98 Degrees. Actually more like 104 degrees.

Well, here we are. The La Junta Library. Got to the area on Wednesday, and it's going to be an interesting 10 weeks. So I have my new companion, Elder Wadsworth from Tennessee, although his family moved to Idaho a week before he left so he says it doesn't really count. So I actually thought I was getting a trial missionary, but I guess at the last minute things got switched up and I ended up with a just a regular training program. So Elder Wadsworth will be the death of me. And so will this area. So it's kind of neat now, I can fully say that Sanford was my longest area at 7.5 months, and Elder Summers was my longest companion at 4.5 months. But I can also say that La Junta was my biggest area. It's pretty crazy, so we cover the town of La Junta which is probably about the size of Leduc or something like that, has a couple thousand people living in it, but in addition we cover way far out west and east, so we basically cover like 9 towns I think, a few of which are pretty sizable. So we shouldn't run out of stuff to do here. The ward has about 400 people on the roster, but only about 100 come to church so....ya...It's a little ward. And a lot of less active's. The chapel and gym are combined in the same room, with a divider to separate the two, so it's weird you could probably make a basket from the pulpit, as the pulpit sits on what would be the half court line. So ya, pretty small.
Elder Wadsworth is alright, he's a lot like Elder Calhoun from the Best Two Years, got a lot of fire and wants to work which is good and should help keep me focused until the end. He's like a mix of Elder Calhoun, and Buddy the Elf from Elf with his personality. That's the best way I can describe it. It's weird doing the training program again though, and that this time I don't have to worry about the language or gospel knowledge. So now 2 hours of companion study feels a little long sometimes because Elder Wadsworth picks it up pretty fast. He's still a little naive when it comes to things in the world, like when we were talking to our ward mission leader and he mentioned a guy in the ward that used to be the bishop and was now less active Elder Wadsworth seemed like he was about to fall out of his chair. So that was kind of interesting.
So right now, being flushed in we are trying to figure out exactly what was going on in the area before the two Elders serving here finished their missions and went home. They left us with a few investigators and right now the biggest thing we are trying to do is contact all of them and set things up. We have 3 appointments set up already for this week, so that should be pretty cool, and a good experience for Elder Wadsworth. Hopefully we can have some baptisms while we are out here. I got my "don't get trunky" letter on wednesday, with the note from President telling you to get moving, and also the "Finishers Wanted" talk from President Monson. It was funny, I was also talking to an immigration guy from SLC who happened to be a previous mission president about my visa and stuff like that, and he was all like "now Elder, I don't want you getting trunky" and it was pretty funny. Oh yeah, I went to get my license renewed and they told me I needed a social security # again, so I went and this time they told me I could get one. Hm. So now I have to wait a few weeks until I get a SSN and then I can finally get my license renewed. The bureaucracy never ends.
In terms of missionary work this week, we met a polish guy in the town of Fowler, taught a few street lessons, and invited some people to be baptized. Some guy in the town of Las Animas as we started walking towards him was muttering from a distance "don't come towards me, I'll beat you with my Satanic bible" and he was getting in his car so we decided against it, but waved instead and he starting swearing and yelling at us for waving at him. But we did have a less active tell us about another less active who could use a blessing, so we went to find the house and couldn't find it, so we decided to tract the street instead and actually miraculously managed to be in the right place at the right time when he got home that we could meet him and help him out. That was pretty cool.
Other than that, no good experiences from the week to share. We got asked on Sunday to give talks next week on the Book of Mormon, and I imagine with such a low attendance we should probably expect to give talks pretty frequently. It's also different that our District Meeting is an hour and a half drive away. We really are out in the middle of nowhere, with no other Elders to help us. And yesterday it got up to 104 degrees F. And it's only going to get hotter. This is going to be a blazing summer. Fun times.
Love you! Thanks for all the birthday greetings and letters, it was really cool to get!
Elder Gibb