Hello Everyone!

Wow. This week has been tough. This week has brought back some
memories from white washing Paris when I was being trained. I felt so
blind and this time is no different haha! It's been a crazy week and
I'm homesick for Paris and my family there.

Even though I miss Paris like crazy, Louisville is amazing! It's huge
and there's so many people here! So many. It's been such a blessing
for Spanish as well, every other person you talk to speaks Spanish so
that rocks!

My new companion is Hermana Boyson. She is amazing. She is from Ogden,
Utah and has been a 4th grade school teacher for the past 4 years.
She's 29 years old and she's just incredible. She was just living life
and had the prompting to serve a mission and went right away. Talk
about faith right? She is awesome and I feel so blessed to have her as
my companion.

So this week started out crazy and ended crazy too. Since the white
wash was a last minute decision the Hermanas here didn't have time to
get anything ready. Poor girls were awake until 3:30 just getting
everything packed. So we came here with literally nothing. They had
given us a couple names and addresses but that was about it. And the
area books are all on the iPad's so we have to wait a couple days to
get it synced. Wow, it was a challenge. It took us an hour just to
find Walmart our first day.... It ended up being just a couple miles
down the street from our house. Hahaha oh it was an adventure for
sure. Poor Hermana Boyson was half scared to death when I pulled over
to ask some random guy on the street for directions (and talk about
Christ of course).

But don't worry we finally found Walmart and we were able to find the
rest of our appointments for the night after some trial and error.
After a couple days the sister missionaries in our area gave us their
GPS until we get used to the area, I was so grateful. This area is
huge, that GPS is gonna come in handy.

But we didn't have one lesson this week. We've made phone calls and
knocked on doors and nada. The Hermanas here didn't have a ton of
investigators right now so it's almost like starting from scratch,
which is a lot of fun! We've found some really nice people and we've
talked lots of Spanish! It was crazy in Paris we had about one lesson
a week in Spanish and we got to use the language on the streets about
once a day if we were lucky but here it's like everyone and their dog
knows how to speak Spanish so that has been awesome, and I don't think
we should have too much of a problem finding people to teach (fingers
crossed)!

The ward here is really nice. Sunday was a little crazy so I didn't
really get to meet a lot of members but we have a dinner appointment
every day this week so that will be a great way to get to know people.
There's this one family here named the Perez's and they are absolutely
incredible! Brother Perez served his mission in Mexico and Sister
Perez served her mission in Washington (Spanish speaking) and they
only speak Spanish in the house so all of their kids know it super
well. They are an amazing family and very missionary minded. They've
already invited us over to their house to have lessons with
investigators twice!

Everyone in this area keeps telling us to be careful and that we don't
live in a good neighborhood (poor Hermana Boyson.. She freaks out
every time someone says it) but I love being a missionary. I feel so
protected and safe here. I know we are being watched over and as long
as we're being obedient and following the spirit we are going to be
okay.

So some fun things... Our district meetings our held in Indiana so I
now have been in another state I've never been in before. And let me
tell you that drive is so pretty, I loved it! We've had lots of
opportunities to do service this week and we even helped cut some wood
(don't worry I didn't use the chain saw, as much as I wanted to, I
didn't). Hermana Boyson got pretty sick yesterday so we stayed home
pretty much the whole day and I studied my little heart out for hours,
it was great.

That's about it for the week though, not much has been going on. I'm
hoping we can have a better week this week and find lots of people to
teach the amazing gospel of Jesus Christ to. I love you all and I hope
you have the best week ever. Be happy, because life is too short to be
anything else.

Con amor,
Hermana Swapp

Ponderized Scripture: "For behold, this life is the time for men to
prepare to meet God; yea, behold the day of this life is the day for
men to perform their labors." -Alma 34:32

Ps: will someone please tell Ziggy happy birthday for me this week?

Hermana Fluckiger always wanted to paint in Paris so that's what we did last week. 

Check the mail this week mom you might have something coming your way (;