Week 61 - Transferred to Goshen, Little Mexico and a TON of Amish

Well, as you've already been informed, I've been transferred back up north to Goshen, Indiana! It's a pretty small city, but bigger than Elkhart. There are a TON of Amish people here and you can see them riding around in their carriages. They even have horse stalls at Wal-mart so that's Goshen. It's really good to be back in this branch with a lot of the members I had grown to love, and it's also great to get to know more members whom I didn't have the fortune to meet when I was in Elkhart.

Being District Leader is nothing big. It's literally the same exact thing as being a normal missionary, except I have to collect numbers from my district at the end of the week and report them to our zone leaders. We also have a district meeting every week and I have to make the program for that and assign trainings and stuff. It's not a big deal at all, I'm just glad I get to keep preaching the restored gospel. And I don't know if you remember when Zach told me that Sam Dean, from our school, got called to Indy, but I'm now in his zone and we even share a car with him and his companionship. It's a little strange seeing someone from my high school out in the mission field, but it's good to see him again. 

I like Goshen a lot! There are a ton of Hispanics here and Juan said it's nickname is "Little Mexico." My new companion is Elder Ebeling from Draper. He, just like Elder Shepherd, just got done being trained. He's a way funny guy and he's super athletic, so it should be fun playing basketball with him today. His Spanish could use some work, but so could everyone's when they first come out. 

We have a lot of sweet investigators. One of them is S. His real name is V, but his nickname since birth has been S. so he prefers to go by that. Before I got here, S. got put in jail after the missionaries had been teaching him for a while. On Friday we actually went by the jail to set up a video lesson over there, but before our scheduled video lesson, we got an email saying that it was cancelled due to his release! To be honest, I was kind of looking forward to teaching in jail, but I'm definitely glad he's out. We taught him yesterday and he definitely has a thirst for knowledge and desires to find the truth. We had a really good lesson about prayer and the Book of Mormon. We committed him to a baptismal date for Nov 28 and we're hoping he'll be ready by that date. It's the second time he's been in jail in the past 3 weeks so our biggest concern is keeping him out of there. ;)

I'm glad to be back up north even though it's going to be freezing cold! I'm going to tough out my last winter in Indy and then it'll be warm the rest of the way. I love you! Have a good week!

Love, Elder Thayne

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