Elder Drew Dahlberg Missionary Blog: Living on the Border... of New Hampshire and Vermont...

My 4th of July outfit got me a lot of stares.

Notice the date on the pictures... See below for explanation.

So i got transferred out of stinky Old Town Maine and im not living in Maine anymore. I am living in Claremont, New Hampshire. A cool thing about this area im in now is that i go to church in a different state than im living in. I live in New Hampshire, but i go to church in Ascutney, Vermont. So with this area i cover a little bit of both states. The dividing line between NH and VT is the Connecticut river. Its a big river and sadly its really brown... Its not clean at all. Another thing about this are is that i no longer feel enclosed/ surrounded by trees! Although there are lots of trees around me there are hills here, unlike Maine which is flat as can be. There are so called mountains around us but they are hills, none of them are taller than black mountain back in San Diego.

When i arrived in this area on Tuesday the first thing we did was drop off my bags at the apartment. When we opened the door to the apartment i got blasted by this stench of stinky armpits and mold. It was terrible. The apartment was trashed too. Boxes everywhere, dirty carpets, mold in the shower, dirty dishes stacked on dirty dishes, and there was just junk all over the place. I was disgusted at how the apartment was and when i went to the vacuum cleaner to attempt cleaning, i was surprised with a dirty vacuum full of dirt and hair. So i came to the conclusion that when you have to clean the tools to clean the apartment, that means it was one heck of a mess. So right now i cleaned up a whole lot and now its at least semi-clean. My new Companions name is Elder Lervald, he lives in Brea, California and is 22 years old. My companion has been out for 16 months. so he is about 2/3rds done.

My new mailing address is:
Elder Drew Dahlberg
2 Winter St Apt T17
Claremont, NH, 03743

https://www.google.com/maps/place/2+Winter+St/@43.3763516,-72.3335001,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m2!3m1!1s0x89e1c1e1b023b7f5:0xcf0f5bdab8188536

I am in a giant apartment building complex. Its called Claremont Arms and there are like 5 separate buildings and they each have different names like 'Camelot' or 'Arthur". Ours is called Tudor. I find it ironic because im the biggest tooter in Tudor! haha get it?

As for our teaching in this area, we don't have a whole lot of people to teach :/. no real investigators atm and no real less actives that want to learn. So we are going to be finding this week and trying to get our teaching pool up.

Some cool things that happened this week were a lightning storm that came out of no where. It was sunny and than boom, in come these black clouds and lightning just starts hitting the earth everywhere. None of the bolts came close to us but it took out a power line to our apartments and we were without power for a good hour. I thought the storm was awesome! It rained so hard we couldn't see while driving even with the wipers going as fast as they could.

Also because of the storm, the July 4th fireworks were canceled and were postponed for the 5th. So we got to see the 5th of July fireworks! A cool little fact of the day is that this area, (called Ascutney) is where Elder Beck got trained! Pretty cool. I like this area and i hope to get to know everything a little better. I hope all of you had a wonderful 4th of July and that you all had fun. Thanks for the letters and the prayers, both are great and i appreciate all the support.

I asked him about who made the big mess in the apartment...

Elder Lervald was in the apartment before but it was his older companion that was such a mess maker. He didn't mind me cleaning. He didn't join me but he didn't think i was crazy or anything. Honestly its really hard to find people to teach, i don't talk about all the negative comments and stuff i get because it doesn't feel good to get them so i just brush it off. I found that im pretty gifted in being patient. Almost all the missionaries out here are impatient and its a wake up call to me to show how blessed i am for being able to step back and look at the bigger picture. Thanks for you support mom. :)