This is not the same New Mexico as Belen!

Hi Mom and Dad! 

It sounds like life is flying by. 

Sister Grigg, my companion, has been out about a year. We seem to get along great.  It’s only been a week, but it seems to be going pretty good. It really does make life so much easier being with someone you can actually get along with.  She has been in White Rock for 6 weeks, but 4 of those weeks she was deathly ill and couldn’t get out of bed.  So both of us don’t really know the area or what to do, just trying to get to know people really. 

And Los Alamos now has 3 sets of sisters. Which also makes life interesting because there aren’t any Elders anywhere near us.  So all of us sisters are going to Santa Fe in about an hour :)  Not sure why, but we are.

Working here in White Rock is very very different than in Belen. The ward has about 400 members and about 350 of them are completely active. 

You can see the effect of having twice as many missionaries.  So last year, the whole county of Los Alamos was covered by one set of sisters.  There aren’t very many people that live here. But now there are three sets of sisters in Los Alamos.

Sister Grigg and I cover a tiny little town of 4 thousand called White rock. It’s a very interesting place to serve.  Every door has been knocked on at least three times in the last year, so tracting is out. We talk to TONS of people who are super super educated and have read the Book of Mormon or taken the lessons. Everyone knows a Mormon.   We are doing a bible class for the youth.  It is fairly successful. Although I have only been to one so far.

The culture here is extremely strange as well.   The whole first day I was like "is this for real? This can’t be for real!"

National Laboratory

It’s a tiny town, but everyone is either a scientist brought here by the National laboratory. Or a millionaire.   Or both.  But they hide it super well. You would never know that it was a town of super geniuses or super rich people.  Basically everyone here was hand-picked by the government to work in the lab or in the schools or something.  It’s very different.  And everything in downtown Los Alamos is science based. 
It is a great opportunity.  I’ve met a lot of really nice people here.  People who sometimes use words that I’ve never heard before, but it’s a super nice ward and they are really eager to do missionary work, even though there aren’t a ton of people around here.

The missionary work is extremely slow here. So we are trying to see if we can find some service.  There isn’t really much here, but there are a few places.  We are going to try and get in at the visitors center at the national park.  We don’t know if we will be able to because it is a national park, but we are going to try.  Apparently this place gets super crowded about April because of Bandelier Nation Monument.  It’s a national park that has Native American pueblo structures from 1150 to 1600.

I’m learning a ton about the scriptures! I’m working on reading through the Old Testament right now.  After about the 5th person who knew their bible in and out I decided I needed to read up a bit on Israelites.  But it is super fun to study the Book of Mormon. The landscape around here, I can totally picture some of the Book of Mormon stories happening here 

I am also super excited. Only a month until we can go to the temple! Yay!

I hope all is going well :)

Love you!
Em