Mother's Day Phone Call

May 13, 2012  

Great call with Sean today!  We were limited to 40 minutes and could not Skype (per mission rules).  He had just finished up baptizing Deliliah, an 11-year old girl.  They had been having power issues and the fire alarm kept going off during the service, so it was a bit distracting but all went well in the end.  He received a new companion last week – Elder Zach Scofield from Fresno, California who is also a district leader (he seems to be a companion to a lot of DLs).

He said that he is really glad that he is teaching Spanish.  The people are more humble than the English speaking people.  He referred to the English program as being weird in one of his previous letters, so we asked him about that.  He said that the teaching program was the same; it’s just that the people have different traditions like holding hands in a prayer circle in the middle of the street.

He got to go to the other end of the island yesterday to attend the funeral of a woman that his companion had been teaching.  He said that end of Long Island is a lot different than the city where he has been serving.  It took about an hour and half to get there and he went through a lot of wealthy areas and farm land.  He said it was a really pretty area though.

He goes into Manhattan every few months to see his endocrinologist whose office is on Fifth Avenue.  He described it as very fancy and way too expensive of an area for missionaries to shop, but its fun to walk around there.  He will go again tomorrow for a check-up but says that his diabetes is doing well and he has had no problems with it.  He also said that missionaries generally do not work on Times Square or right in the city there – too many tourists and people who do not want to generally hear about the gospel.  He hasn’t been to the Statue of Liberty yet, but said that missionaries from his mission are allowed to go there since the Stanton Island Ferry goes there and that is in his mission boundaries.

Sean described his current area as having very few white people, with the majority being African-Americans.  A lot of the people that he teaches are people crammed into small apartments (a lot of times 8-10 recent border crossers share a small pad).  They mostly work in construction or cleaning services. 

The church house that they attend has a gym so they are able to play a lot of basketball there.  They also play soccer with some of the kids in the ward.  He eats quite well.  There are two professional chefs in the ward who cook them meals a couple of times a week.  With other families, he eats a lot of rice and beans with sometimes chicken.  The chefs have cooked them fancy pasta, homemade rolls, and pies.  He also got served ribs and mashed potatoes a few days ago.  They don’t get to eat at those houses very often, but love it when they do.

There is also a missionary in his district that came out in February – Tanner LeBaron whom he said graduated from Timpanogos with him.  He didn’t know him very well, but it’s kind of cool that there is someone from THS in his mission.

He said to say hi to everyone and sorry that he doesn’t write back promptly.  They are very limited on their time to write letters apparently.  He also said that letters sent through dearelder.com take a lot longer to get to him than those sent directly to the mission office address.

It was great to talk to him though and he sounds really good.  He feels pretty good about his Spanish, his health has been great (since the bout with flu a few weeks ago) and he loves what he is doing!  It’s been almost 8 months already – one-third of the way through….!