Othello!

Well, this sure has been an adventurous week. I doubt many of you are following this closely but some of you may have noticed that six weeks has passed by since the last time I have mentioned anything about transfers. Well, today is that day. Last Wednesday I finally left Chelan. It was surprisingly sad to leave the area but at the same time, I am excited to continue my service in another area. I have been switched to a city called Othello, about an hour north of Kennewick, or 2 hours south of Chelan. It took us 8 hours to get here but that was because we had to sit for 6.5 hours waiting for some other missionaries. That is too long to sit in a church building. Anyways, Othello has about 10,000 people in it, or about twice what Chelan has in the off-months. The interesting thing about Othello, though, is it has the highest population of people from the state of Guerrero, Mexico. Why do I mention this, you ask? Good question. I'll tell you. In Guerrero, although they do speak Spanish, they mostly speak a language called Mixteco. It’s a dialect that comes from up in the mountains of the state, and let me tell you, it does not sound like Spanish. It honestly sounds more like an Eastern language (i.e., Japanese, Chinese, something completely foreign like that) than a dialect of Spanish. And how do I know this? Because yours truly has the calling of attempting to learn the language. There are no books for it really, only a handful of members speak it, and my comp that speaks it goes home in 2 weeks. Lucky me. Regardless, I'm excited for the challenge. Never thought I would come home from my mission trilingual.

In my little time I have thus far here in Othello though I've loved it. The people are great and are always willing to help us. The members are awesome, as always.

So since I'm still trying to wrap my head around having to learn another language, I haven't come up with much to report on this week but I assure you I will have more to say next week. I just need to let the shock of picking up a foreign language wear off a bit and I'll be good to go.

In the meantime, I am going back to Leadership Camp for Marching Band my senior year for this week's quote. It’s been on my mind a lot lately so I thought I would share it.

"No one cares how much you know unless they know how much you care."

Until next week!

Elder Kupferer