1st Week in the Mission Field

Good morning everyone!

Monday is Stephens P. Day so he gets to email us on those days. This morning I woke up to find a lovely email from him with all the details he left out in his letter. Enjoy!


OK, I have a lot to tell everybody. Hopefully I will remember everything I wanted to say. We arrived at the airport monday afternoon around 2:00. Pres. Nelson and the AP's picked us up and brought us to the mission home. Before we landed at JFK we had to circle the airport for 25 minutes because President Obama was leaving the airport and we had to wait for Airforce 1 to be in the airbefore we could land. CRAZY. so that was weird.

Anyway, I spent the first night at the presidents home and we had a nice dinner and a little fireside with all the new missionaries. The next morning we drove to the mission office in Queens, met our companions, and went to our various areas. My companion is ELder Williamson. He is from SanDiego and he great. I am in the Patchogue Spanish branch. The appartments that Jared and Sarah lived in are in my area!(Jared and I lived in Bellport, NY for 4 months durring the summer of 2007) I drove through them just yesterday.

The first day I got here we went over the some investegators homes and taught them a lesson, then we taught another lesson and then we visited some less active members. We don't do much tracting because it's hard to know where the spanish speaking people live and its more effective to go to the homes of former investegators, less active members, media referals,ect. then we knock on three doors to the right and 3 to the left. The spanish speaking people usually live close to each other so this works well.

There are 6 Elders in my appartment. Elder Williamson, Elder Close, Elder Douglass, Elder Huner(new elder), Elder Parez and Me. They are all good missionaries that want to work hard, so that's good. My companion has been out for almost 1 year, and he has been in Patchogue for 4 transfers, so he knows everybody and he knows how to get around. This makes it a lot easier.

I went to church yesterday for the first time. Some of our progressing investegators came. They both want to be baptized but arn't able to yet. I really enjoyed church, there are about 50 or so members that come each week, that number includes the children. It's a lot different than the Alpine 7th ward, thats for sure.

We got to go to the temple saturday morning with the ward, to do baptisms for the dead because there were some reasent converts that were going fort he first time. They loved it and can't wait to go back.

The Ward missionleader's are Benito and Jose, Jose has only been a member for 2 months but he is awesome. He comes with us a lot to teach and he is super smart and very proffestional. He always coaches us on how to be punctual and how we should say things. He is really funny. So far I am loving it, and our branch really loves the missionaries and most of them are very excited about missionary work, we get lots of member referals and they are always willing to come to lessons with us and that is what really makes the difference.I can't wait to get to know the members better and to find more people to teach. I have really enjoyed my first week here, but i wish i couldunderstand what people were saying a litte better. Some people speak clearly and i can tell, but others... I'm clueless. When we get packages they are kept at the mission office until we have atranfer or if the office elders have time to bring them out here. It's aboutan hour or so drive to the mission office from my area. Really its likethere are two TOTALLY different missions in my mission. The city, and theIsland. It's crazy but I am loving it so far.

I am really enjoying myself and its a LOT of HARD work, but it's vale lapena. (worth it).

Thanks for all of your prayers, love, and support.

Love, Stephen