Derrick's Trainer - Elder Rook (Esplin Jr.)

Hah! Well, it is pretty cool here. (P.S. not temperature wise). It is cool that I get to spread this message to the world. Yes, I am in a biking area. I am assigned to work in the Grove 2nd ward. I live outside of our area by about 3-3.5 miles. So, just to get to where we start with appointments is that far.

The Lord really blessed me today, my first P day. He has aloud the temperature to be less than 3 degrees  (The lord loves and blesses me).

Our Bishop is way cool, but the members are even better! The members love to feed us dinner. No joke! We have had a dinner appointment everyday and have them lined up for like another 2 weeks. The member are way cool. Everyone here is VERY, VERY wealthy. They have very nice houses. It took 4 days to see a normal size door. I guess goliath-size doors are in right now. Anyway, they are not humble so they don’t really want to listen. And on every door they have the little peek holes. So, sometimes people come to the door, look through the peep hole, and walk back into there house. There are like 15 gated communities here! Like everyone here is loaded....

Yesterday, I saw my first dust storm! It was way cool! We were just biking and Elder (Jr. Esplin haha!) Rook saw this thing. It was way far away, so I really didn’t pay attention to it. But then, after we knocked on like 2 houses, the wind started going nuts!!! And we had to seek shelter. So we started biking to our church building (like 1 mile away). We were like literally right next to our Church building and this car pulls up and asks us if we needed some shelter? We say yes, and we follow his car back, no joke, right next door to where we were just at!! And we get in and talk to them. It was crazy!

These people were very heavily into there own faith and they were not very interested, but we invited them to go see the open house that is being built in Phoenix. I hope that we were just able to plant a seed. Anyway, the Dust storm was nuts! While we were inside the dust blew past us, and then it starts to Dump rain!!!!!!!!! And it is pretty dark!. It is kinda crazy how it will just be light, and 10 minutes later it will be way dark and raining! So yeah, it has rained a few times since I have been here, and so that just makes it humid! Yeah…109 like everyday with a lot of humidity. (Satan really doesn't want we out here. Haha. They say that is has been a really mild summer, but that it has rained a lot more than they are used to.

Biking here is not really that bad. It is really flat here so it is mostly easily riding. The wind that you make when you are riding is almost like having a heater blowing in your face at 20 miles an hour............. but sweating here is just normal and it is kinda a culture thing here. Everyone sweats and sweats hard.

People here are almost never just outside because it is hot, so street contacting is almost obsolete. Elder Rook is just like what we were hoping for. He is exactly obedient and hard working. He is our District Leader and is way easy to get along with. We work well together.

And… if you get into a house you WILL get a bottle or glass of water! I will send a pic of the water bottle collection I have after like 2 days.

And everything here is dead or wants you dead.

Here are some pics:

1) Flight to Phoenix Airport

 2) MTC with Elder Clark

 3) Elder Dawes, Clark, Baker, & Kwao?

 4) My trainer, Elder Rook (Esplin Jr.)
Bishop Tomlinson, of the Grove 2nd Ward in Chandler, AZ, sent this picture to my mom during the week;)

5) Elder Rook picking up his new Trainee

 6) 25 new arrivals to the Tempe, AZ mission

 7) President & Sister Toone with Elder Dawes (Derrick looks like he's about 13 in this picture next to President Toone!!! Sheesh!