were heading out to Little Rock, and we flew there!

We were met at the gate by President Petersen and his wife, along with the APs, Elders Armstrong and Barney. They're super cool, and in our ward, so it's cooler. We spent the night there. It was fun. You should be getting a letter in a few days that has more, so I'll leave it at that. 

So! now I'm in the field. My companion is Elder Dalton, of Gilbert Arizona! He lives across the street form the temple. He's pretty chill and stuff. We are serving in Conway, Arkansas. It's about an hour from Little Rock. Fairly small town, which is nice. We live in an apartment building.
  Here's  the address: 
401 2nd Street, 
APT. #321, 
Conway AR 72032.

You can write me at that address for the next little while, I guess! <cough cough>You can mail me direct, you don't have to go through the mission office.

Now, about my investigators! First off, we have two baptisms coming up on the 12th. Two girls, 9 and 11 from a less active family. They're coming back to church, which is good. Then there's Omero. He is an eternal investigator who has been coming to church for about 5 years. He says that he believes in the church, but he won't get baptized because he believes that baptism by water is symbolic scripture language for birth, so he doesn't need to do that. He is.... interesting.... yeah. For example, he gave his testimony in church this week. Someone was translating for him (we're in an English ward), and thank goodness! He opened by talking about how Satan and sin does not exist. He continued with stuff like that, with the translator "getting the spirit" of what he had to say. He's interesting. And those are our main investigators, most of the others I have not been able to meet yet. 

Well, I'm going to sign off now! I am ready to serve everybody here for as long as I can. Hope you all are doing good!

--

Llamado a Servir,

Andrew Reay

Happy Monday everybody! So, i'm pretty much all packed now, so I won't be working when we party like it's 1999 in my house tonight. We figure that because everyone won't be able to sleep anyway, we may as well stay up till 2. But yeah! i'm all set to go!

So, my weekly summary. The day that i emailed last, we went and played tennis (or tried) for about 2 hours. I did not think it would last that long, so I ended up with some lovely body art on my arms, legs, and head. picture is attatched. I'm all better though! not much else happened this week though. President Pratt informed us that we had to take down our lovely fort, so the room is empty now. Es triste. 

It's also triste that I have to say goodbye to everyone here. You become such close friends here, it's crazy! We said goodbye to the hermanas and Elders Rogers and Harris. Everyone else is leaving today. It's sad, but I know we'll be meeting up with each other later, so it's not horrible. 

Can't really think of much else to write, so I will be mailing y'all from ARKANSAS next week! 

Tennis sunburn - OUCH!  That white skin.  

My asombroso scripture cases these are the coolest things ever, just letting you know

Mi maestro, Hmo. Trejo. He has Darian Comsa's sense of humor. It's adorable.

Look at us photogenic bosses.

our tennis opponents Yeah, I get the feeling we're weird.

Calle De Abbey

The part of the story where i start freaking out

So. Today I woke up and realized that by this time tomorrow i would be halfway to Georgia.

Not. Cool.

Ok, maybe it is pretty cool. This time has flown by so fast, it´s almost scary. i think it´s just starting to hit me that this isn´t some incredibly awesome EFY and I come home in a week. But you know what? I think I´ll be able to handle it.

So I had a pretty good week. Apparently St. Patrick´s day is a bigger deal here than in the U.S. because yesterday there were fireworks all over the place all day long. We did the Hunger Games salute whenever one went off. :P Actually, they have fireworks every day. not flashy ones, just ones that go boom and stuff. But they've lit the mountain on fire four times in the past two days. Like an actual big fire. But they just let it burn itself out. Gotta love it, right? 

So, here is the highlight of my week. We came home to get dressed for gym on Thursday, and there was a fort in our living room. words cannot do it justice. i'm talking a let´s-use-all-the-furniture-and-sheets-and-six-mattresses-and-make-a-twenty-foot-long-fort-that-covers-two-rooms kind of fort. It's incredible. We have six people, myself included, sleeping in it for the past five nights. We were worried the cleaning people would take it down, but when they came, not only did they find it awesome, but they gave us more sheets without us asking to make it bigger! so, this may be the most epic thing ever built by this house. 

In church news, both of my investigators are getting baptized, one this weekend and the other next, so that's good. We made a lot of progress with Favian, an atheist who drinks and smokes a lot, but he's not anymore b/c he wants to be baptized. so WOO! 

So, That's just about it! i will be emailing on Monday next week, since I will not be able to on Tuesday. I will email you all then!

the tent people! From the left, we have Elder Whetton, who can sing like Jack Johnson and beatbox better than anyone I have heard, Elder Heber, the oddball who, in his words, "tames woman" :P And then there's elder Tito, the Samoan of great stature, who has a boss tattoo (it's cultrural, of course) And then there's me, and then on the end, there is Elder perez, who is hilarious.

The inside of the fort

The outside of the fort

 

--

Llamado a Servir,

Andrew Reay

Little Rock Arkansas Mission Address

Okay, so Andrew has let us know that we probably shouldn't send any more mail to him in Mexico City.  You can still e-mail him at andrew.reay@myldsmail.net but if you want to write him send it to Arkansas:

Elder Andrew Reay
905 Kierre Drive
North Little Rock, AR 72116-3709

More Pics!!!

Thank you! I'm borrowing pics from my friends now. Some other last minute stuff: I bought a sick scripture cover, it's handmade leather with the Aztec tree of life burned into it, it looks amazing. Also, we found a bathroom so deep in the computer labs that the lights have not been changed and we call it the mines of Moria. We locked Woffinden and dougherty in there accidentally for almost an hour before we figured it out. oh, and I got a haircut about an hour ago, i'll send a pic.It´s not too bad, about what I have at home.  And WE HAVE A NEW DISTRICT! it´s super exciting. The four elders are hilarious, because we have two elders, 6'6" and 6'3" respectively, paired with two elders about 5 foot nothing. And the Hermanas are very nice, and I think everyone's going to get along well. And we had a great privilege bestowed on our district, but I can't mention it here, so you'll have to ask me later.  

Here's the temple! it's gorgeous. Fun fact: The angel Moroni on it is holding the gold plates, the only one in the world like it. 

These guys have the most fun companionship i have ever seen. Elders Woofinden and Dougherty

This guy is also my zone leader. he's the one I told you about with operatic training. Elder Thomas

This guy is basically family, as far as his sense of humor goes. He's in Ecuador now,on his mission. Love this

guy!

So, here's my district! Bottom row, from left: Elder Carr, my district leader, Elder Dougherty, the brony( He wears a Fluttershy necklace under his shirt, i kid you not), his companion, Elder Woffinden (who looks and acts like axl from the Middle), Elder Marshall, the district leader's companion. Hermanas: Carlson, who is super nice and also addicted to M&Ms and Altoids, and Hermana Dickerson, who has a better grasp on the language than anyone else. Top row: The extremely attractive Elder Reay, Elder Schoenfeld, my companion, Elder Rogers, the band geek, and Elder Harris, the straightlaced one. and that's my district!

guyyyyys, i'm freakin ouuuuutt

Hi! So, It just dawned on me that by the end of this week i will have been here a month. GUYS. NOT OK. jk, it's totally fine. today was a pretty good week, but a bit hard to sleep in. This weekend, there was a rave of sorts basically across the street from our house. it went until around 3:30 or four. i know this because it kept me up until then. For two nights in a row. They did have some preytty good tunes going, though. :P 

So yesterday the older district in my zone left for their missions, which was really sad. i got very close to them, considering I have only known them for a month. They will do great though, so I'm not too sad. We did have to stay up late last night though, because one elder in the district left at two a.m, and you can't be alone in your dorm. So, he came and stayed over at our house with me and my companion, which was pretty fun. We chatted about the gospel and stuff. That is one thing that I still find awesome, that we all fanboy over the book of mormon and ll this doctrinal stuff like we would about a TV show at home. Man, i love being a missionary. 

So yeah, that's about it! I'll send some pics of the absolutely gorgeous Mexico City temple, and one of our district, and one of me and my zone leader and favorite person ever, Elder Leach. I don't think I've told you about him. ¡Hasta luego!

--

Llamado a Servir,

Andrew Reay

Quotes

ok, forgot one thing. the first week we got here, we had an area seventy give a talk. I wrote down a couple really good quotes (and drew pics with them, but I'll be keeping those). Thought you'd like them!

"You can count how many seeds are in an apple, but you can't even imagine how many apples are in a seed."

"We are not obedient because we are blind; we are obedient because we can see."

So yeah, those are the quotes! Byee!

oh, and P.S. I won´t be able to email everyone a whole lot, we've been overstaying our welcome in the computer lab. I'm going to try to send as much as possible in the main email. 

Week 4/Wasn't that 3???

Well, here we go into week 4! technically, we've been here less than three weeks, but according to the schedule, it's been 4. So, yeah. This week was quite good, but a bit dull. the routine is starting to set in, and so all of us are getting a bit tired of it. However, the lessons are still great. I have learned more Spanish here than I did in all my classes in school, and I know that is the Lord helping me.

We got to watch a talk by jeffery R. Holland from provo, and it was as fiery as you would expect. He talked about how missionaries need to be inspired and stuff, and it was amazing. We also watched Joesph Smith : Prophet of the Restoration, which I highly recommend, it's a wonderful film. 

Oh, by the way, sorry i didn't email you earlier, but we went to the temple! It's closed for the year, so we couldn't go in, but we went through the visitors center. It's cooler than ours, no offense. I will send pictures as soon as I can get some. 

So, quick spiritual/nerdy thought. We were talking about the Book of Mormon. And also the Princess Bride. W're geeks. Get over it. But anyway, I had a thought. It's a quote by the Grandpa: 

"this book, it's a very special book. My father read  it to me, and now I'm going to read it to you. It's got fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, true love, miracles..."

That was quite cool for me, once I got to thinking. The Book of Mormon does have all these things, from the fighting amongst the Nephites and Lamanites, to the true love and miracles brought by Jesus Christ. I know that this book is true, and it contains all the things that we need to do to return to live with God. if there are any people who are reading this who have not read the book of Mormon, I'm going to ask you to email me.  I want to talk about it with you. And since I can only respond once a week, in the time between i would challenge you to read this book. I can promise you with all my heart that this book is true, and in the words of Joesph Smith, " a man can  grow closer to God through it than through any other book." I promise that if you read it with an open heart, God will tell you through His Spirit that the words you read are the words of God. If you have any sort of problem at all, the Book of Mormon can answer it. It's been true for me, and it will be true for you. 

Well, I must be going now. Since our morning was taken up visiting the temple, I have laundry to do! 

just remember I love you all, and i hope you are doing well! 

llamado a servir,

Andrew Reay

P.S. to my familia: I bought you guys some things, so I'll probably send them when I get to Arkansas! Oh, and i got your letter, mom. It took quite a while to get here, so i don't think it's a good Idea to send anymore to here, as they may not arrive on time.