February 23, 2009

Hello,

So are you excited to hear where I am at right now? Drum rull. . . . . . I
am in Brooklyn. I am serving in an area that is called Dyker Heights. You
want to know something really weird? There are two Chinese areas in the
whole mission. One is Flushing, the other is Dyker. Crazy huh, I am
serving the Chinese areas, Spanish speaking. Kind of weird.

My comps name is Elder Hernandez. He is from California, born in El
Salvador, so he is a native Spanish speaker, so that is pretty sweet, it
will help my spanish out being around a native all the time. He is in his
last transfer, so he will be going home in 6 weeks. Um, as far as a person,
I get along with him well, he is interesting as a missionary. He doesn't
really have any "flame" left I guess. He doesn't work very hard, very loose
about some rules, things like that. So it has been pretty hard this week.
I had my President's interview last week, and he told me pretty bluntly that
my job was to try to keep him going until the end, and then take over the
area and do something good with it next transfer. It is a really good area,
but not much has been done with it with past missionaries. So, I guess it
makes me feel good that President trusts me with it, but it is going to be
really hard, because it is hard to try to force your companion to do
something he doesn't want to do. So if anyone has any ideas, let me know.
For now, I'll just keep trucking.

So I am pretty sick right now, which is no fun, I have a super bad cold and
my nose will not stop running and I basically can't breath. Hopefully I
will start getting better. It would be nice.

So my apartment is pretty run down, I am going to try to clean it up a
little bit today, but there is one cool thing I found out about it. On like
my second or third day I was in the kitchen making some breakfast, and i
looked out the window, and you can totally see the Statue of Liberty from
our pad. It was pretty cool. The first time I have seen the Statue of
Liberty in my life was from the window of my pad. So that is pretty cool.

Not much else has been going on, just getting used to the new area and
getting to know people. It was kind of coool that a lot of the missionaries
that are serving down here, the chinese missionaries, I had already served
with in Flushing and they got transfered down here, so it made me feel
pretty at home, already knowing almost everyone. That was cool. I would
have never thought that my first two areas would be the Chinese areas.

Anyways, that's about it for this week, nothing too exciting doing on. I
love you all, you are in my prayers.

-Elder Miller