February 6, 2018

I'll miss The Republic of Ireland, but I'm happy to be back in Scotland.

I got moved from Galway to Perth in Dundee zone.

Elder Abel and I left on Thursday night so he could catch the bus from Dublin to Belfast, travel for a few more hours and eventually get to the mission home in Edinburgh. He's home now, I'll miss him and excited to hear from him again eventually. Since we needed to be in Dublin I got to stay in Dublin with Elder Valiati (Va-lee-atch) and Elder Anderson. Both of them are really nice guys, Valiati is a really humble guy from Brazil and Elder Anderson is from Alberta Canada. Just my few days there the three of us had a lot of fun. We saw a bunch of drunk people fighting each other at the same time when walking back to the flat and then literally 50 meters up the road there was another fight happening. It was pretty funny. Then when Monday came around I took a bunch of busses and a ferry with rolling all of my luggage around all until I got to Perth with my new comp. On my travel I stopped in Glasgow for an hour waiting for a bus to Dundee and I saw so many missionaries there that I've missed a ton. I saw Elder Crowley, my second trainer, Elder Palmer who I haven't seen since the MTC, Elder Huang and Copeland who I'd served around in Livingston, Elder Stevenson from my transfer in Cumbernauld. It was a really good revival of energy. Then I got to Dundee and met my companion Elder Gunson. He is a nice guy, and seems to work hard and be laid backso this transfer oughtta be a good one.

Perth is a pretty nice area from what I can tell in the short time I've been here thus far. I was starting to forget what the Scottish accent was like and it's nice to hear it again. There are a good amount of investigators here and even a family or two. All of the investigators are really close to baptism but they all have problems with smoking. So hopefully we will be able to get them on the church's stop smoking program, give some blessings to people, and they'll be on their way. The branch here has a building which feels weird to have since the last 12 weeks we met in the top floor of a building in a business park. The people here seem to be friendly and there is tons of potential for this area.

Have a good week!

Elder Erik Orchard