Hola familia,

Pres Greer

So President and Sister Greer are pretty cool. I'll forward a picture that they took with the whole zone. They're both pretty funny and you can tell that they love all of the missionaries. I've only met him the one time. In the little meeting that we had they had each of us introduce ourselves. Sister Greer talked about their family a little bit. Then they told us about a whole bunch of changes that are going to be happening. New training that they got in the MTC. For example, our zone conferences and interview cycles will only be every other transfer now, every three months instead of a month and a half. They have a whole bunch of new PMG lessons and videos that the church just barely produced. The videos are footage of real missionaries doing real missionary work. It's hundreds of hours of camera men just following missionaries around. I'm excited about that. The Greer's seem to be really excited and ready to go to work.

Nihipali

We now live with the Nihipali family. They are from Hawaii. They are both very nice and the place we live is pretty good. It's a lot different from the Boyle's. We are living in more of a separate part of the house. So we don't see them quite as much. Elder Bair and I rearranged the furniture and stuff the way we like and we feel at home.

Birthday

My birthday was intense. President and Sister Greer and the AP's called me the morning of my birthday and sang to me over the phone. Then they sang to me again at the meeting when we met them. We ate lunch on my birthday with Sister Boyle and a few other missionaries including Elder Hortin. Then we ate dinner with the Church's and they threw a surprise birthday party. When we got there we thought it was going to be just us and then four missionaries popped out of the closet and the Boyle's showed up later. I forgot to mention that I ate strawberries pretty much all day long. Then at night we went to Sister Drown's house and had strawberry shortcake with Tillamook Oregon strawberry ice cream. Wow I got spoiled. I got your package grandma. My favorite part was the cookies. They're almost gone already.

4th of July

It was like a war-zone here. We had a hard time going to sleep on Saturday and Sunday. It literally sounded like bombs were going off every few seconds. The only time I watched any was while I was in the bathroom. I opened up the window and I saw big explosions in the sky slightly obscured by a large tree.

Have you ever driven on the wrong side of the road?

Listen up close this is a story you'll never forget. We went on exchanges last night with the first counselor of the Branch Presidency, Hermano Garcia. We were talking and having a good time as we were driving to our first appointment. Elder Bair and I were both giving him directions as he was driving us around in his little white honda. Well, we tell him to turn left at the next light and he does. Only he turns a little bit too early. I shout to him, "Not here Hermano, not here!" And all of a sudden we are on the wrong side of the median. We see a bunch of cars coming straight at us and another person on the other side of the median honking at us. Hermano Garcia eyes got as big as watermelons. He doesn't know what to do. Elder Bair tells him to keep driving until we got past the median. After about 200 feet we make it and are back on our side of the road. We all let out a sigh of relief and busted out laughing. I kind of sat there stunned. And said to myself, "Did that really just happen?" That's something you only see in movies. Then Hermano Garcia says, "Well we're okay." I couldn't stop laughing all night.

Just another week in the life of a missionary.

Love you all
Elder Ben Arnold