June 12, 2008 - Greetings from Tucson!

...this one's the same except missing a little paragraph at the end.

Well yes it's true ladies and gents. The one transfer where I was SURE I wasn't going to get transfered, they ship me across the mission to Tucson. Right now I'm emailing from the UofA campus. Makes me wonder about some of the friends and associates I had that I think are going here (Arjun, Steph, Mike Cavalli, etc.)
My companion here is Elder Lopez, he's from Fresno. He comes from a Hispanic family and while technically he's learning Spanish out here, he pretty much already speaks it fluently. He's been out for about a year and a half and he's my fifth short companion in a row (Ok Elder Adams wasn't really that short at 5'11" but all the rest have been 5'9" and below)
I'm pretty much serving in the middle of the ghetto in downtown Tucson. I haven't even been to my area yet (I've been driving across the mission all day), but at least that's what I hear about it.

Our address is:
5001 S Cherry
Tucson, AZ 85706

Tucson is very, very different from El Paso from what I've seen. Just more... normal. I can't really put my finger on how exactly Tucson is different. I think it has something to do with materialism. In El Paso, there aren't very many people with money and those that do usually lived pretty far away from where I was serving. People just lived without a lot of stuff that we in California call "Necessary". As a result I saw very few clothing stores and such. Here it's more of what I'm used to, a mall here, a Target there, etc. etc.

But the best part of Tucson is definitely.... IN N OUT! I haven't had the chance to go yet but I saw it today and I hear that we have the chance to go there every now and then, so I'm pumped for that.

In Horizon I left behind a couple of baptismal dates and a few very good friends. Leaving an area is never easy. There was one woman, Isela, who is investigating and will probably be baptised in a couple of weeks, who was particularly hard to leave behind. She had felt a need to find the truth and come closer to God about a year ago and stumbled into the Jehova's Witness. They taught her for nearly a year but she says that she didn't feel the spirit when they taught and that when she read the Book of Mormon and spoke with us she felt the spirit strongly and it felt right. It's been amazing to see her progress and the way her life has changed. There's a light in her eyes now that wasn't there before.

Love you all,

Elder Wilson