West Hills

West Hills babay!  Yep I'm now in West Hills Area 3. . . a new area.  It's soooooooo different from Valencia!  There's people everywhere!  You just go out on the street and BAM!  People are everywhere and we get to talk to all of them!  I live on 8735 Independence, Canoga Park by the way.  Ya, Northridge is pretty much next door.  It's weird.  I'm pretty sure Northridge is in the Grenada Hills Stake but I could be wrong.  I'm in the Canoga Park Stake. My new companion is Elder Smith from Mapleton Utah.  He's been serving in the Mint Canyon ward in Santa Clarita for the past 7 and a half months.  He came out one transfer before me.  He's awesome!  He's got a powerful testimony and he knows how to use it.  He's a little quieter than my previous companions, but he's a great guy and we've had a great first week.  Like 80% of the people we talk to only speak Spanish, and we've sending off referrals like mad.  We barey know any Spanish, but that's ok because pretty much every latino person you talk to gives us their address and phone number.  We're able to fumble our way through a conversation, but we definatly need to get better.  We're the 3rd set of missionaries in the West Hills ward.  We have another set of Elders and a set of ASL (American Sign Language) sisters, as the West Hills ward is also the ASL branch for the mission.  We took parts of both of their areas.  We inherited a couple of not very solid investigators from them and the teaching records aren't up to date on some of them.  We've been trying to contact them this whole week.  We've only taught one of them, and she straight up told us that she doesn't want to change at all.  Her name s Debbie.  She's the only one we've met.  So far we haven't found any new investigators, even though we've talked to more people this week than I have in any other previous week.  We've been going by a lot of referrals and potentials, but none of them have panned out.  We have met some awesome people this week though, so hopefully we will be able to get in contact with them this week and teach them.  Elder Smith (black Smith) is my district leader.  He was in the MTC with me and served in Northridge with Elder Stucki, my previous zone leader.  The West Hills ward has a lot of less actives and the chapel was pretty scarce this Sunday.  We're going to change that!  Anyways, this week has been pretty stressful with opening a new area and not knowing anything about it.  It's been a lot of fun though!  Really all we've been doing everyday is finding.  Biking is so much fun! Well I don't have very much time to write this week.  We gotta go out and work, but I love you all! (Sorry this one is shorter than most!)

Elder Nelson