Marin County

Moms and Pops,

Novato is great! This area is so beautiful! There are a lot of trees and there are a lot of hills. There is also a TON of money... Holy Cow! I have seen some massive homes, some sweet cars, and a lot of other super duper fancy things. Whew... The ward here is awesome though! We have about 150-170 active members, and the grand majority are young couples with a few kids. It is a very young ward (referring to people, not how long the ward has been around). There are people in the ward that are old and retired and rich... But, yeah. I was surprised yesterday when there wasn't as much screaming by the little kids as I expected because of all the little munchkins.

Elder Windholz is a monster! He can run for days, and days, and days, and days... I feel like I'm in conditioning every morning. Like I told you, he spent 4 years in the Army before he came out on his mission and he spent 12 months in Afghanistan. He is just a super solid and fit guy. He is a bit older, 24 years old, but luckily we were already good friends so it wasn't weird or anything. We are getting along great and we have lots of laughs during the day. He calls me Major and I call him Sarge, and we end up talking in military jargon a lot too... it's fun! He is sure whipping me into good physical shape... I'm still sore from running all last week. We go about 2-3 miles a day, plus up at least 1 really big hill (Novato is full of hills). I'm dying while we run, but he is just loving it! Every morning, he'll roll out of bed and do 100 push ups right in a row... I love the guy though, he is probably one of my best friends on the mission. Oh, he is from Woodward, Oklahoma and loves to workout and shoot guns. He has a bunch of guns... I've seen pictures. I guess when you live in a town of 12,000 in Oklahoma, there isn't anything better to do than shoot guns and work out.

Anyway, the work here in Novato is pretty slow at the moment. We only have 4 investigators, and one of them is getting baptized this coming Sunday! So that is awesome! But, other than that, it's tough! We are also ZL's (forgot to mention that last week), and our zone is pretty dang large, our zone covers 4 cities, and we have 11 companionship's which is 23 missionaries (one of the companionship's is a trio). Our zone is the biggest in the mission, so it'll be fun going around and visiting all the different cities. Elder Buchan and Elder Ramiah (former companions) are both in Rohnert Park, so that is fun too!

I can't believe you got my travel itinerary! I wasn't told anything about it. I won't get mine until next transfer. That makes sense though, so you guys can start planning on whatever, and I won't get mine so I don't get trunked out. I think I'm doing well with that though, because I still feel like I'm pretty focused and it doesn't feel real that I'm going home soon. There are times when I'm not busy that my mind wanders to things like music and movies and football, but that isn't too often. Last night we had dinner at a PM's house, and they didn't turn off the tv (we also didn't ask......) and they have pre-game football on... That was awesome because I love football, but it sucked because it just made me trunky for football... I got over it pretty fast though.

We go to our all-mission conference this week on Wednesday up in the redwoods on the coast off of HWY 1. I'm super excited! I hope I get my package before I go... I have been assigned to give a little devotional in front of the mission, so that should be interesting as well. Anyways! Time for me to go... Because we have this 3 day all-mission conference, we have a short as possible P-day today, so we gotta go shop and clean our apartment and car. I love you both very much! Thank you for all your prayers and words of encouragement. Also, any news on the priesthood lineage??

Love,

Elder Edwards