AREA 3- Belgrade!

Good ol' Belgrade!  I just came from you, and you will always hold a special place in my heart!
Well, this was my second area on my mission.  When i got the call, I was NOT excited to have to leave Kalispell, at all.  I was afraid of it being a place filled with scary people, unfriendly scenery, and I don't know what else I was afraid of while moving there.
However, when I got there, I was pleasantly surprised!  I had an awesome time at Belgrade!  I loved the mountains around us.  It seems that every morning there was another sunrise that was even more epic than the one I saw the other day!  The Gallatin Valley, where Belgrade and Bozeman reside, is one of the prettiest valleys I have seen in Montana.
I quickly made a lot of friends in Belgrade.  Just like Kalispell, the ward members were amazing.  I look up to the little wards in Belgrade and all of the people there.  I made good friends with our host family, the Bakers!  Joel Baker and I quickly became friends when he showed me his guitar and we had a short jampsession the first night I was there!  I had so much fun living with the good Baker family and will always be grateful to them, just as I was with the Moss family, my host family in Kalispell.
In Belgrade, I learned of perseverance.  When I first cam there, I was having a hard time with my mission.  I was wondering if I would make it.  I set the goal to go to my 6 month mark, take a look and inventory of myself and make a decision from there of either staying or packing up and leaving my nametag behind.  Well, in the 3 months of being in Belgrade, with the help of good friends in the wards, other missionaries including my mission president, and all of the fun I had with my companion, Elder Hokanson, I was surprised to find that 3 months in Belgrade went really fast because of the good times we had.
There were still hard days in Belgrade.  Those will happen no matter where you are!  One of the things that pulled me through those were visits with an elderly member of the Belgrade war, Helen Jensen.  This good lady has been a good friend to missionaries for a long time, and I feel very blessed to have met that good lady!  She made me laugh many times, sometimes when I most needed it.

I LOVE Belgrade!  I will be returning for sure; partly because of the 3 ski resorts that surround the Belgrade/Bozeman area.  But until then, Belgrade and the good people that live there, will always have another special place in my heart!  The one right next to Kalispell.