Transfered to Nampa

6-11-12

I got transferred! I'm in Nampa now. Funny thing is it's only about 5-10 miles away from Caldwell. Know what else is funny? I'm serving with Elder Bell again. I'm stoked about that! I did NOT get along with Van Zalinge very well. It was a hard 6 weeks with him. I was ready to leave Caldwell. Nampa was the one place I didn't want to go though. Well, guess I didn't want to go to Oregon either, but I remember saying "I hope I don't go to Nampa". Oh well. I'm just happy to be away from Elder Van Zalinge and excited to be with Elder Bell again. We're gonna have lots of fun.

Nampa seems pretty tight though. It's about 80,000 people, so I'm moving to the city. Elder Bell hit someone last transfer, so I'm the driver. New city and I'm driving it. Been so long since I've driven a car. Drove to Meridian today for p-day, and it's been a while. Didn't hit anyone (or even come close to for that matter), it's just been a while. So use to either biking or sitting shotgun. Just a little different.

So I haven't heard from anyone for a while. Haven't gotten a letter for a couple weeks now. What's up? Life too crazy busy for me? Ha-ha

Been a fun last week... With everything that happened with my eyes, I've been sick almost all week. Swollen eyes Monday, then Tuesday-Friday I was feeling sick. Friday I was able to get out and work a little, but I still felt pretty bad. Better now, so I'm happy about that. It was def not fun being sick. Gets to the point where you're just so used to feeling bad that you really can't remember what it felt like to be healthy, that's kinda what it was. For 3 weeks prior I had had allergies, the itchy watery eyes, runny nose, that kinda stuff, but then swollen eyes and all that, so it's been a while since I've felt good. But I am glad to say I'm feeling good now and things are starting to get back to normal. Luckily we got everything figured out with the medications. Pretty sure you might've talked to president about it already, but missionary medical covers the eye drops, but Aetna didn't cover the pills. But it's better than it was. Had a $25 dollar co pay on the drops (shoulda been 10, but it is what it is), then $60 for the pills. So all in all I paid $85 for all the medications. That's WAY better than the $176 it was before.

So before I forget, our address is 1200 Autumn Wind Dr. Nampa, ID 83687. Pretty easy to remember.

Well, take care everyone. I'm doing well here. Gonna need to adjust to Nampa now, but that'll be easy. I feel like I'm gonna be here for a while. Might be another 6 month area, who knows, I just feel like I’m gonna be a while here.

Love,

Elder Blomquist

I got transferred! I'm in Nampa now. Funny thing is, it's only about 5-10 miles away from Caldwell. Know what else is funny? I'm serving with Elder Bell again. I'm stoked about that! I did NOT get along with Van Zalinge very well. It was a hard 6 weeks with him. I was ready to leave Caldwell. Nampa was the one place I didn't want to go though. Well, guess I didn't want to go to Oregon either, but I remember saying "I hope I don't go to Nampa". Oh well. I'm just happy to be away from Elder Van Zalinge and excited to be with Elder Bell again. We're gonna have lots of fun.

 

Nampa seems pretty tight though. It's about 80,000 people, so I'm moving to the city. Elder Bell hit someone last transfer, so I'm the driver. New city, and I'm driving it. Been so long since I've driven a car. Drove to Meridian today for p-day, and it's been a while. Didn't hit anyone (or even come close to for that matter), it's just been a while. So use to either biking or sitting shotgun. Just a little different.

 

So I haven't heard from anyone for a while. Haven't gotten a letter for a couple weeks now. What's up? life too crazy busy for me? haha

 

Been a fun last week... With everything that happened with my eyes, I've been sick almost all week. Swollen eyes Monday, then Tuesday-Friday I was feeling sick. Friday I was able to get out and work a little, but I still felt pretty bad. Better now, so I'm happy about that. It was def not fun being sick. Gets to the point where you're just so used to feeling bad that you really can't remember what it felt like to be healthy, that's kinda what it was. For 3 weeks prior I had had allergies, the itchy watery eyes, runny nose, that kinda stuff, but then swollen eyes and all that, so it's been a while since I've felt good. But I am glad to say I'm feeling good now and things are starting to get back to normal. Luckily we got everything figured out with the medications. Pretty sure you might've talked to president about it already, but missionary medical covers the eye drops, but Aetna didn't cover the pills. But it's better than it was. Had a $25 dollar copay on the drops (should  have been 10, but it is what it is), then $60 for the pills. So all in all I payed $85 for all the medications. That's WAY better than the $176 it was before.

 

So before I forget, our address is 1200 Autumn Wind Dr. Nampa, ID 83687. Pretty easy to remember.

 

Well, take care everyone. I'm doing well here. Gonna need to adjust to Nampa now, but that'll be easy. I feel like I'm gonna be here for a while. Might be another 6 month area, who knows, I just feel like I'm gonna be a while here.

 

Love,

Elder Blomquist

Swollen Eye

So President Cannon authorized me to email right now. I'm doing better now. Swelling is gone and most of the allergy symptoms are gone. The allergy shot I took killed my immune system, so I've been feeling pretty sick lately. Other than that I've been doing great. Last week was a great week and the start of this week has been rough, but I think it's gunna be another good one for the time we got left. Pretty sure I'm getting transferred on Monday, but we'll see.

Don't know if you can see, but the right eye is swollen shut.

 

President Cannon also said to give you his number in case you had any questions.  He said to call him for anything. Any questions you have, call him and we'll be able to sort everything out. He's a pretty funny guy. He called this morning and the first thing he said was "Elder Blomquist, are you alive?"

I'm alive, but I'm not kickin yet.

take care everyone!

love,

Elder Blomquist

Allergic to Hay

so today's been a hard day...

I think I'm allergic to hay. On Saturday we threw some hay, and I got all these rashes on my arm. Then this morning we were working in a barn and around hay and my eyes swelled up. Got so bad that I couldn't open my eyes. My eyes were swollen shut. Our ward mission leader took us to the doctor and they gave me a steroid shot in the butt (hurt a little bit) and some medications. I'm doing alright now, I'm able to keep my eyes open, but I have to stay in for a few days and still hurt a little bit. Keep me in your prayers tonight.

This morning our ward mission leader set us up with a non member who braids horse hair. He had to put his horse down and let us take some of it. We got with this guy this morning and braided it into bookmarks. Unfortunately I was swollen at that point and couldn't do mine, WML did that for me, but it's still pretty cool. Got a horse hair bookmark.

We've had a pretty good week. Made some solid contacts and had some good lessons. One of our investigators is going home to Thailand in a week, and I've been teaching her since she started investigating the church (sometime in February) and she gave us a flower that she made out of a paper towel and a nice little note. It was a nice surprise.

Really not much more I can say. My eyes are mostly what I'm trying to deal with right now. They're still swollen and it was pretty funny to see the looks I got in the doctors office. I've been wearing my sunglasses everywhere, even inside, and I wasn't wearing em then. Got some pretty good looks. Be house ridden for a couple days, but I'll be fine.

Take care everyone!

love,

Elder Blomquist

A Nothing Week

Another week come and gone... this has been a crap week though. We’ve only taught 5 lessons, only 1 to an investigator. There is no work here right now. We are only meeting with one of our investigators regularly, none are coming to church, and none are keeping commitments. There is no work in our area right now.

On top of that, still getting used to Elder Cronin. We had a talk yesterday about some of the problems we have w/ each other, so things should start getting better. Same way with Elder Bell. Didn’t like him at first, but then things got better after we talked and I really liked him. Things should get better now. We’ll see. He's a great worker and a good missionary, just some things we needed to work out and I think things are gonna get better now.

So like I said, last week was hard. We had a lot of appointments set, but over the course of Wednesday-Sunday we had 7 in a row cancel. 

It’s still a lot of fun though. We’re having lots of fun here. Little too much sometime I think, lol. 

That’s my week. Nothing... got a few letters from people at home, so will write back soon (yes, I actually will).

Take care everyone,

Elder Blomquist

Out 5 Months on Feb 14, 2012

Been an ok week this week. My ear hasn’t been really giving me any trouble cept a little bit yesterday, but it still rings and is unpleasant. Got a doc appointment tomorrow and we'll hopefully find out what it is. Kinda tired of this constant ringing.

Struggling a bit with my new companion. Elder Cronin’s a good guy and a pretty hard worker, but there are things that I don’t like. We play card games every night after we're done planning and all that, but he always cheats and coming from my gaming background, that annoys me. I think he's also pretty inconsiderate. Today we're playing golf for p-day and he set it all up. I don’t really mind playing golf, but he set it up w/o asking me about what I wanted to do. It just seems a lot of the time he just wants to do things his way and for his own benefit. He’s probably my least favorite companion so far.

Cool experience though. Well, a couple of them, but we had Elder Ballard come and talk with the mission! He’s here reorganizing a stake and he took some time to talk with the missionaries. He really stressed the importance of companions and being the best teachers there are. He’s pretty funny too. I think in such a small low-key gathering he can afford to let some humor out. That makes 3 apostles I’ve seen/heard in person. Elder Gavarett of the Seventy is gonna be coming to our stake at the end of the month to reorganize our stake and he's having a new member meeting with us and the people we're working with. That should be cool too.

Had the opportunity to give another blessing this week too. I’m pretty amazed with some of the less actives in this area. There’s one guy who's a pretty rough guy. Been to prison at least once, tough looking, and pretty rough in his speech, but he said he's been having a rough time and hasn’t felt the Spirit for at least 3 weeks and wants it back. He has a strong testimony and when you see a rough and tough guy like him cry, it's something else. There was another less active we met who's a convert, and we always like to ask about their conversion story and how and why they embraced the gospel. Well she was telling us her story and she started crying too and said she couldn’t deny the church. These people do have testimonies, maybe small ones, but they are there and it makes me wonder why they don’t come to church.

It was fun staying in a ward for more than 6 weeks. On Sunday when we greeted it was fun to see all the people I knew. Spent 6 weeks getting to know these people and I get to stay and spend more time with them. I’ve had a lot of fun with this ward. we changed up our wards again, but I got to keep the ward I had most fun in. we rode our bikes to Notus 10 miles away, did skits in mutual and ward functions, got shocked by an electric fence at a dinner appointment, and I think I’ve been more open with people and I’ve gotten to know them better and they've gotten to know me better. It’s been a lot of fun. We’ve built a lot of member trust in the ward. Hasn’t paid off yet, but we're still working it.

5 months tomorrow! Crazy how fast it's gone. I'll hit my 6 month mark here and burn my tie. There's 2 other people from my MTC district serving here in Caldwell, and 1 in Nampa which is about 10 or so miles away, so we're probably gonna have 4 of us burning our tie here at the same tie. Gonna be fun when that happens. Time is moving by. Sometimes it seems slow cuz of our lack of work, but looking back it all goes by fast.

  

That’s pretty much the week. Nothing much is happening. We’ve only taught 6 lessons last week and not looking very likely we'll teach much more this week either. Kinda sucks when the work is slow, but it also cuts our work out for us. Lots of contacting and trying to keep busy. Now if we can just turn that into being productive, that'll be better.

Take care everyone!

Love,

Elder Blomquist

Companions

Elders Farris, Blomquist, Bell, and Bowers