BOZEMAN!! And new address!

Haha well I am officially in Montana! This last week has been crazy, but I absolutely love it here. On monday we flew in and I met my new mission president, President Mecham. He is an incredible man, one of the most inspiring that I have ever met, and it is incredible how much he knows about us and even more impoortantly, cares about us before we even get a chance to talk with him. He is super kind, and him and his wife were very welcoming and helpful. That first night all the elders stayed in this bunkroom type thing they have in the mission home, and we received our assignments. Mine is to Bozeman, which is a smaller town about an hour and a half from Billings. MSU is here and I am really liking it already. I had a turn of events happen and on Tuesday morning, one of the Assistants to the mission President, Elder Olsen from Spanish Fork, UT, told me to pack a smaller bag and that I would actually be his travel companion for a couple days and we were going down to Wyoming and dropping off missionaries, and then I would be on exchanges with two elders down in Riverton, Wyoming, and that after that we would head back up to Bozeman. Haha so that was a surprise, and I had the privelege of going down through a huge chunk of Wyoming, which is basically a whole lot of nothing. Haha it had some beautiful parts, and I actually came to really love Riverton for the people there and how awesome they were, as well as the two elders who I served with, Elders Linton and Organ. They were great, and the area needed a lot of organizing so we spent a lot of time with that and working as to how we could make our efforts more effective. Just as I was really loving it and looking ofrward to being there, Elder Olsen said we needed to move on, and so we left and made our way back to Billings for a night, and on Friday morning we left to come here to Bozeman. I met my companion, Elder Brown, who is awesome, and we live in an apartment with the two elders, Elder Burrows and Elder Schlenker. I love Elder Brown already, he is a good elder, loves music, very smart, and knows the area here really well.

Anyways, I got here in Bozeman and my area covers mainly the outskirts, so it takes forever to cover areas because of how spread apart our area is. We have a truck and bikes, so we often spend time biking or driving half way then biking to save gas and mileage. I love it here, it is so beautiful! I have also had some interesting experiences, this family had us over for dinner and they live in a trailer home, but as we walked in she was decorating a Christmas tree, which was interesting. .. haah so they are a great but very unique family. And unfortunately it reeked and was super hot in their trailer. Like bad. Like I am pretty sure I haven't smelled something that bad for a long time. Well I was mistaken in how bad I thought that smell was. Because on Sunday morning we woke up at our usual time to the worst smell I have smelled in seriously like my entire life. Our apartment REEKED! Our windows were open and we discovered this lady below us was cooking (or letting rot, or making smell as bad a possible) something, I don't want to know what, and it was coming up and killing us all silently. So we spent a half hour frantically lighting a scented candle, spreading dryer sheets strategically around the place, and dousing every surface in febreeze. But that's ok, it definitely was memorable!! The people we are teaching here are awesome, I love them all already! We are teaching a woman and that's been good, she is a less-active member, and she hasn't been to church in years and has had such a hard life. We are really working with her in helping her come back to church and she has such a desire to know God and have a more personal relationship with him so we are trying to help her pray more and read the Book of Mormon every day. She has been progressing well but there always seems to be something in the way of her keeping her commitments, so hopefully we can help her keep those and have a desire to pull through. My favorite investigator right now I met yesterday, her name is B and she is an immigrant from Shanghai, but she speaks really good English. Elder Brown has been working with her for three months, and she is so ready to be baptized. She has such a knowledge, desire, and she attends church every week. Yesterday we taught her in the Gospel Essentials class at church more about the life of Christ because she doesn't know a lot not being from a Christian background, and then we taught her after again about the Atonement, and it was so powerful. She is so ready and we challenged her to be baptized on September 7th, which she accepted. She is somewhat hesitant as she feels she needs a perfect knowledge of everything but we talked to her about faith and how she needs to pray to know if this is was she needs to do, and she said she thinks it is and she will pray. So that like made my week, and she is doing really well!

 I am really excited to be serving here though! Also, the address you need to send everything to is the one for the mission home, it should have been on the return address for my letter, but just have it be to me and they will forward everything. Also any packages need to be USPS priority or something like that, not standard, otherwise they won't be able to forward those. I am seriously loving it here, please put the mission address on my blog so that people can write me if they'd like (hint hint, nudge nudge) hahaha and I hope you are all doing well! I loved hearing from everyone via email and I am keeping all of you in my prayers! Booboo, I hope the tendonitiis goes away quick, work hard and be smart and then be aggressive with running when you can, Katy, I LOVED hearing about your week and I am so glad that you are doing well. Kyle, I love you lots, let me know how you are doing, and Dad, I am so glad that work is good and thanks so much for the advice, I really needed some of the things you said. Well I love oyu all, tchau!!!

Elder Carney

Danny's New Address is:
Elder Daniel Carney
Montana Billings Mission
1848 Rimrock Road
Billings, MT  59102-0765