Settling In
It's been a little more than a week since the MTC experience. Stephanie and I flew back to Raleigh, finished packing our car and took a relatively leisurely three-day drive to Houston. On the last night, we stayed in Beaumont, Texas which is less than two hours out from our new apartment. We could have completed the journey the previous night, but there was a friend in Beaumont that we wanted to see and the Mission's Housing Coordinator and I had arranged to meet at a specific time. So for the final leg in I decided to stay off of the interstate and take a more rural route into the city. I'm glad I did. First, the feel of the back way was a nice journey down memory lane in that it felt a lot like drives I would take with family out in west Texas as child. Sure, Lubbock was drier and flatter, but it still evoked pleasant memories.
Second, when we reached the city, it gave us a better feel for the area where we will be living and serving. When you go to a city on business, it is often the case that you primarily see it from the highways and seldom get into the neighborhoods. You visit the business centers and nice hotels. You don't see what the day-to-day life of people is really like, and this drive in allowed us to start to get acclimated to that.
The congregations and other divisional units of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are arranged geographically. The local congregations are called wards, which are in turn collected into groups of (usually) six to fifteen, which groups are called stakes. Our assignment is to serve in the Melbourne Ward of the Houston Texas North Stake. You can get a sense of the boundaries from the images below. The blue outline is the boundary, the orange dots with white chapel icons are the meeting houses, and the green dot is the Houston Texas North Stake Center. The IAH airport is the grayish patch southwest of the Kenswick label.
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The Melbourne ward geographically covers around half of the stake although there are currently nine wards in the stake. Two of those are Spanish speaking wards which, combined, exactly match the Melbourne Ward boundaries. This clearly means that there are more than a few Spanish speakers in the area, so Stephanie and I will try to pick up a few words and phrases while we are here.
Houston Texas North Stake
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Melbourne Ward
As you can see from the ward boundaries, it is an inner-city ward. From the top of an apartment building in the south near Interstate 10 you can get a spectacular view of the downtown Houston skyscrapers. The area in the southwest corner of the ward showing as Houston Heights has some areas that are reasonably well to do. A lot of younger professionals are in this area. To the east and northeast of that, more humble circumstances generally prevail.
The Melbourne ward meets in the first LDS chapel built in Houston some 80+ years ago and is now near the corner formed by Interstate 45 and the Interstate 610 loop. It is the only chapel in the area that is close to public transportation stops, which is fortunate because transportation can be a challenge for many people in the area. Houston has an extensive public transportation system (Metro) including door-to-door services for those with special physical needs.
Stephanie and I had a delightful Sunday last week meeting the various people with such varied backgrounds. From well degreed professionals to individuals with inspiring stories of faith of leaning on the power and atoning grace of Jesus Christ to change their lives, striving to set aside and overcome past issues. In speaking with the bishop after meetings, he is first seeking our support in reaching out to a few individuals, visiting some that may be a bit lonely, others that need help with filling out forms for medical support and transportation issues.
We were also asked to help start an Addiction Recovery Program for this ward and stake. This is a remarkable program that we have seen work well for people in other areas of the world, so long as they are willing to put in the effort. It is a 12-step program, based on and modified with permission from the AA 12-step program. The modifications are designed to make it more focused on Jesus Christ and his atonement, and to make it more generally applicable to other additions and compulsive behaviors beyond alcoholism. I find it to be a set of principles that everyone would do well to put into practice for making any changes or improvements that you might desire in your life.
