So here I am in California! I'll start from the beginning.
We had to get up at 3 on Tuesday to take Elder Christensen to the travel office. After that, Elder Giddens and I got ready and wrote a few letters (tell Andrew Fernlund that I'm sending him one today, and sorry it's taken so long!) and left for the travel office! When we were on the bus, I looked out the window at the "Truly Nolen" sign on the side of the freeway. I don't really know what Truly Nolen is, but I remember being able to see it brightly lit while inside of the first Underground. It made me kind of sad to leave Salt Lake behind.
We left Salt Lake around 8:40 Mountain Time, and got to Oakland about 9:30 Pacific time. We were greeted by President Alba and his wife. They are awesome. I'm excited to serve for them and learn lots. We went to their home in Santa Rosa, and it was just beautiful there. Very green, huge trees, and we even saw a deer in their backyard! Santa Rosa is very nice. We stayed in a hotel that night, we had a little devotional with him and the trainers in the hotel. We all went to bed at around 8, it was the last night in 2 years that I'll be able to sleep more than 8 hours. The next day we went to the Badger Building to find out who our trainers are. My companion in Elder Alvarado from Honduras He's great, but it's hard to understand him sometimes, people form Honduras talk really really fast and don't enunciate. After we met, all of the new missionaries went to the bike shop. I bought a single speed street bike, it was $280 and hopefully it will last me my mission! If not, well, we'll get to that point! I had to buy a lock, helmet, and lights which added up to about $375. Not bad for everything, here's hoping it lasts and doesn't get stolen!
Right now, I'm in the Napa South area. We are working with the Napa Spanish Branch. It is really weak. A lot of inactives, which is mostly who we're working with. We have 3 investigators, but only one really serious investigator. There is only one returned missionary, his name is Hermano Perez and his family. They've already fed us twice, and are working hard with us to help us strengthen the branch. I like it here. The biggest problem is that it's hard to understand what people are saying. I can understand words, and sometimes meanings, but most of it really goes over my head and I have to force myself to talk. It's been difficult, but I'm sure that things will pick up once I'm understanding and speaking. We have a program called 12 weeks to train new missionaries I'm hoping that by the end of the program I'll at least be able to communicate more. That's probably the hardest part of the mission. I know with faith and practice that I'll be able to speak in a few months. At least after 24 months I'll be speaking! But that's the hardest part now.
So for conference, I watched the first session of both days and the Priesthood session in Spanish, so it all kind of went over my head. We watched the second session of both days in English, and I'm glad. Elder Holland's talk was fantastic. He is an amazing Apostle.
So I think that's it for today. I'll have more next week!
Elder Foster
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