12-24-12

SNOWWWWWW!!!!! It snowed a lot overnight Wednesday night and it was fun because President Keyes said to stay inside even though we worked a little bit on Thursday. The other picture is in my new apartment in Blue Springs, Missouri..........Yes, I got unexpectedly transferred. I'll talk about it in my big e-mail.

Family,

Thanks for the pictures and e-mails and stuff. I love hearing from you all and it sounds like the wedding day was an awesome day. I was thinking about it on Tuesday but knew why I was out here. We taught an awesome lesson that night but they still didn't accept baptism. 

As for the rest of the week, the main and biggest news was transfers. I was totally expecting to stay in Wamego for at least one more transfer to finish training Elder Black. But the Lord had other things in mind as I got the call on Wednesday morning that I will be transferred to the Fleming Park ward in Blue Springs, Missouri in the Kansas City stake. We cover the whole stake since we work in both our ward and the singles branch at the stake center in Lee's Summit. The missionary who was here before me, Elder Parrish, got transferred to Wamego. So we just flip flopped places. My new companion is Elder Hamblin and he is from Seattle. He's been out for 3 months but is older than me (that has been the trend throughout my mission thus far). It's been tough driving around in an area that I'm not familiar to like I was with Wamego. But it's been especially difficult because we had some really solid investigators, some with a date set on my last day there. We have almost no investigators here and it seems like the missionaries here didn't work as hard as Elder Clare and I did or as Elder Black and I did. But I will help Elder Hamblin and him me as best as I can in this new area. It's also tough to hear people talking about Elder Parrish and how great he was because they don't appreciate me yet. But don't worry, I'm patient. At church yesterday, we didn't sing in the choir like I planned to in the Wamego branch, but the program was really cool and I felt the spirit in both sacrament meetings. I attended 2 sacrament meetings yesterday and there are some really good singers in both the ward and singles branch. Sorry if I'm jumping all over the place. I'm just not used to all of this yet. Elder Hamblin hasn't passed off his lessons yet so I have been liking driving. But without knowing where I'm going or who we're seeing, it has become rather difficult. So on Wednesday before I left, I said bye to the members and investigators that'll miss me and me them. On Thursday transfers were cancelled because of the snow so I actually got to eat at President Knapp's house for the first time for dinner. He's the stake President for Salina. I thought it was another brother Peterson moment because they wanted us to be out of there early because they had something to do at 7. Well that thing to do was watch the BYU vs. SDSU football bowl game. I heard BYU won (how could I not have having members that live, eat, and breathe BYU football?). Did you get a chance to go to the game at Qualcomm stadium or even watch it? I heard it was boring up until the 4th quarter. Anyways, I am doing my best to cope with this situation. I am glad to hear that you are doing good. Oh, and that picture that I sent you in my new apartment, I am wearing the tie that Sister Burstedt sent to me. I'll show you the pictures over the computer tomorrow if you can't get them up on the computer. Well, I'll let you go and if you want to know anything else just ask tomorrow. I will have up to an hour but no more than that. Until then, love

Elder Sutherland

PS: "Hey could I borrow 2 or 3 of these?"
"mmmmhhmmm." 
"...2. Count them 2...marshmallows!!!"