The First Week in Orlando!

June 9

My companion is Elder Barton, from Walnut Creek, CA (just outside of San Francisco). He was released as a Zone Leader before being called to be my trainer and my district leader, and he has 2 more transfers after this one before he goes home, so he's been out for almost 21 months. We serve in the Hunter's Creek zone (it's basically Southern Orlando, right between Orlando city and Kissimmee) in the Barton Creek area (or, as we call it, "Barton's District"). This is also where the main office is because, if you didn't know, we are the office missionaries! In this mission, we only spend about 2-4 hours per week in the office, but last week we were doing Stake Monthly Correlation Reports, so my first couple of days were spent in the Mission Office filling out paperwork (YUCK!).We have a van (2005 Dodge, really nice air conditioning!)Because we spent so much office time, there are only a few faith-promoting stories to tell about this week, although our zone leaders just told us we still outdid the other missionaries in our zone to win the "Most Savage Missionary Companionship" award for the week! One of the really interesting things about Orlando is that there are so many people moving in and out of here that come from so many different places in the world, so there are always new faces to talk to every day! So far, we have run into people that speak Spanish, Portugese, German, French, Italian, Creole, Haitian, and English, and most of them are from anywhere you could point to on a globe. With that many people coming and going, it can be really frustrating to try to set up appointments because people are so busy either looking for somewhere to live and work or are moving to different areas and places, so almost all of our appointments for this last week have cancelled.One of the bright points, though, has been the Landon and Lisa Young family. Landon is actually a former Church member from Orlando that fell away from the Church when his sealing to his wife and children was revoked when he got divorced from his first wife and he didn't know about it (this is his story, but we do know that this happened and that his ex-wife was the daughter of the bishop, so we think it's probably true), but has finally decided to give the Church another chance. His now third wife, Lisa, has never been a member, but has committed to be baptized on July 5th, and she is really trying to do everything she can to come to church on Sundays (she's a nurse), read the scriptures, and gain her own testimony of the Gospel. They have an awesome family, and this week has been spent mainly with them preparing Lisa for her baptism. We are expecting great things from them!Another one of our contacts is Rusty, who is a 22 year old college student at UCF (Central Florida) that is really into religious study and debate. We have had the chance to talk to him and his roommate about the Gospel, and they are very accepting and willing to learn, but they are very scholarly about their approach and are not really feeling the Spirit as much as we would like. We'll continue to teach them for a little while, but I am not really sure about these two...Before I came into this area, Elder Barton and his companion had already set up 4 baptisimal dates with investigators, so we will have a couple fairly soon that I haven't had a chance to talk to yet. One of the best of these is Randy Scarborough, who works out at the Deseret Ranch as a cowboy (Dad's type of guy, for other reasons as well!). He has accepted a committment to be baptized, and this last week his less-active wife took the challenge to get Sundays off of her job, and she got it! We're excited to continue to teach this family and help Brother Scarborough come to church with his wife and be baptized!
The most interesting contact for me and Elder Barton, though, has been Rafael Quinones. On Saturday, we were contacting some less-active members by cycling around a community (unlike in Centerville, the houses and streets are set up in "gated" communities, which look a lot like apartment complexes but have their own access roads with gates and some community recreation activites, including golf courses set up through the houses!) when we saw Rafael staring at the moon. We stopped and talked to him for about an hour teaching the first lesson, which he pretty much asked questions about as if he had been role playing the lesson with us. He said that he had been to our church parking lot before (if you want to know, it's on Wetherbee right next to the Central Florida Turnpike, just in case you've got an Orlando map displayed at home), but no one was there. He committed to come to church, and he showed up a half hour early! This Sunday he could only stay for sacrament meeting because he had taken his son's car and needed to give it back, but we set up a time to talk with him this week and he promised to come for the full 3 hour block next week. He's almost too golden to be true! We have great hopes for him.
Enjoy doing everything that you do, and don't forget to smile! It either makes people really happy or creeps them out tremendously!

PS
One thing I forgot to mention is that we live with a companionship of Spanish-speaking Elders, so I've had a chance to freshen up on the language a bit.