Elder Brad Skalla: Transferred to Lakewood, Ohio (letter from 10/2)

Hi!!! I am glad you had fun on the cruise! It looks like it was a blast!

So I am now serving in Lakewood Ohio... Honestly its a place I never thought I would be. It is TINY (area wise) compared to my last 2 areas which is weird to not have to worry about hour long drives and going over on miles. It is right outside Cleveland and covers Lakewood, Rocky River, Fair View Park and Bay Village. It is like the super nice suburbs of Cleveland so there is like not much ghetto and the houses are beautiful here. Much different than downtown Youngstown. Its so weird cuz there are just people everywhere and everything is so compact and there is just stuff everywhere. I am way excited though, it is going to be a fun area. The mission office is in our area too and all the senior office couples and the AP's live in the same apartment complex so that's fun we get to see them all the time and last night the Hokansons brought us a ton of food haha. The AP's are our neighbors so we work out with them in the mornings. The ward is really small but I think it might just look small cuz we meet in a big western type stake center and we aren't even close to filling it up haha. It is weird because President lives like 5 mins away and his ward meets in the same building, so it was weird seeing them around the church building.

My new companion is Elder Curtis from St. George Utah. He is a great kid. Really impressed me with his teaching already so I am excited to work with him. He is scared to death of tracting though so we have been working on that a lot haha. It has been kinda funny. I love it though just cuz I have been doing it for so long tracting is just tracting and for him its like this huge thing that we do. It's so fun though, I am excited to train and we get along well already.

Our first few days here were crazy. I thought being a zone leader was hard but shotgun training takes it by far haha. The previous Elders were so kind as to leave us 0 appointments for the week so we get here and neither of us knows anything about the area and my greenie is just waiting for me to say what we are gonna do. haha I had no idea what to do! We figured it out though and met some of the members and less actives and stuff so it was good. Not much going on investigator wise here. That's probably why it was shotgunned, but we will figure it out eventually haha. Again the apartment was disgusting and smelled like mold just like it was when I first got to Alliance. We spent a lot of time cleaning and scrubbing the shower and stuff. The complex is really nice and is by all these huge houses right on the lake but the apartment was nasty. The night we got there we went to the store and bought a little food and some cleaning stuff and air freshener. When we were leaving the lady checking us out comes over and like whispers in my ear "hey where could I get a Book of Mormon? I had one years ago and lost it and I want to read it." We got her info and stuff so that was pretty cool. She hasn't picked up the phone yet but we will keep trying. It was cool for Elder Curtis though. That night a member called us and there was a LA in the hospital so we went with him to give her a blessing. Elder Curtis got to give his first blessing so that was cool for him too. I think for both of us not knowing what was going on we did pretty well our first week.

I am trying to remember that exchange with Elder Read... I don't remember visiting an ex member. I remember him telling me about one but not teaching him. I don't know you do so much stuff you can't remember them all. (He remembered when I told him the story correctly!) And I am not the best at writing in my journal… :/ I write but not a lot. He got called to be a zone leader this transfer. Its funny cuz we both went to each others greenie areas. He started here in Lakewood and I started in Tallmadge where he is at.

Well I hope you have a good week recovering from your cruise!

Love and miss you!!

Elder Skalla