First week in Corpus, and my insane companion!

My first week here in Corpus Christi has been really crazy! it is definitely a culture shock for sure! There are white people in the stores and in houses! it's so weird! but it seems like the only ones we've found to teach are Mexicans! haha! some things never change!

Our ward is absolutely massive, I could finish my mission here and not be able to know even all the active members! Corpus is really close to a navy base and a big college, this combined with some other things, means that people don't seem to settle down here very often. The ward is big and strong, but it's constantly changing!

This week I did an exchange this week with Elder Boydstun, he's been in my district when I was a DL and even when I was training! it's weird how with almost 200 missionaries, the same few always seem to keep popping up!

This weekend we has an awesome stake conference, it was all about faith in Jesus Christ, even through hard times, the stake president shared a very tender story about how he lost his special needs son at a young age, and the 70 that came (elder frost) spoke about how his son, who has down syndrome. he talked about how he doesn't know why his son is still alive at 34 and our stake president son died. It was really well spoken, another counselor of the stake president gave a great talk on the same theme, but he related the story of the anti-nephi-lehites being killed! it was great!

We just had a meeting with our district leaders about some problems that have been happening in the zone, it seems like the same problems are happening everywhere in the mission! it's crazy how people seem to follow each other even when they're hundreds of miles away! its been just a lack of focus and motivation to do... well much of anything productive! Not being able to find people to teach is crazy to me!

I had a really cool experience with that this week! it was thursday night and we were about to go home, but we decide to stop at an apartment complex. my companion don't me "you won't find"... "challenge accepted" I thought! so I said a specific prayer! telling the Lord the situation and our plan to accomplish what we needed to do! I told him we only had time to knock three doors, and we were going to use that time to knock three apartments with the lights one! the first apartment was Letter A, the next was F,... then it hit me! we need to knock H next! (I was thinking of Americas Funniest Home Videos! AFHV) and so we knocked H... and a family of three was there! and all had baptismal dates in less that 15 minutes! prayer mixed with faith is awesome! (I learned that in Gen 24!)

-Well I have to get going! I love you all lots!

Elder Duerst!