Feb. 7, 2011

Hello dear family and friends. I hope this week has been good for
you! It's been a whole different ball game for me! As I mentioned
last week, I got transferred on Tuesday evening up to Colusa. Since
I've been here, I've learned a lot about the area. It's 1100 square
miles. It has two incorporated "cities", Williams and Colusa, and 9
much smaller towns. Colusa is bigger than Williams, and it has a
popluation of only 5600 people. It reminds me a lot of Salmon,
Idaho... only smaller. Most of the intersections don't even have stop
signs... :) Most of the people who live in the branch boundaries
either own Walnut and Rice farms, or they work for the people who own
the farms. So the income level of the people is either really high,
or really low. Most of the people are hispanic, and they attend the
Catholic church, or whatever Christian church is in the town nearest
where they live.

There have only been missionaries here in the branch for 3 months.
Before that it had been closed for misisonaries for almost a year. So
it's almost like we're opening the area again. The work here is
really slow. We are currently teaching one investigator. He's the 16
year old son of a less active. His name is Aaron. He wants to be
baptized, and we're going to help him with that for sure. But we also
want to make sure that he recognizes the importance of the step he's
making and that he really needs to attend church regularly, despite
the example that his parents are setting for him. I haven't been able
to teach him yet, because he didn't show up to our scheduled lesson
this week. He did come to church yesterday, though, which was
awesome!

We're doing a lot of tracting and member lessons, so we can gain the
trust of the members of the branch. I've met with the Branch
President twice so far, and shared with him some of my goals for the
work here in Colusa. I was pretty optomistic. He seems pretty
excited. We went to the Branch Council meeting yesterday, and
President Sorenson asked me to introduce myself to the council and
share the same goals with them that I shared with him during our first
meeting. It went really well. During sacrament meeting, later, he
had me stand up and introduced me to the whole branch. Then he said
that if anyone in the branch had friends or family members that were
ready for the gospel, that these sisters were the ones to handle it.
It was pretty cool that he already trusts me that quickly. The
sisters who have been here in the past have not been the most
diligent, I think. They've taken advantage of the fact that we're so
isolated up here, that they can get away with not working as hard as
they maybe could. I plan to change that. In 1100 sqare miles, there
HAS to be more than 1 person who's ready to have the gospel. I'm
going to find them! We're also going to meet every less active in the
ward and try to help them come back to church. In most of the less
active families there are at least one, if not two or three unbaptized
family members. In the last 4 days, we've found several new potential
investigators, and been able to set up appointments with several of
the less actives that no one in the branch seems to know much about.

It's going to be a long couple of weeks, filled with lots of tracting,
until we can get our teaching pool up, I think. But I'm up for the
challenge. Of course, I'll need all the prayers and faith you can
send me! And, now, more than ever, I'll really need all of you to
write to me. We're pretty far from everything, and it gets pretty
lonely out here. My companion is really shy, and not really
talkative, even when she's comfortable with the people she's with. So
please, I need to hear from you. I promise to be better at writing
back! I love all of you and miss you all like crazy!

Love, Sister Reid

PS. Kayti: Happy Birthday!! I promise to think about you all day on
Thursday!
PSS. I'll take some pictures around some of the towns I'm in this
week, and send them to you, so you can see what Colusa looks like.