I flew to Boston last Tuesday morning and the President and his family were waiting at the airport to greet us. They are the nicest family I have ever met. President has one son on a Mission in Chile, 2 daughters, and a Son who is probably 11 or 12. They are the happiest, most loving, sweetest, and biggest "missionary mode" family I have ever met. They all have their normal lives but being the kids of a mission president means that missionary work seeps into every aspect of their lives and they embrace it like nothing else. Its pretty awesome. Also, the youngest boy break dances like a gangster. Pretty dang sweet.
Our first day we spent at the mission home for training. There were 25 new missionaries entering the mission with me so we split into two groups for the training. Half of us stayed at the mission home for some lessons and info on what we were focusing on as a mission, and the other half went to the Boston Common (kinda like central park for NY) in Downtown Boston to go do some contacting with the people walking around. Then the groups switched spots. I was in the first group to go to the Common and it was super fun. There were some interesting people for sure (and I bet they thought we were interesting... two guys in white shirts and ties handing out books and cards with pictures of Jesus on them =] haha) but there were some sweet people who were just really fun to talk to. Its great meeting people! You just gotta get out of your comfort zone and open your mouth and start talking and you meet all types of cool people!
The day after training we headed to the chapel right next to the Boston temple to find out what area we would be serving in and who our trainers would be. I got assigned to Providence Rhode Island in a 100% spanish speaking ward (Sunday was interesting, they are hard to understand and sometimes I'm not even sure if they are speaking spanish!!), riding bikes, and I love it! My trainer's name is Elder Collins. He is from Utah, he is super fun, and he is a great missionary. Before he was made my trainer he was an Assistant to the President for like 9 months, and he also served in Providence at the beginning of the his mission for like 9 months so he is a veteran to the area and everyone in the ward LOVES him. I am SO excited to have him as my trainer for the next 12 weeks (I'm his last companion! He goes home in 3 months and we are going to make it the best 3 months of his mission). After we found out our assignments we got to spend some time at the Temple which was pretty sweet. After that, we somehow crammed 10 missionaries and all of their bags into a Minivan and 2 five passenger cars, and headed down to Providence.
This is my first day in the mission: Elder Collins and I got to our apartment and unloaded our stuff. (the apartment building is a redone cotton factory with old wooden floor boards and our apartment is just a HUGE open room with a movable wall type "L" shaped thing to divide it and make a room, its sweet! Ill take pictures and send them next week). After that, we headed to the church and met the 2 other new elders and 4 veteran Sisters that are serving with us in the same ward, to talk about what has been happening with area. One of the Elders Im serving with was in my district in the MTC: Elder Berthelson! We were so happy when we found out! His companion's name is Elder Richardson, we are all from the Valley in AZ, pretty sweet. Anyway, we have 4 companionships in the same ward because the work is ON FIRE here. The Hispanic people here (there are people from Guatemala, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Spain and other countries) are all so excited to share the gospel and the 2 companionships they had here before couldn't handle all of the work. So now they have 4 companionships. Pretty crazy. Okay sorry, back to the first day: Us 4 elders ate dinner at a ward members house who thankfully spoke english. They are the most energetic and funny people I have ever met and they have the thickest Rhode island Accent ever. It was great. After dinner they decided to take us to the the store to buy our first few days worth of groceries. They dropped us off back at mine and elder c's apartment and drove off (the other elders were going to stay the night because they lived about 15 minutes away).... We didnt have our keys, locked out on our first night hahaha so we had to call the members to come pick us and take us to the other apartment. Crazy first day...
OKAY I HAVE ONE MINUTE TO TELL YOU SOME QUICK HIGHLIGHTS FROM THE REST OF OUR WEEK!!!
- rode home about 2 miles in a HUGE rain storm and got absolutely soaked
-played catch with these two super athletic black guys across 3 lanes of traffic and ended up playing a little game of football in the street and got their info
-IM OUT!!! LOVE YOU AL:L:LLLLLL!! have a great week!!
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