Over a year on my mission and I was still a Jr. comp. I was frustrated and yet scared to become a senior companion. I am a complex person of often opposing emotions, not alone but lonely at times. So it was with excitement and a healthy dose of humility, being humble and not humiliated was written to be in a letter by my Pa at some point in my mission, that I was called to be senior companion to Elder Goodman from California in a mining town that was settled originally by Europeans and was in the shape of a Roman Helmet. The center being the main plaza and church with the major business and government agencies surrounding that,then layers of residential cookie-cut houses. It was a cultural experience, a two hour bus ride from the zone's central city of Chenarral.
Elder Goodman confided in me,telling me that he was mad at first to be called as my Jr. companion and was planning on giving me a hard time about it until he met me and found out that I was a "nice guy, just doing my best." It was rewarding to have won him over and to have had my prayers answered about my petty concerns of being an agreeable companion, as a Jr. myself all my Seniors were not only agreeable hard-workers, they were all in leadership positions too.
After two weeks of knocking on doors and trying my best to be the senior comp who wasn't all about the numbers. I got a call from my mission President Call asking me how the work was going. He laughed and reminded me that in the nearest town the Elders were the branch presidents of their area, that the work I was to do in El Salvador was a bit different than what I had been doing. It was yet another answer to my prayers of wanting desperately to know what in the world I was doing. A feeling of being lost gave way to losing myself in working with the branch members.I was surprised and excited to stay in El Salvador to be Senior companion to Elder Ardilles, my first native companion.He was very pacient with me, the skinny gringo.
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