Land of the Oaks

So I've officially finished my first week in Oakland! Every one talks about how ghetto it is and how scary it is here, but I've had a pretty pleasant week. :) In my opinion, San Francisco is 10 times nastier in every way. But Oakland has potential to be one of my new favorite areas!

I've had to do A TON of administrative stuff this week, which has made our schedule totally unpredictable. Last night we were up at the mission home till almost midnight with the Assistants because we had to record everyone's key indicators into excel files.. Staying out past 9:30 is basically un-heard-of in our mission. But apparently it's pretty normal for Zone Leaders. Who knew...? The whole week has been full of stuff like that. We had to go to the DMV one day because some of our elders asked us to escort them, and we had to lug around some of our sisters' bikes because their area got converted to car, and we were just constantly running errands for people all week long. It didn't feel like it, but at the end of the week, we realized that through all of the admin stuff, we actually had quite a lot of teaching appointments! Our area is looking great! We just need to work a lot more on our investigators... When I got to the area, I found out very quickly that nobody had updated our area book in like 2 months... SOoooooooo. I don't really know anything about our investigators... :(

This ward also asks missionaries to "live translate" all of our sacrament meetings, so this week, I sat in the front with this microphone set-up and I translated the whole sacrament meeting into English for those who would rather listen to it in a rough English translation. It was so hard actually! But it's a weekly thing, so I'm sure I'll get the hang of it.

Elder Castleberry is still one of my favorite comps, so everything's going pretty well with us. Even though I'm bitter about our area book. haha jk. But seriously, all is good in the hood.

Love you all!

Thanks for the emails!

Last moments with Elder Wride in our BRAND NEW MISSION SHIRTS!

I've NEVER been able to solve this puzzle... And I try fairly often. And Elder Castleberry solved it within the first 5 minutes of the transfer... grrrr. (this is the one you sent me for Christmas)

This is one of my favorite songs. Props if you can read it.

This is my favorite Licence plate. :) props if you can read it.