a month down...

hey fam!

weather is nice out here. the snow out here was all melted within a few days. not too bad. the wind really does have a bite though. our apartment is SWEET! it is the nicest apartment i have lived in. wait, not the condo. the condo was better. but most definitely a step up from the compound i was living in last semester. how awful. its nice and big and its got really tall ceilings. did i spell that right? anyway, its awesome. sister porath is great too. she and i are getting along fine. can't really tell how we teach together yet, cus we don't have more than one real investigator. the branch is teeny. 6 women in relief society. our whole building is about the size of half our chapel. again, its teeny. its the stafford branch, and there are us and then two elders. we cover the southern half of the branch and we actually live in the elders area. we have to drive a lot, but once we get to the neighborhoods we try to park-it and walk. the area is called Manahawkin. and its pronounced man-uh-hawk-n. i know i skipped the i at the end. i meant to do that. nobody says it. the accent is going to invade my very soul. i swear. by the time i'm done here i might not say i grew up in CA, nobody would believe me. but i love it. we got fed calamari by some "investigators" that are devout catholic and don't intend to convert, but we're still working on them. they pronounced it caleh-mary. its was funny. but they are great.
so, sister porath and i are both fairly new to the area cus she got emergency transferred here when one of the sisters decided to go home. so she's only been here 3 weeks. and i've been here 1. and i've been out exactly a month today! crazy! but we're both figuring it out and getting used to the branch. which is surprisingly easy to do.
sister porath is 21, she is now a junior at u of u and studying psychology. again, we're getting along fine, but thats because i haven't quite figured out how to be me and a missionary at the same time. its quite the task. adjusting is difficult, and i get homesick about every day, but it doesn't last long. as soon as i start studying or leave the apartment i begin feeling better. i'm going to give myself at least another week to figure it out, but after that i'm not putting up with any more of it. i'm starting a list of pick me up scrips for me to memorize and keep with me always, cus i think i'll need it. i know this is going to be most difficult thing i do. but i know that president hinckley's advice of forgetting yourself and going to work is going to help me. and i can already see that start to work in my life. the spirit is so strong with the missionaries. its amazing. we got to go with the elders yesterday to combined district meeting and see president and sister winegar. combined district meeting, cdm, is really zone conference, and sone conferences are really half mission conferences. so we met with our zone and made some goals and figured some things out. then we went to lunch with the other elders in our zone. that was nice, i always feel at home with other missionaries, cus i know they feel the same way i do.
[ps- i have to sign off, and sign back on again in about 8 minutes, so i will be sending two emails]
they feel the same way about missionary work and they know what i do everyday and they know whats hard and they understand. and for the record, it would have really helped me for someone to even mention the fact the the mission is not at all like the mtc. totally different. i loved being scheduled out all the time and in the field i swear we have to sit and re-schedule everything about every 20 minutes. there are more less actives than actives here and we "stob by" more than 5 or 6 people a day. more if we're not lucky. but i'm learning that you need that time in between meetings to let the spirit guide you and accept the promptings He gives you. so the learning curve is great. I swear i'm picking up on more and more each day. sister Porath keeps saying i'll be training next transfer. which... nope, not gonna think about it....
gotta sign off. send you more about my people out here in the next email. loves!

sister mcneil