Cooper, Kerry & Jamee

Dear  Family and Friends, We didn't have a very eventful week.  On our prep day we washed clothes and went to our favorite place in Oakland - WalMart. Actually there is a fun little story about WalMart.  The first day we got here we had to go get supplies. The cashier that helped us was a friendly lady originally from the Philippines.  She noticed our name tags and asked what we were doing. We had a nice conversation with her.  Now every time we go to WalMart we look for her, and that's quite often.  Our goal is to get to the point where we can have quick little visits about with her about the Church and give her a Book of Mormon. On Tuesday we went to our orientation at the hospital for our volunteer service.  We will start our service this coming Thursday and are excited to get going. We noticed that as we were walking around the hospital a lot of people were glancing at our name tags.  In addition to the service we will be doing, we hope to hav...

Dear Family, Good Sunday evening to everyone.  Another week come and gone.  We had a pretty good week. On Monday we went to a state park near us called Coopers Rock. There is a deep canyon with a river running through it. The lookout is a big rock jutting out over the canyon with a view up and down the river. With the fall colors it was beautiful.  We tried to see why it is called Coopers Rock but couldn't find any information about it.  We happened to meet some Elders from another district on the trail.  One of them is an missionary that was here on exchanges the week we got here.  Another one was from American Falls, Idaho.  He was excited  when we told him Mom had lived in Rockland and I had lived in Aberdeen when we were young. For those of you who aren't familiar with that part of Idaho, those three little towns are just a few miles apart. Most of the rest of the week was planning our visits and driving around the country trying to find peopl...

Good evening family, I hope this letter finds you all happy and healthy. This was kind of a slow week, so this might be a little shorter.  Most of our time was spent driving through the Maryland and West Virginia countryside looking for people to visit. Our area is the entire Garrett County in Maryland and some of W. Virginia. Our branch  is the only area in our mission that is in Maryland and we are surrounded on three sides by W. Virginia. This area is  REALLY RURAL  and we spend a lot of time driving. It is really beautiful as we drive through the trees and rolling highway.  The forests are really thick and you can hardly see through the trees. I love driving through our area, but it is a little frustrating to drive for 20-30 minutes to find a home and then either no one is there or they won't come to the door. We have made some progress.  We have been able to talk to some people that the leaders of the branch are surprised would talk to us.  We hav...