Serving in Missouri: "Nobody really gives us trouble because we are the "Jesus boys...."

Hey Everyone,

So East St. Louis is ok, it's not as bad as people make it out to be, in fact I think it's just as bad as my last area. It's ghetto but it's not as crowded like I thought it would be; there are allot of vacant houses and buildings. There are a couple of streets that we have to avoid, but for the most part we are safe. Nobody really gives us trouble because we are the "Jesus boys" so they know who we are and what we do.

My new companion is Elder Rausch ( not Roach, the zone leaders messed up with his name ). He is from Calgary Canada, he is pretty cool. We get along great so far, he has been out for 4 months, so I'm not training which I'm totally fine with.

The area is ok as far as work wise, we white washed in so we replaced two elders who just went home, and to say the least they where slackers. They didn't really do anything, and they where super rebellious. We found a whole bunch of movies in our apartment that are from the flea market, so they are pirated. They had Iron Man 3, The Avengers, the new Batman, and couple of other movies. We also found out that they left the mission boundaries with a sister in the ward to go to the Nauvoo pageant! Everyday we keep on finding out how big of piles they where, so that was frustrating, oh but they cleaned most of the apartment before they left, except the bath room. It was pretty gross, there was mold in a lot of places and on the shower curtain...eek, so we throw that away real fast. They did leave us with some people to teach, one of them we met on Saturday, his name is Mike. He is a good person, he just got out of prison and is still on parole and house arrest and wont be off of it till next year He is going to be taught by missionaries for a long time.

Other than that we haven't met with anyone else since we were busy trying to get to know our area better.

We also met with the branch yesterday, boy it's a small branch, only 15-20 people come and including there are only 8 priesthood holders. So we got to help bless and pass the sacrament one thing for sure is that we got our work cut out for us.

Thanks for the video link of Dayan, man I can't believe they are getting married in November.

I'm super excited about general conference this week end. Oh, and that reminds me, I got to buy Orange rolls today :)

Love you all,

-Elder Dixon

It may be a good idea to send that info, for future purposes and you guys should be fine to send me packages and what not, we don't live in East St. Louis, but we live outside of it in a town called Belleville, its a way nicer town. So we won't have to worry about any thing.

My address is 109 N 74th St Apt #1

Belleville, IL 62223

Pictures of East St. Louis

Vacant building