FIRST WEEK IN THE GKLM!!

 

Hi Ya'll!

   Well It was my first week in the Great Kentucky Louisville Mission! Boy oh boy was it interesting. haha!  

I am serving in Somerset Kentucky which is south of Louisville. It is funny that I am serving here since that was the street we lived on in Poky! My companion is Sister Peterson and she is awesome! We are opening a new area, which sucks by the way, but we will see the miracles happen later. We are in the downtown area of Somerset. Yes it is a little ghetto, but its not bad haha! It is soooo Beautiful here. This town reminds me of Pocatello. It has about the same population, the mall is little, the downtown area is about the same too. I already love the people here though!

Oh so the first 2 days our water was BROWN! It was sooooo gross. I felt like I was in a third world country. Luckily it was just that the apartment had been vacant for so long that the water heater just needed to run for while. It is all good now though! 

Sister Peterson is from Riverton Utah. She is 20 and has been out for 4 months. She has been in 4 areas, which is crazy! I feel bad for her. She is such a go getter! She talks a lot and sometimes I don't really get to ever talk when we go tracting or contacting, but it is fine with me! She always knows exactly what to say haha!

 

The branch here is little. There are about 60 people that come regularly. There are a ton of less actives. The church is a half an hour away when we bike. It is not in our area. Luckily we get rides to church. The members are awesome and we will get fed a lot. I had a yummy pot roast dinner yesterday at a members house! There are elders here in Somerset too. They cover the outer area, and they have a car. They are awesome though. One of them is the district leader and his name is Elder Chrichton. He is from America Samoa.

Our apartment is great except it smells like smoke ugh! Its fine though because everyone smokes here! I will definitely be used to smelling smoke soon enough. It was sad because we saw some little 12 year olds smoking and I was appalled! I didn't even know what to say or think.

The first day on our bikes was interesting haha! There are a million and one hills here in Somerset, so my legs are getting nice and strong.

We started talking to some guys on the first day who were out on their porch, and boy was it interesting. One of them started talking to us about how we don't believe there is a hell, and all this crap. Then he  started to try and prove all this stuff. It was dumb. I stopped listening and just looked at the trees while Sister Peterson listened to him.Then the other guy came up to me while other one was talking to Sis. Peterson, and started asking me about Joseph Smith. I told him about it, and then he asked me some random conversation questions. He told  me that both of us looked like we weren't old enough to be doing this, and we told him our ages. He then proceeded to ask me out, but I didn't understand/hear him. Sooo I said yea, because I didn't understand what he said. He goes so when would be a good day, and I went WHAT? He asked me out again, and I go oohhh. Yea I can't do that. I told him why and he told me that it would suck to not be able to date for a year and a half. I was so grossed out afterwards and just laughed a lot since I misunderstood him. He was probably in his 30's. YUCK!  Another guy the other night told me that he felt safe around me and that I was an angel. That was also interesting.

The reason why opening a new area stinks is because there is not much info about it. We got some info from elder Chrichton, but most of it was potential investigators. We have visited almost all of them, and none of them are interested. We have done sooooooooooooooo much tracting and contacting it is ridiculous. Sister Peterson told me this was the hardest week of her mission because of how there was not much success in finding people.

We have 4 investigators. Two different couples. One couple is an older couple who is strong in their Baptist faith, but told us they would read the Book of Mormon because they love reading and learning. They are also going to let us teach them.

The other couple is Nicole and Michael who we found while looking for someone else. They have 5 children, and they seem like good parents. We taught them the 1st lesson and it went really well. We go back this week sometime. I think they are really interested, but I know they will struggle with the word of wisdom! They both smoke and drink a lot. Lets hope that their hearts will change over the next couple of lessons.  

Guess What everyone  I have 45 mosquito bites at the moment!  Yes they itch, but I try to resist from itching them. I have been using repellant, but it doesn't work to well. I guess they just love me! It will all be good though.

We met a couple who is catholic and they chatted with us just because. They collect clocks and they had over s thousand in their house it was crazy!

There is one girl that will get baptized here in a few weeks hopefully. She is the only member in her family who isn't baptized, but she is 12. We will be teaching her all of the lessons soon!

Love,

Sister Bradley