Elder Louw arrives in NY

While traveling to NY we met some very generous LDS people at the Chicago airport. They were excited to see us and treated all 9 Elders in my group to dinner.

I have been in NY for about a day and a half now. I stayed in my mission pres. house for the first night and had a really nice dinner there with his wife, Sister Ekersley and their two daughters. They are super nice and I really like them. They have a pretty nice house. So Wednesday we all got up and had breakfast and went to the stake center for training and to pair up with our new companinons. After all that we left and headed to our area which is in Carthage, north of Utica. But ya, New York is sweet. It is so green and there are trees and forests everywhere. My companion is a big dude. He weighs like 225. He is pretty cool. We have taught 2 lessons so far, one last night and one today. The lesson we taught today we didn't even plan on. We just decided to drive past this investigaters house and she happened to be on the front porch (that's the Spirit for ya) but ya it's so cool sharing the gospel with people who know nothing about it or know about it but have questions or just don't understand. My favorite scripture lately is Ps 33:20.

We wake up at 6:15 work out (I'm huge, well really not compared to Elder Vogelsang), eat, shower, study for 2 hours and get anything else done before we head out. Then it's usually a couple hours of tracting, meetings, lunch, more meetings, and driving out to Fort Drum military base. We teach out on the base a lot because about 70-80% or our ward is located there. Fort Drum is about 20 minutes away from our house. At church yesterday there was only like 70 people there, maybe... they have tons of in-active people in the the ward here in Carthage (the town is about 4,000 people.) It seems like everybody here just needs the smallest excuse or is looking for an excuse to get offended so they don't have to go to church. The church needs more repentance and forgiveness by everyone for everyone. I met this little girl in the ward who reminds me of pictures I have seen of Jennifer when she was a little girl (really blond super straight hair.) I met this guy, Walt, while tracting who has two '63 and one '67 Camaros that he is restoring. Dad would like his garage. He was pretty interested in what we had to say. Nobody really has an accent here. Everybody was telling me I was going to have to learn the language of NY but ya, it just sounds like home. I was kind of sick the past two days but I'm feeling better now. I had like a fever and sore throat. I saw my first ground hogs and fire flies. The fire flies are sweet.

So I love you guys (fam, cousins, friends) and hope you're all doin alright. I'm prayin for ya! Keep me filled in on the goods!!! Thanks for all the letters, packages and prayers. Keep em coming!

I just want to leave you by saying that I love all of you and that I have come to realize that the strongest part or the base of my testimony is my family! I know we can live together forever and that we can all be happy together.

Elder Izak Louw
NY Utica Mission
PO Box 149
Whitesboro, NY 13482-0149