I am loving the new area. I wish I had hours and pictures and the words to describe the first view that I had of Charlottesville and the feeling that created. I hadn't seen over the trees for 19 months, and that is NOT an exaggeration. In Richmond it was all buildings, in Newport News it was ghetto and trees, Va beach it was the same as Richmond, but a lot of trees, and in Chesterfield there were trees as well. Trees in VA are like a 35-40 ft. wall alongside every road and yard. You don't ever see past the trees. It's crazy. As we were coming to Waynesboro there was a wall of trees on the right side of the freeway and a wall of trees on the left side of the freeway and at some point way off in the distance down this channel of trees I could see the ridge of a mountain!!!!!!!!!! HOly cow I flipped out. I was so excited. It wasn't big, it was actually quite small, but it was a welcome sight. I told Elder Canova to take me to the best view in town first thing so he took me to this small little hill where you are barely above the trees but it was so amazing! I could see for miles!!! I could see all of the mountains to the left and all of the mountains in front of me and all of the mountains to the right. I wanted to CRY! Is that crazy?! I got my mountain fix and we were back to work quickly but I am so excited. We already convinced a member in our ward to have an investigator picnic activity on the mountain next to their house. It's in the Shenandoah national park and they have a lifetime pass so they agreed to take us to have a picnic in the mountains. I will take pictures. That has been my favorite part so far. I'm in love. We will get to see Monticello and the view of the Shenandoah valley soon. "Country roads, take me home, to the place, I belong! West Virginia, mountain Mama, take me home, country roads" I feel right at home in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Tell Jordan Snow I am starting to appreciate that bluegrass music he always played. I'm just about living in that song.
We have only had 1 lesson so far but it was great. It was with Casey, and she is awesome. She is bed and home ridden and desires to be baptized. We are contemplating finding a pool that has an easy ramp access and wheeling her in. This will be a fun one. Her story with the missionaries goes back about a year if I'm not mistaken. She is so fun and particular about everything in her house. She wanted to get to know us and asked us a bunch of questions about our families. You can tell that she loves people and is extremely interested in the culture of the church and of missionaries, the organizational side of the mission, and things such as that. She is very smart and sweet and we love her already!
Elder Canova and I had a good planning session and have a good direction for the area. This ward is ready for success. Already we have 12 or 13 names on our list of potential member referrals. When a member tells us the name of a friend they are desiring to share the gospel with we just write the name down so that we can follow up. We usually invite them to do something like invite them for a church tour or to Easter services. It seems as though everyone has a friend that is interested in part. We will just do what we can to harvest that. I don't see a whole lot of time for tracting in the future. We have ten ward missionaries and they all want to go out. That is unique and a needed blessing. We also met with the bishop and he gave us a list of names in different categories that he has been thinking about.
Well, I gotta go. Oh yeah, another thing that happened, it snowed last night! We woke up to snow on the ground. FUN :)
Love you all!
--
Elder Skyler Mark Andreasen
p.s. I choose Christ
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