New area and new responsibilities

A lot has happened with Christopher over the last several weeks.  Unfortunately, we don't know most of the details.  We have received several short emails from Christopher and he keeps telling us that a lot is going on but he hasn't had time to write us about it.  So here is what we know.

About three weeks ago Christopher was finally transferred out of Arcade to a town called Penn Yan.  This is a little town just southwest of Rochester in the Finger Lakes area of New York.  Along with this transfer, he obviously has a new companion now and a new responsibility.  Both Christopher and his companion are new zone leaders in this area.  They were double transferred in to Penn Yan which means that neither one had been a zone leader before and neither one had served in this area before.  So both of them are starting out with a new companion, new area and new leadership responsibilities.

There is also kind of a "it's a small world" story between Christopher and his new companion.  Follow closely here as I try to explain how these two missionaries have known each other for years even though they had never really met before.  First of all Christopher grew up in Pleasant Grove, Utah and his companion grew up not too far away in a neighboring city.  But that isn't really the interesting part of this story.  Christopher has a younger brother who recently returned home after serving his mission in Independence Missouri.  While Christopher's younger brother was in high school several years back, he dated a girl who also attended the same high school and grew up not too far away in a neighboring city.  If you caught the subtle hint here, both Christopher's younger brother's former girlfriend and Christopher's companion's older sister, are the same person.  How's that for an interesting coincidence?  Anyway, Christopher has told us in almost every email that he has sent one since the transfer, just how great both he and his companion get along and just how busy they have both been.

So here is another little "it's a small world" tidbit as well.  Just recently a senior couple in our Ward was called to serve a six month mission.  It just so happened that this couple was called to serve in the same mission as Christopher, in the Rochester, New York mission.  Since this couple will only be serving for six months, they will be serving for the last six months of Christopher's mission and will probably return home at the same time as Christopher.  Oh, but the story gets better.  Christopher told us in one of his recent and very short emails, that with his new calling as zone leader in Penn Yan, he is also the zone leader over the couple from our Ward.  The way we see it, the Prophet just needs to call a few more Pleasant Grove missionaries out to Rochester, New York and the Penn Yan zone would be great place for a PG missionary blitz. 

Christopher did include one short story in his last email right after he told us again how busy things have been and how little time he now has to write home. Just to give you an idea of why he has been so busy, Christopher told us that their new area is actually quite large in comparison to other areas in the mission and that not a lot of missionary work has taken place there recently.  Christopher told us that just in the last couple of weeks, both he and his companion have picked up somewhere between 20 to 25 new investigators which means they must be doing a lot of contacting, tracting and teaching.  But that isn't the story that I promised at the beginning of this paragraph.  Christopher told us that both he and his companion have made friends with a group of older folks from a Methodist church.  He said that this group likes to do a lot of things together including weekly bible study.  Well a week or so ago, this group invited Christopher and his companion to go out to dinner with about 20 members of the group.  Christopher said that it was a lot of fun and that the members of this group are such great people who get involved with all kinds of community activities.  As a result, Christopher said that he and his companion will be getting involved doing some volunteer work with this group which is a great way to show how people of all faiths can come together for the greater good of the community.

So there you have it.  You now know just about as much as we know about what has been going on with Christopher over the last few weeks.  It seems that things have become much busier for Christopher which is a really good thing.  The best thing that can happen to a missionary is for him to wear himself out doing the work.  And that seems to be what Christopher is doing now.