Dear Family,
Well, This is the first E-mail from New York. I miss you all like crazy and think about you all everyday. You should all write me letters :c)
Here is the scoop of all the great news since I haven't talked with you for like two weeks! CRAZY! Anyways, We flew from Utah to Chicago on June 22, 2010 and had to leave from the MTC at 4:00 am. Sorry Dad that I couldn't get a hold of you to call. I tried 4 times and ran out of money. Hopefully the messages were enough for you. I wish I could have talked but oh well. :( So, we flew to Chicago and then had a one and a half hour layover in Chicago where we ate lunch and got to where we needed to be. Then we flew from Chicago to Syracus where we were greeted by the Mission President and his wife. President and Sister Bulloch. They are two of the nicest and funniest people I have met. Once we got our luggage, we went straight for Pizza! But not just any pizza. Really NY Style Pizza. MMMMM it was DELICIOUS! Loaded with CHEEZZZE :c) After this we went to the Mission home, which is amazing, and started our training right then and there. They just through us right into it. After that we ate dessert which everyone knows is my favorite meal, and then just relaxed, talked, and had fun. 4 elders and I made music. One elder played the piano magnificentally and the 4 of us sang Hymns. I LOVE HARMONIZING! it was way fun getting a chance to just sing for fun. After that we got ready for bed.
When we woke up, we got ready and had AMAZING breakfast just waiting for us. Sister Bulloch is an amazing cook! We had Scrambled eggs, French Toast and Bacon. But with her eggs she puts butter in them!!! YUP BUTTER. MMMMMMM. We also had REAL MAPLE SYRUP. Oh my goodness. Real maple syrup is so SO SOOO Delicious.
After breakfast we went to the church to do more training and.... wait for it :c) Meet our companions and find out where we were going to be sent. So, here is the news you have all been waiting for. My companion is Sister Despain and I am up in the Ogdensburg area. All the way at the top of New York. Where we live, we can see CANADA! my backyard is the Saint Lawrence River. Cool huh?!? I can see the bridge to Canada too. It's pretty cool. So this is where I am. Up here, it is completely opposite of Utah. Completely! First of all, it is totally green, and trees everywhere. Utah really is a dessert! it has rained every other day here. I really like it actually. It's not too hot up here since we are so far north. What's the temperature like in Utah? Next part of how it is completely opposite is there are only about 20 active members in the branch! That's including all the kids. It is tiny. I think there were only 7 Ladies plus the 2 of us sisters in relief society. So it is way different! There are so many different churches up here. There are like 5 on every street. It's insane.
Anyways. our area is pretty big. I think the furthest part away from where we live is about an hour and 15 minutes. So we have a car and definitely do a lot of driving. We drive on long country roads with nothing in sight. It is so pretty out here just driving. Yesterday, we decided we were going to tract a road. We thought there some houses on it. It turned out that for the hour we were walking, we only tracted 4 houses. I think I figured out we walked down about a mile and a quarter of road and only went to 4 houses. At least we got our exercise right?
Okay, my favorite part of north country are the Amish people :c) There are so many Amish up here riding around in their horse drawn buggies! It's fun! And they are so friendly. We are going to meet with one amish family this week somtime. They have 10 kids. Wouldn't that be awesome if we converted their whole family?!?! My companion said the percent chance of us converting this is about the same percent chance of us becoming amish. it could happen though! Other than that, this place needs a lot of help. People are so confused up here. Also, we will definitely be teaching the Word of Wisdom to a lot of people. Almost every house we have gone to, someone is smoking or drinking a beer.
The Mission President told my companion that this is one of the hardest areas in New York to work, so I don't know why they put a newbie here, but it is WAY hard up here. People don't even give us a chance to share our message. I need to remember not to turn disappointment into discouragement. Which is definitely one of my weak points. But I am working on it.
I am trying my best to do the things I need to do to be a good missionary, but this is hard work. It is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I am still trying to come out of my shell and just accept people for who they are, Children of God. It is hard to love everyone, when no one loves you because they think we are just trying to get them into our church for numbers. I just need to remember that this is the Lord's work and we are possibly planting seeds. We will not see the fruit of our labors completely. I am working on putting my full trust in the Lord that everything will work out for the better. I just need to work on my confidence in what I know I can do, and then rely on the Lord for what I can't do. I am learning a lot, but have a lot more learning to do. I love you all!
Love,
Sister Simmons
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