The Scene of Naturita

Well now that I have some time to write, I'm writing everyone from Nucla, Colorado (a small town about 4 miles outside of Naturita) where we live. It's amazing here.  I'll describe the scenery a little bit.  It's very mountainous, and we live in what I can closely call a "mountain plateau". It’s got a farmer, open area feel, but we are far from any large civilization (the closest "large" town is Montrose, about 2 hours away).  It's absolutely beautiful here.  I can't say there's a place like it.  It's green and lush and we are very close to some huge mountain ranges.

The area is huge.  If you go on to a map, we cover a bunch of cities that are really far apart.  Of the top of my head I can name Naturita, Nucla, Redvale, Norwood, Placerville, and way out there is also Telluride.  It's hard because we are only allotted 400 miles a week and we take one trip a week to Montrose for district meeting and p-day (for this reason, my emails will be coming in on Tuesday morning instead of Monday because the libraries are closed by the time we get back from Montrose on P-day.)

The branch is great.  The branch president has a really thick cowboy accent and works for the power plant as a repairman.  He's always chewing gum it seems like and absolutely loves the missionaries.  About 45 people came to church last week (most over the age of 60) so everybody knew everybody, and I've already been wrangled into playing the piano for priesthood.  It's like stepping into a completely different mission.

Our apartment is hilarious.  It's really low income so it was infested with ants and all of the faucets leak 24/7.  So I'm making it a quest to make it a really nice apartment by steadily fixing and cleaning the apartment.  (I've already fixed the ant problem ha ha.)  It's tiny, only a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen.  And one other room that Elder Southworth has taken over so I don't go in there.  There are no chairs and no table.  I said to Elder Southworth, "I finally feel like a real missionary here!"  It was funny.

The only hard part about the area is the teaching.  We teach an average of 10 lessons a week.   Elder Southworth said it used to be 4.  Yikes!  So our days are very slow and we go through a lot of lists.

Elder Southworth was with me in the MTC. We were in the same room so we know each other well.  We haven't crossed paths very often in the mission field as we've been on different sides of the mission, but we probably will only spend one transfer with each other (since we both leave at the same time)  He's nice.  Loves basketball, but he's ready to go home. So I've just got to encourage him to keep moving.

We are in a car area, so my bike is out of commission... never will ride it again.  When I was packing the bike, I found out the seat bar had actually rusted into the bike.  It's like cement and won’t move.  So my only option was to force the seat down and remove the top of the seat to get it to fit into the box.  It was a rough cut and the bike is just had it. So I won't be sending that bike home ha ha.

Well that's all the info I have for the area I can think of.  If there are any questions please let me know!

Elder Bringhurst