Before my mission I did not like sushi, but after eating cow stomach I realized that eating sushi is nothing and I actually enjoyed it a lot.

Dear Dad,

Mom did not e-mail me for the first week of my mission. (I actually did write to him. I just sent it from my itouch and I sent it to the wrong address) I assume that means she is quite busy in Arizona. Did grandma already get there, and if so how did it all work out? I cannot imagine it was very pleasant to be there during all of that.

Thank you for the residency information. I will get that printed out and see what I can do. I can get the papers signed and sent via a some kind of nice mailing company, but I will have to look around for a bit to find the camera shop. I suspect that I should be able to get everything mailed off by the end of this week if not early next week. Saying that, I must also note that we are VERY busy! This is the first week of my mission where I have had literally almost every hour of the following week (mon-fri) booked before Sunday was even over. Although this area has a reputation of being very difficult and baptizes very little, the ward has gotten very excited about missionary work and everyone is anxious to help with missionary work. Apparently the missionary I replaced was having a few problems and rubbed the wrong way with the members AND investigators, although they do not know me very well yet, they seem to enjoy our new companionship and we are receiving a lot of excitement about the work. Yesterday we had FOUR men from the ward including the bishop come up to US and ask US to come and meet with their families for a meal and to talk about the work and we had to tell all of them but one that we were sorry but we were already booked for the entire week. This is a first for me, but it is exciting to have the work going this well. We are going to request from the mission president to keep our companionship together as long as possible.

I realized I have not mentioned much about my companion yet, but he is the man. He has an interesting past. He is literally a beach bum from Australia. He would live on the beach for months! Definitely a different life style than I had growing up, but he is a humble guy and has a way of connecting with everyone. I thought that was one of my strengths, but I have been put to shame by his talent. His humility is expressed the most when he prays. He is one of those that you look forward to hearing him pray, not because of fancy words, but because you can tell that he knows he is talking to his Father in Heaven. He is 3 months younger on mission than myself.

Do I have frequent interaction with the mission president? Yes. I feel like I see him at least once a week now. I agree with the comments that you made and that is something that I have given a lot of thought. In fact there is a guy in our ward that for work he meets with CEO's and gives them advice about how to make others work better together/how to read others, etc. It is kind of weird, but he is a close friend with us missionaries and I was talking to him just yesterday about what you mentioned. Because he is so good at reading people I told him that he and I will have to sit down and have a discussion about what he sees as my strengths and weaknesses and what type of career he sees me getting into. He is very excited about that because that is where he excels.

I look forward to meeting with many of the men from back home as well and simply talking to them about what they do, how they got into the line of work and discussing the advantages and disadvantages of it.

Wow, I just realized I am behind time quite a bit!

Thank you for the e-mail.
Love

Elder Blake Williams

PS: We are e-mailing a little late today because it is Asian day today. Each of our p-days have been having a theme lately because Elder Clark who I live with only has 3 weeks left on his mission so we are making all of them count. We were planning on going to this Asian place where you put your feet in a tank of fish and they eat the dead skin off of your feet, and then have sushi, but the fish were not ready today so we just had the sushi. Before my mission I did not like sushi, but after eating cow stomach I realized that eating sushi is nothing and I actually enjoyed it a lot.