May 22nd

Hello All! I hope everyone is doing well out in the rest of the world because I am doing GREAT here in Washington! It has been a whirlwind of a week, but it's been amazing. So Tuesday we left for the airport at about 8am, had a short flight over and landed in Pasco at about 11am (Pacific Time). We headed over to the Mission Home and had lunch and an orientation day of sorts where we talked about logistical stuff, the mission, etc. After we spent some time talking about that and missions, there were a bunch of missionaries who came over and took us around the area for a short lesson and some tracting! It was crazy to just hop on out there, I loved it. We found out our assignments that night and I am serving in West Richland for my training! My companion is named Sister Crandall, she's from Chesterfield, ID and is fantastic. We are loving being together. Sister LaRue and I get to be in the same zone so I still get to see her on occasion, it's nice to see a familiar face.

I'm starting to get to know people we're teaching and people in the wards, but it is definitely a process. There are just so many people. It has been pretty amazing to see the response though, everyone has been so welcoming and so friendly to me. We had a training meeting on Thursday, but other than that it's been a lot of missionary work out here. We've had a few lessons, stopped by some houses, did a little tracting. It's been a good taste of mission life. Sister Crandall is so good about keeping us busy and knowing who we should stop in the visit and what people need, she's teaching me so much. The members here take really good care of us, we've always got delicious dinners lined up and everyone loves talking to us. We spent a few hours on Saturday doing service and we got to help some members lay some sod in their yard. It felt good to do a little manual labor again, I enjoyed it.

Cool experience, we decided to read the Book of Mormon with some of our investigators this week and it was such an awesome experience. You learn so much when you can read and talk about things and it really helped me learn some new things. We read Mosiah 18, everyone should go read it right now. It's such an amazing chapter. Not too much else to write today, I'm still trying to take everything and it's a little overwhelming at times, but I'm trusting that the Lord will lead and guide me. This weeks Relief Society lesson on prayer was a great reminder of how much I love prayer and how grateful I am that I can communicate with Heavenly Father so regularly. I love y'all, I love this mission, I love this work.

Sister Ellingson

ps- shout outs to Mac and Alex for the awesome dear elders my last day at the MTC! And shout outs to Ruth and Sister Mortenson for my first letters in the field.

pps- everyone here has gardens. It's amazing.