Our second missionary has embarked

We dropped our missionary son, Nate, off at the airport to begin his missionary service.

Tyler helped him with his bags and getting to security while I made a loop through the new airport. It was surprising to Tyler how much Nate stood out. Everyone knew he was a missionary and went out of their way to help him and ask where he was headed.

I was forever grateful to a sweet soul who took several photos of the missionaries at the airport and texted them to me. I was nervous for Nate who had never been on an airplane and was having to navigate the airport by himself AND a new airport at that. I couldn't even tell him what to expect and where to head because I'd never been in this new airport myself. But Heavenly Father was aware of my concerns and sent me some relief from a total stranger.

I've included his first email below. I don't know if we will get the photos like we did with Erik. I can hope. But he's already been challenged by not having a car or a bike and he's witnessed God's hand with a little miracle that came to him and his companion.

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

Hey Everyone!

This week has been craziest week of my life. I flew on an airplane for the first time, which was super cool. I had the window seat and I spent half the flight just looking at the clouds right next to me. It's a super short flight to Denver (I've been reassigned to the Denver north mission), but I loved it.

The first night we had dinner at a church and President Blake and his counselors and their wives all spoke. We stayed at a hotel, and then went back the next morning for more instruction and we met our companions.

Elder Hales has been out about a year, he's from Mesa, Arizona. That first day he told me that I was in charge, and that I was supposed to lead on everything, which I was not expecting. Instead of just learning what to do, I decide what to do, and he gives suggestions. This has been challenging, because everything they taught us in the mtc was about teaching, which we haven't done a lot of. We're both new to this area so we've been trying to contact all of the people the sisters before us had contacted, and we're working on doing member lessons and setting up our Brighton Facebook page.

In other news, I live outside my area by a ways, and though I was told it was a driving mission, due to the number of reassigned missionaries here, my companionship doesn't have a car. I do not have a bike at this point either, since I didn't think I needed one. We do all our work online for the most part, but we do go to the church and other places to do service. We've been able to get rides places, but on Friday we walked 3 1/2 hours back from a service project. I've emailed my Mission President and we'll see what he thinks I should do.

A mini miracle happened on my first full day. I've decided to pick an attribute of Christ to work on each day, and I picked faith that day, and I prayed in the morning to be able to have more faith. We went to the church to create a video introducing ourselves to put on the ward Facebook page, and then walked to Walgreens so Elder Hales could get a flu shot. We got back and called for a ride, and then realized we didn't have the flash drive with the video. We looked everywhere and couldn't find it, so we prayed and asked for help. We checked everywhere again and then felt impressed to check in the rocks along the fence out by the road. We went and sure enough there was the flash drive.

I know that prayer works, and that our Heavenly Father wants to hear from us. If any of you are struggling with anything, or just got out of the habit, I'd invite you to make prayer a goal. He will answer your questions if you continually pray in faith, and you will feel his love as you do so.

With that, I found out last night that my grandpa has the coronavirus, so if you could all pray for him I would appreciate that. I love all of you and I'm excited for the work to come!

- Elder Leary

p.s. if any of you got sent this by mistake, if there's a better email to use, or don't wish to be on my email list let me know. Also if you know anyone that does want to be on the list let me know, sorry if I missed anyone.