Week One In Calexico

Well, this last week flew! We have been pretty busy. There is a lot of clean up to do here in just about every way. The apartment and the area book were both a big mess. We have been grinding to make this apartment super clean and organized, cleaning stuff that I think has legit been there for over a decade, including a pee-stained bedsheet that was pinned to the wall of our study room, signed by all the previous Elders that lived here. In the trash!!

We have been spending lots of time calling and visiting all of the people in our teaching pool to find out who is actually interested and who should not be in the teaching pool. So it's been a grind of a week, but it's been good. 

Calexico ward is interesting. It's both English and Spanish, and most of the active members and ward council members are implants from El Centro, the town north of Calexico. Our ward council meeting consisted of two main conversation topics. The first was what to do about a 29 year old leaky fridge in the church building. Bishop wanted to take a look at it and try to fix it while everyone else wanted to just replace it. After that 15 minute debate, we then talked about starting a ward activity night to bring back inactive members and get friends to the church. 

We all agreed it'd be best to have food at the activity, and someone listed some suggestions, including toastadas. One of the Mexican counselors who doesn't like to speak Spanish said pretty forcefully, "I HATE toastadas!" It was a funny meeting for sure. As the discussion went on, the ward clerk, a nice old black man, kept repeating, "Make a plan, execute it." I'll never forget that ward council haha!

It was a good first week, lots of work to do here. Elder Harmer, the missionary whose training I am finishing, is very coachable and wants to learn everything he can. So this has been awesome so far.

Well, I hope everyone is having a good week. Let me know if there is anything exciting going on for yall!

Love you all

Elder Pettit