Hank is in Louisiana!

An excerpt of his letter today!  I had to laugh at one comment he made, I underlined and put it in italics below.  You can tell we're from Arizona! 

hey mom

its been crazy being here right now. after i hung up the phone we got on the plane and took off for jackson mississippi airport. it was crazy to see how the landscape just got greener and greener. we landed at seriously one of the smallest airports i have ever seen. it is very small. even the airplane we were in was tiny! anyway we got out of the airplane and and president tucker was there to greet all of us. he seemed very happy that we fianlly arived. we then rode in a car with him to the church building. it was very small. on the way there i was just looking out the window seeing how different it was from arizona and utah. its was green and there are trees everywhere! we went to the church building and ate lunch and talked. then we went with a missionary by ourselves to go tracting in an area of their choice, for practice. i went with elder renshaw and we went to a trailer park. we were there for about  1-2 hours before the lady who owned the trailer park kicked us out because we were "soliciting". yah she got pretty mad at us and told us we were going to hell for "lying". anyway i took a picture next to the sign that said "no soliciting".

then we went back to the building and rode back to the mission home. this place is really awesome and feels so different. its very green and the roads are differsnt and there's actually water under the bridges we drive over. anyway that night we had a devotinal and then went to bed. there was a lady there who said that she had been talking to you through email and told me that you said hi. then we went to bed. when i woke up we got assigned to our first areas. im actually already here and have been here since yesterday. so i will tell you where i am and will be for the next 6 weeks. I assigned to West Monroe, Louisiana. I have been here since yesterday afternoon. my companion is Elder Belden. he is cool and i get along with him great. .. hes been here a year and from Michigan.

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...im going to be honest, the apartment we are in is kindof gross haha! theres alot of cockroaches and stains everywhere! but oh well. we share it with 2 other missionaries, elder higgens and elder bolander, they cover the northern part of west monroe, and we cover the southern part of west monroe but we got to each others areas occasionaly.

...After that we went to have dinner with an investigator with all four of us. we went to Logans Roadhouse! i had no idea that they had those out here! we stayed there for about an hour then we said goodbye and drove back to our apartment. we then pklanned for the next day and went to bed.

...today we woke up and got ready. i took a shower and got dressed. me and my companion then went to go visit someone, when all of the sudden someone called us to go visit a member who just went to the hospital for bleeding in the brain. we drove to St. Francis hospital in Monroe Louisiana (look it up if you want) to go visit them. we were there arount 11 o clock in the morning and werent able to visit until 12:30.

So we ate food and waited until we could. when we fianally got in we talked with him. his name is tom henry. we talked with him and his familiy for about an hour and then we gave him a blessing. i was so nervous. i just did the anoiting. but my companion said i did good. we were there for until like 2.

then we drove back to the apartment to use the bathroom and left to go to the library. Thats where i am right now, im using one of the library computers. anyway the people here are cool, and everyone has a southern accent. its awesome to hear everyone talk like that. anyway its very green here and it definantly does not feel like arizona. im actaully surpised at some of the houses the people live in. alot of them are very worn down and look like nobady lives there. ill take more pictures anyway its great here and really wish that you guys could see it. ive never seen anyplace like this, and i like it. anyway enjoy the pictures i took.
love Hank