MUSKEGO LAKES

Tuesday-- 5/19/09
I came at the perfect time of the year! It's green, cool, not too humid - gorgeous area. The Muskego Lakes ward is the ward that the mission presidency is in. We are right down the street from the Mission home and office. I am very fortunate to be in this area to start my mission. We drive probably the nicest car in the mission, a dark grey '09 Malibu (from the picture that Sister Kier sent you), and our apartment is really nice too. We might be moving in with some members soon though, the Du Charmes. Brother Du Charme is the new ward mission leader, and the family is really cool. Their house has plenty of room for us too, I think we'll have our own part of the house to ourselves.

Oh and I haven't even talked about my companion. His name is Elder Vance, from Boise Idaho. He was a convert to the church at 18 years old, so that is cool to have that story when teaching. He is 22 now. He's really good at skateboarding, snowboarding, guitar, singing, rapping, and beat boxing, and I'm sure other stuff I don't know about yet. He was in two different bands back in Idaho that were pretty good, one Indy/rock band and one hip hop group. We work well together, and get along well.

Well, this first week went really well. I really liked meeting the members of the ward, and we were able to teach and invite alot of people. Everyone here is so nice. I don't think I've talked to any mean people yet. Everyone here seems is really religious too, mostly Catholic or Lutheran. Right now, we are teaching a little 9 year-old named LJ, a yound couple - Steve and Shelley, another young couple, William and Ashley, and a guy named Nate. And all these people have baptism dates within the next month, and we set them all since I've been here so that's really cool. Steve and Shelley, and Nate have all been meeting with missionaries for years and never committed, so it's crazy that I am here when that happens. We've met with a lot of other really nice people too, who we hope we can continue teaching. It's easy to teach when we have this fail-proof method to know if something is true: prayer. Most people really like it when they realize that we don't just want them to take our word for it, that we encourage them to sincerely pray and promise them that they will know for themselves if the things we teach are true or not. We aren't salesman, we are mailmen - delivering a message.

That blog looks really cool Mom, I like it! And just like Elder Caldwell said, I got to meet him last Thursday at transfer point! It was really cool to meet him, and we aren't too far away from each other so we might meet up on P-Day one of these weeks. Alright, well I hope you guys are doing well! Keep me up-to-date on how everything is going! Love you Elder Taylor Vogan