Dear Family,
This has been a great week. I love White Plains, and my companion Elder Wall is just great. We have been having a good time working the Westchester 1st ward. I love it. The ward covers White Plains, Scarsdale, pretty much the west side of Westchester county, with the exception of Yonkers. There is a branch getting started in Yonkers, that currently is still part of the Westchester 1st ward.
So, lets start off with Wednesday. Transfers come, and since I am an office Elder I know exactly what is going to happen and where and who. But, it was still nice to see all the new Sisters and Elders coming in. We got a big group, especially with Sisters. I think we had 8, and we have another big group coming up in May. But, a lot are going home in May/June so we will need the replacements.
Anyway, on Wednesday, Elder Willden and I drive down to the Scarsdale mission home, meet the new missionaries, and help load their baggage into the mission van and the truck. It was funny to see the new missionaries. New suits. New ties. White shirts (not yellow or grey). New luggage. It was a nice time to reminesce about my entry in to the field. Anyway, we got them all loaded up, and drove down from Scarsdale to the Kingsbridge chalpel in the Bronx. The KB chalpel is something else. It is at a fairly busy intersection, and it is huge. It has underground parking, and a lot of other interesting features not typical of your suburban LDS chalpel.
So, all the new missionaries entered the transfer meeting, along with everyone being transferred. We sung a hymn, introduced the new missionaries, and met our companions. I knew what was going to happen, so it wasn’t too big of a shocker. Once Elder Wall and I met, we went straight to work trying to fit 15 people’s worth of luggage into a 12 passenger van. We got it all to fit, with the doors just able to close. One interesting thing, I was with Elder Willden and Elder Watkins, and we were running down a stairway, and we got locked in the stairwell somehow. There was an exit, but it was emergency only. So, we had to knock on the stairwell for a while before someone found us. Not too big a deal. Bad design though.
So, Wednesday night we started working. We contacted some people in downtown white plains, tracted a little bit, and it was great. Thursday was the same thing. Just starting to call members and make appointments, and then start tracting and street contacting. We had a meeting with the zone leaders and discussed a few possible “focus areas” to work. We have found some really good neighborhoods. The main theoligistics (not sure if that is a real word) here are Jewish, Catholic, Asian (Christian or Buddist), and a few Protestants.
On Thursday in particular, we were able to see the inspiration of this companionship, as we were able to teach a young Jewish man and a Chinese family all in the same night. It was great. I don’t think either of those people will progress, but it was still nice to be able to handle that situation.
Another thing we have been trying is Chinese restaurant look-ups. We found an interesting family from Fujo at one of them. They were all amazed that Elder Wall - a - Spoke Chinese, and b - had heard of Fujo. It turns out that a lot of people who come into this country from China are coming from Fujo. They speak Mandarin but they also have a dialect called Fujanese. It has been interesting learning more about that particular culture, especially the illegal immigration part. It is amazing what people will do to get in this country. It really makes me think of how blessed I am to be here.
We looked up another Chinese restaurant, where they happened to serve Mexican food too, although there were only Chinese cooks. So, it was interesting to think about where they picked up Mexican cooking. They were nice too.
We street-contacted an interesting guy a few days ago. He had a Book of Mormon, and had met with missionaries before. His main concern was that as Christians, we didn’t have a stronger anti-war perspective. We tried to explain the doctrine about it, without becoming political. It was good I think, and we left it in his hands. Anyway, a few days later we street contacted him again, and had a long, thorough discussion on many aspects of the Gospel. Again, we bore testimony and left it in his hands. Hopefully he’ll find his way someday.
Things have been going well in the office. I haven’t had a ton of time to work on some of the software. I keep getting new feature requests. For example, the CES missionaries wanted to be able to generate a list of all the converts from 2005 and onward, within a certain age range, living in either the Westchester or Manhattan stakes. Not too difficult of a query, but the data is not there. So, I called SLC and asked them to send me the data in some format that I can work with. They can’t give me an XML, which would be nice, so I am probably going to have to write a parser of some sort. Havne’t done Perl in a while…..This will be fun.
So, things are good. Sorry I didn’t send some handwritten stuff lately. I will try, but just like you all, we have been soooooooooo busy lately. It has just been incredible. There is so much work to be done. In the office. In the area. Personal studies. I wish I could just pause the world for a while to catch up.
So, today was good. Played football with the zone. Shopped at Trader Joes. Got a new belt. It was good. I think I am good on stuff for a while, although probably some shirts (long or short sleeve) and some ties wouldn’t hurt whenever you get around to it.
Alright. I better go. Thank you for everything. Oh, here is some quick car advice for Andy. Andy, get something good. Like, $3000+. Anything less is going to be much more trouble than it is worth. If I total up all the $ I put into the truck and the mustang, I could have probably a nice used Tahoe. Look into something like that. Maybe a 98-00. Spend $3500-$5000, so you’re going to have to save for a while. But that will be nice because you will be able to drive your car, instead of fix it. And fixing cars is fun, but not when you want to go somewhere but you can’t. So, that is my advice. Get something decent. And do whatever Mom and Dad tell you.
Alright, I have to go. I love you all so much. I know this work is true and of God. Please take care.
Love,
Elder Barr