Buses

The bus system and I are now well acquainted. I may even go so far as say that we are friends. To make our 10:00 meeting today we left on the 148 Line just after 8. You always hear about the stories of saints that travel for hours to get to church and I have been looking forward to going to church since we got here. I just can't wait to be part of a ward outside of Utah, see what the church is like outside the clear, plastic, iridescent walls of "the bubble."

80 percent of the ward is black, most from Ghana, a few from Nigeria...There is the classic old man that every ward has who's a little off, but lovable all the same. It just felt like home. We meet in an old train station that has been converted into a church. Getting to the chapel is a bit of a labyrinth. The meeting was moving, a great way to get a little exposure to quite a few ward members.

After the first block we got our callings. I am going to spend the next 5 weeks working in the Primary teaching the 8 - 11 year olds. I can't wait. They are total pests; constantly poking and prodding about "opening your scriptures proper!" and "he's hitting me with his hanky again!" It's going to be a fun ride.

The bus ride home was interesting. Soprano decided to jet off the bus on the wrong stop and like brain-dead, trained-to-follow-in-a-line-since-kindergarten sheep we all hopped off with her thus commencing a 30 minute meander to find the right stop with the right line running through it. Eventually we found one and just our luck! the bust driver got lost so we wound through back streets and all around some hospital until we finally got to our stop. From there we scurried onto the tube and I promptly fell asleep. Bad idea. Lost my Oyster Card. Wanted to die after finding out my iPod magically got erased and almost had a melt down when I found out that the line headed back to where we came from was closed because of some incident on the platform.

Church is an 8 to 4 ordeal, but will provide ample time for study and reflection.