week 3- 1st week in Michigan

Hey Y'all! 

I love being here! My companion is Sister Hannah Lindsay and she grew up in northern Nevada. She is the cutest ever. I am her first 'daughter' or trainee, but she is already so amazing at training I couldn't believe that she hadn't ever trained before! She attended college at SUU before coming on her mission and was an elementary ed major! She probs knew Emilee without evening knowing it! She did say that she voted Innovate so you know she is super amazing! My area is Lapeer south and we are in the town of Oxford, look up some facts about the gravel pit that is in this town and you will know why this is my first area. ;) The area has a good mix of poor and rich. 

I feel like I have been out here for a month already and it has only been a week. The sisters had a baptism on the 23 of July so we have been focused on helping her endure to the end and getting her to the temple. Her name is Tabetha and she was golden when the missionaries were led to her. She has an amazing desire to grow and learn in the gospel. I got to teach her on my first day.We are also teaching a recent convert named Bill. We study The BOM with him and help him apply it to his life. It is really an amazing thing that I get to teach this at the beginning of my mission because it is helping me read with the 'mindset of an investigator' and making my personal study a lot more effective. The other less active we teach is named Deavon, he has no motivation. He literally sits in his house all day and plays video games until he has to go to work. He is the palest person I have ever met. The sisters challenged him to read his BOM before he plays his video games and he says he has been doing it but he doesn't see how "a bunch of wars and dead guys can relate to (his) life." He will be difficult but I believe that I am bold and daring enough to be able to teach him with the Spirit. His mom is one of our investigators I haven't had the chance to teach her yet but her name is Tonya, she will be a fun one. We do a lot of service to non-members that were investigators at one point, I don't really understand why we keep going over there when basically they are a lost cause but i love them already and will try to find ways to teach them. One is Peggy, her husband, Dick, has Huntington's disease, I don't really understand it but i guess its where your body starts to shut down. He can't move and can't speak but they tell me his mind is all there. Anyway we go to her house to help with yard work and cough assist. Cough assist is where they hook this machine up to his lungs and clean them out, I couldn't help/watch because I was nervous I would pass out so next time I will bring my BOM and read to them while they work, hopefully that will help Peggy.  We teach this very catholic woman named Cheryl, she loves the BOM but can't seem to find the connection it has to Joseph Smith. She has done a lot of incredible/terrifying/crazy/weird things in her life. She has had cancer 5 different times and won the fight every time, she was almost beat to death once, she had her throat slit, she knows a lot about cars, she has been 29 years sober and there is so much more that I don't even know yet. It is hard to teach her a lesson because she has a story for everything. 

Guess what Mom! I got to go into the hood! Who would have guessed that my first week here and they already let me into a part of Detroit where the crime rate is way up and they have drive by shootings all the time. Don't fret, we went for a mission wide service project where they cleaned up 300 blocks of Detroit. We did yard work to make neighborhoods look more presentable so the crime rate will go down. I'm not even kidding. I almost got to drive a trackhoe but I didn't have my drivers licence on me and they said I would need that... And i probs needed President Clevelands permission too but a girl can dream. but mainly we worked with clippers and rakes and shovels. I wish we had dads chainsaw we were hacking at these tiny trees forever trying to get them to come out.  It was so much fun! We spent all of Saturday with half the mission and 10,000 other volunteers making Detroit beautiful again. The name of the organization is Life Remodeled and they do with every year. They see crime drop in 10 out of 11 categories in the areas they clean up. Crazy huh? Well I am almost out of time and haven't read any of your emails yet! I better do that! 

Love Sister Ashlee Evelyn Witt!!