Where in the World is Palo Cedro?

January 29, 2007

Okay Folks,

This is going to be kind of short because I had to use part of my half an hour of writing time reading the emails I'd received. So if you want more news, send me letters, if you want less news, send me emails. Don't you feel powerful?

Email rules (for those of you who expressed wonder, if not feel free to skip): I can only email from myldsmail.net, I cannot check any other websites. Which means that I cannot update my own missionblog. Sad for you. I can only spend 30 minutes total. You are supposed to email at a library or computer business but as Palo Cedro lacks any of the above, we are allowed to email from Members' businesses if they have computers and are willing to let us do so. Now to the real stuff. You can comment on my blog, but I wouldn't see the coments. Someone would have to send them to me. I am undecided about wanting Sorensen group mail, I might not have time to read it.

My first assignment is is Palo Cedro. I'm not going to lie it's pretty much the boonies. Which does have its positive points. For instance, we are in a car and not on bikes. The funny thing, is that we actually don't even live in our area, but we do live in one of the nicest apartments in the mission. It's about a half hour drive to where most of the people in our ward live, and we have investigators that live at least an hour away. So we have to be very clever with our planning not to exceed the number of miles we've been allotted. But Palo Cedro is quite pretty, so that is a bonus. And so far the people have been quite nice and nobody has brought their shotgun out while we've been tracting. We do not, however, tract at night for this very reason.

The first day was kind of crazy. I ended up waking up at about 2:00-2:30 because my room mate had to be down to the travel office by 3:00 and while she is a very nice person, she is not the quietest. I did survive the plan ride with 20 Elders, though at the start of the bus ride from the MTC into Salt Lake (with many more than 20 Elders) I feared that perhaps not all of the Elders on their way out were going to make it if they persisted on talking in Donald Duck voices at 5:30 when the rest of us were trying to sleep. We spent most of the day once we got to Sacramento driving to the Stake Center, getting orientated and interviewed, setting up email accounts, and filling out paper work. Then we drove to the mission home where we were fed finally, I didn't eat breakfast and it was about 2:00 by this time. Then once the mission President figured out where he was sending us all we drove an hour and a half to Yuba City to meet our trainers. On a side note, I quite liked the Perrys. Though for some reason or other Sister Perry rather reminds me of the mother from 7th Heaven.

My companion is Sister Rowlands and she is by all accounts an excellent trainer. She is very bold in talking to people out on the street (OYMs) which is good for me because she insists I take my turn as well. We didn't drive up to our area on Tuesday because it was nearly a 4 hour drive and we had to be back down in Roseville on Thursday morning for Sister's Conference. So we went on exchanges with the sisters in Auburn and I got to tract--for a good 3 hours--there and teach my first lesson (to a member and a recent convert). Then Thursday we had Sisters Conference where all 12 of the sisters here met together and gave little mini lessons. Yes there are 12 sisters out of 160 missionaries in our mission. Then Sister Perry drove us to Vacaville (I made up that spelling) which is incidentally not in our mission, to meet up with the Edwards who were driving us up to our area. Since then its been a lot of meeting members. I only remember who about 30 of the people I've met are. We try to tract for about an hour a day, and teaching little lessons to inactive and part member families (we have tons of these in our areas). I've only taught one real lesson, and it went really well. We definitely diverged from our lesson plan, but I felt really comfortable and I had lots of personal experiences I could use to make our points and I could really feel the spirit when I testified.

Love,
Sister Sorensen

Address:
4538 B Lynbrook Loop
Redding, CA 96003