Marble Falls, TX

Family,

Don't you just love life and how crazy things get sometimes? Katie seems to be doing great in sports and school, and so does Taylor. It's always great to hear how things are going with them.

Well as you know, I got transferred. I got put up here in Marble Falls. It is a small town west of Austin, about an hour away from Austin. We cover about 7 little towns that are all about 15+ minutes away from us. It is great!!

I'm already loving this place. We are going at it. It is a lot different from Riverside because this place is all houses and no Mexicans. I'm still in the same stake just we are in the middle of nowhere. But I'm really excited to be here because this area has so much potential. My district is probably the richest district in the mission. Multi-million dollar houses in all the areas that are part of my district. I believe the missionaries here are just going through the motions and don't really have the Faith to baptize. Obviously we can all grow our faith, including me, to baptize but we are going to work at it this transfer.

My new companion is Elder Frei. He is from St. George Utah. He is great. This is his second transfer and so he has been out a total of 3.5 months. Here in the mission we are one of the three missions in the world that are testing a new training program that lasts through 2 transfers and for those two transfers we have a training curriculum that we have to follow. It is pretty intense and the reason I bring it up is because I am in charge of finishing his training since this is his second transfer.

The Ward here is great. It is a very old Ward and they are all spread out. Their Primary is smaller than the Primary in Serenada was which was very small. And so you can imagine the size of this one. I think there are probably 10-15 kids that are in this Primary that actually come to church. Still, the Ward is great here. Yesterday we received $80 from families just because they live so far away that we can't go eat at their house. It was very surprising, and great!

This area is really crazy. There are no Mexicans even though I think we found them all last night. I've been looking for them so that I can continue to speak Spanish with them. We were walking last night and we saw about 15 of them all playing volleyball so we challenged them to play us but they were scared. We even were going to lay down some money because they play for money, but they saw we were white and they got a little scared to play us so they didn't. But we did find a real sweet Hispanic and taught him last night. It was great because I love the Hispanic culture. They are open and willing to listen, but the hard thing is getting to do things and come to church. But this area is going to be great!

I'm real excited to be here, and to serve in this area!

Have a good week! Love you all!

Elder Harvey