Thursday, February 28, 2008

Notes from Sam - 28 February 2008

Dear family,

I've been transferred to Blackpool. Blackpool is a famous seaside resort and vacation city ("the British Las Vegas" as some people put it) with a long beachfront promenade lined with casinos, concessions stands, a Ferris wheel, etc. It's one of the largest cities in the mission (probably fourth after Manchester, Liverpool, and Stoke-on-Trent). On a map, it will be just north of Preston and south of the Lake District. It's actually not too far from Barrow - from the Hoad (where I went with Elder Tomita and our landlord during my first transfer), you could see Blackpool on a clear day.

I'm really enjoying it here and am excited about this next transfer. Since it's such a big place, there's a good town center to contact people in, a lot of pedestrians around to stop and talk to, good bus service and lots of opportunities to do bus contacting, and a decent-size population of immigrants, including African ones (who tend to be quite receptive to missionaries), some of which Barrow and Runcorn lacked. Blackpool has 4 missionaries and apparently a pretty big, pretty active ward. They had 3 baptisms and a bunch of investigators at church a couple of weeks ago, so the members must be especially excited about missionary work right now. In weekly planning this morning, we went over our teaching pool, and it sounds really good to me (although I haven't met all the people yet) - it looks like we'll probably have a baptism this transfer! I'm pretty stoked.

I'm serving with Elder Smith from Snowflake, Arizona, who's been out a little over a year. I think he and I have similar personalities and will get along really well. The other two elders in Blackpool are Elder Empey (not my previous companion - there are two Elders Empey) and a brand-new missionary whom he is training, Elder Carter. I think our district (which also includes two sister missionaries in Lancaster) will be a lot of fun.

Elder Russell has been made district leader in Runcorn and is training a new missionary this transfer. Kind of exciting for him! We have a bunch of great appointments set up for this week, so Elder Atkin (the greenie) will get a good start.

I have a lot more things to talk about but my time is about gone. Thanks for your prayers and support!

Love,
Elder Pimentel

P.S. My new address is
Elder Sam Pimentel
Flat 5 Claughton
Harcourt Road
Blackpool FY4 3ES

1 comment:

Gary said...

Ah, Blackpool! The location of the famous ballroom dance competition! I don't know if Sam is allowed to watch dance competition, but there will be some great dancers there.
Blackpool Junior Dance Festival will be 24th to 29th of March, Blackpool Dance Festival will be the 23rd to 30th of May, and the British National Dance Championships will be the 20th to 22nd of November. Come to think of it, with the obvious exception of the BYU formation team, the women tend to wear skimpy clothes. Perhaps not appropriate for a missionary. Thanks for the posts! I always love to read what Sam is up to.