I'm now serving about 40 miles south-ish of the greater Phoenix area (where most of the mission is) in the magical world of Maricopa. It's an interesting place. You literally drive through the barren desert for 40 minutes to be surprised by a random "island" of houses. It's almost exactly like Laveen, in that all the houses look the same and they're all bunched together in little HOA communities, etc. There's pretty much nothing around here at all, just a bunch of random houses in the middle of the desert. In my mind's eye as I describe it, it sounds like a ghetto place, but it's actually a fairly decent area. It's really quiet and the houses are actually fairly nice.

Here's my new address:
45175 W. Cypress Lane
Maricopa, AZ 85139

My new companion is Elder Reed from Sparks, Nevada. He's a really hard-working missionary and is really dedicated already. He's one of those that came "pre-trained" so there's not a whole lot of work to do on him which is always good! He's a really nice kid, and we'll definitely see a lot of success together. I'll attach a picture of us that we just took. You can see my sick watch tan-line I've been working on! Also my... bodacious biceps...


So there's a train track that runs right through the middle of Maricopa. Cool huh?
But really, so we were biking home one night and in order to go home we have to cross the tracks. Well, right as we pull up to the tracks the rails go down and a big train comes to the tracks. And stops. It's a passenger train (apparently) that sits there right in front of the road and loads people up for like 20 minutes while all the cars pile up behind each other waiting for it. While it was parked, 3 other trains passed at various times, and right as soon as the passenger train starts going, just when we think the guard rails are going to lift up another train goes by for another 10 minutes. I don't know why I tell this story, other than I guess to say that this whole city revolves around those train tracks. I guess originally there was just a train station in Maricopa, but now it's just a huge housing...place. Wow, that was such a cool story!

We have some cool investigators though! There's this one kid named Kane who's totally prepared to be baptized, but the previous missionaries literally just went over there and talked about video games and junk every time. So I think as long as we do anything he should be good!

It looks like a lot of the work here is going to be focused around part-member families. Pretty much every investigator we have is in a part-member family! It's crazy. We have a brand-new ward mission leader which is really nice. Oddly enough, I think he was just barely the Ward Clerk...he was just called last week. I feel like there's some sort of conspiracy going on...hmm... In any case, I can tell already that he'll be a sweet WML. He's a really cool guy, and just happens to know everyone in the ward. He seems really eager to do whatever needs to be done, which is great.

You'll be happy to know, Mom, that our dinner calendar is absolutely filled up for August and even a lot of September already, so don't worry about that. My main problem isn't staying fed, but staying fit! I think it's a good problem to have though. I'd rather be fat than hungry.

Hmm, I dunno what else to talk about! There's really not a lot of variety at all to what I do, but I guess that's probably just because I take it for granted. The work is still good, church is still true, still having fun and all that. Love ya'll.

-Elder Cox