August 10, 2009

Hey Mom,

Yes I am online right now, but I will just make this my normal e-mail.

Sounds like you had a bit of fun. That would be really cool. I am glad you
all had fun.

I am serving in Lynbrook, which is just barely Island. It actualyl kind of
touches Jamaica, where I just was. It is pretty far away from the Hamptons.
Those are a lot further out. But it is really weird. It will take a while
to get used to. There are like houses and stuff. Guess what I did last
week? I went to a Wal-Mart. It was crazy. It was the first time I have
seen a Wal-Mart in like a year. It was crazy. It is also going to take
some getting used to not having a Metro Card, and having a car. We have a
like 2007 Chevy Malibu. It is pretty nice. It has been weird to drive a
little bit, since I hadn't in about a year. But it is nice. You always
know where your ride is, and no running for the bus.

We live in a house. It is super crazy. No more apartment. But we just
live on the second floor. The bottom is the owner, and they rent out the
top floor to us. It is really nice. It is kind of scary to me. My last
bathroom in Jamaica was nasty and like covered in mold, and the bathroom
here in Lynbrook is all tile and way nice. As nice as our bathrooms back
home. Just everything is nice and clean and fairly new. It is pretty
crazy.

So I went to church yesterday, obviously, and the branch seems really good.
I like it. It has about 100 active members. It is split, it has both
spanish and english. For priesthood there aren't too many Spanish males
that don't know english, so they just kind of go with it, and those that
don't sit by people that know both and they kind of translate for them.
During Sunday school they have two classes, one english and one spanish, and
during Sacrament Meeting they have little headsets, and someone sits in the
back of the room and translates into a little mic-head set thing. Guess who
the person who gets to translate is? Me. Man it was pretty hard.
Translating so much so quick made my brain hurt really bad. There are 4
missionaries assigned to the branch, one being my companion, who is English
speaking, and the other two are Spanish, one in his 2nd Transfer, and one in
his 3rd. So I was the one that got elected to translate. It will be good
for my Spanish though, because there are not very many people that live in
our proselyting area that speak Spanish, so I don't think i will get to use
it a lot.

My companion is pretty good. His name is Elder Goodman. He is 25. So that
is a little weird. But he is cool. I already knew him pretty well, because
when I was in jamaica, he was in Richmond Hill, which are in the same Zone,
so I saw him pretty often and got to know him well.

I have tried a couple times for Brenda, I will keep trying. One of the
hastles is I changed phones, so I think she may have tried the Jamaica
phone, but I will be sure to get ahold of her as soon as I can.

Other than that things are going really well. We came into a not very good
pool, so we have been doing a lot of finding, but we have found some people
that I am very excited for.

Something else exciting happened this week. I threw up for the first time
in my mission. haha. It was really bad. I don't know what it was, but I
thought I was going to die. It was coming out of both ends and I was in so
much pain. But no problems since, so I am happy about that. And you are
welcome for all the details. haha.

Well, i love you so much, and I will talk to you next week.

Love,
-Elder Miller