28 September 2011

So I'm here in Puerto Rico! Elder Mancía and I landed at about 7:00 Monday night. The mission executive secretary, Elder Button and his wife picked us up. They didn't feed us on the flight, so they took us to Burger King. My first authentic Puerto Rican meal. After that the Zone leaders of the San Juan zone met us there and took us to an appointment they had with an investigator. She has been meeting with the missionaries for two years but never committed to a baptismal date, her daughter has been baptized now for a few months. So we went there, there were three sisters there teaching too, I'm not exactly sure why but that made seven missionaries there. They had food but we had just eaten so we weren't hungry, but everyone thought we were just too nervous to eat. We had some anyway, it was just something the sisters had cooked. They taught the lesson really fast because it was getting close to 9:30. But after they talked a little about baptism, they asked Elder Mancía and me to bear our testimonies. He bore his about baptism being the only way, and I testified that with the Lord on our side we can do anything, and He will support us. The Spirit was really strong and right after that Elder Adams, the zone leader invited her  to be baptized on Oct 22 and she said she would be. It was so awesome to see that, and a great way to start my mission.  We stayed the night at the zone leaders house then the next day we went to the mission office for a meeting for all the new trainers. We went because we arrived earlier than the other missionaries coming from the Dominican Republic. So we sat in on that meeting for awhile, and met our trainers. My companion's name is Elder Griffin from Provo. It sounds like he has trained a lot of elders, and I have heard he's a really hard worker, so I'm really excited. Anyway, at lunch time we went and got some pizza from Costco. Right after we were done with that they took us over to President Alvarado's house for lunch with all the new missionaries, they had make your own pizza, but I was too full to eat again. But I just ate salad and talked with everyone, President served in the Tampa Florida mission so we talked a little about that, he knows the Boyds, so I told him dad baptized her, he thought that was really cool. The missionaries from the DR were so excited to have pizza, they said all they ate there was rice and beans. So we took pictures with the President and his wife, then went back to the mission office for our interviews. My interview was awesome. I really like President Alvarado. He told me all the good things that people have said about my trainer and made me some really cool promises. We had about ten minutes after the meeting to go contacting and I started a contact, it was a family sitting out in front of the house and they were really interested in General Conference so we told them where they could go to watch it. I hope they go. That made me really excited. Missionary work is everything I hoped it would be. We stayed at the Assistant to Presidents' house last night and today was transfer meeting. So we just barely got everything to our house and came over to the library. I'm in a city called Caguas, it's pretty close to San Juan. They gave me a bike already, they said it would cost 500 dollars so I need to know how much is in my account. I have 100 cash right now. So we'll be on bikes the whole time. We are sharing the apartment with two other companionships and one has a car so that will be pretty good.  Anyway, my P day is Wednesday, I'm not sure what we have here. My companion is new to the area too so we'll just have to figure stuff out, but I'm excited for that. I am safe and happy and having a lot of fun, and I'm so excited to be out here. I'm glad I got to come out so soon, and I know this is where I should be. The language has been coming really well and I'm excited. The MTC program I went through was new, I think we were one of the first groups to go through it, and part of that is a 12 week new missionary training program out here in the field. We take an extra hour each day to study and the trainer teaches the new missionary to lead out in a lot of things that the trainer would normally just do themselves. The goal of it is for missionaries to be ready to train new missionaries after only 12 weeks in the field, so that's exciting too.  I think that's pretty much it. I can answer any questions next week I guess. I'll try to send another email with pictures.    Elder Brock Duclos