New Area and Companionships!

4-6-15

Hello,

I'm sorry that it has taken so long to update you all on everything that has been happening the past few weeks, but most of it is irrelevant compared to what happened this past week, so I will just talk about that.
   On Tuesday, we had interviews with President Cusick in Sarasota and that was kind of interesting and on Wednesday we received a call from him telling us that both Elder Baumgartner and I were getting transferred to new areas with different companions.  There wasn't necessarily enough work going on in the ward to keep two companionships in the mission.  Elder Baumgartner got reassigned to serve in Sarasota, and I got reassigned to serve in the Riverview ward up in Brandon.  The zone leaders took us to our new areas on Friday morning and I got to ride with Elder Nelson, my MTC companion and talk with him for a while.  It was fun.  I met my new companions, Elder Reynolds and Elder Pond around 2p.m. that afternoon.  Elder Reynolds is from Vernal, UT and Elder Pond is from Pennsylvania.  Elder Pond goes home with me, but he did not come out with me.  He started his mission in Africa, but was transferred here because of the whole Ebola outbreak over there.  Elder Reynolds has been out 8 months and he is a really outdoors kind of guy.  I talk about hunting and camping and all of that stuff with him.  Both of them are really fun companions.
   My first night here we had an awesome ward Easter party where I got to meet a lot of the members. The following day we went to a member's home for the morning session of General Conference, and before the session started we got to try their "salmon ladder" that they had made in their backyard.  That's what the video is of.  We didn't film my first attempt, but I managed to make it up two rungs successfully, but in the video with this second attempt, I fell pretty hard.  The cards in my pocket went flying everywhere.  I think I might try out for the American Ninja Warrior show when I get home-haha.
   This whole weekend was great with the talks that were given and the people that we got to spend it with.  I think that I am really going to love this new area, and I am going to do all I can to strengthen it and to work diligently through the remainder of my mission.

Love,
Elder A. Whaley


                        Elder Whaley trying the Salmon Ladder