Dyker Heights

Wha-wha-what?!? You may want to correct wiki. Let me just tell you now, the Chinese population here is sssoooo not 15%. Maybe 65%? Then the rest is Hispanic (mostly from Mexico but quite a few from Guatemala, Puerto Rico, Honduras, and Dominican Republic too). Then like 1% of the population goes to us white people. haha.

It's funny because we have two main streets we walk down all the time. 3rd Av. and 5th Av. 3rd Av. is the mini China town but everyone lives off of it and then 5th Av. is all the Mexican soccer, pastry, market stores and that is where we do our street sweeps and most of our finding. Basically it's a mini China and mini Mexico with one Avenue separating then. It's awesome!

One of the safest areas, ehh? That's pretty sweet! We don't go out until about 11:30 since we study all morning. We wake up at 6:30, exercise (kind of), get ready, then study from 8:00 until we need to leave or 12 if we don't have an appointment before then. We have a lot of people to teach and meet with though so I think I've only had a whole hour to do language study once now. My language study always gets cut short because we have visits to get to. That's alright by me though. Though I really ought to be studying I'd rather be inviting people to church and teaching gospel principles to those who need our help. The language will come with practice. Anyway, we have to be home by 9:30 at the latest and though we are often running late (my comp and I are always running from place to place. The Elders tease us because anytime we see them on the streets, yeah, we're running. I don't know why but that's just the way it always works out for us. Running to catch a bus, running to catch a train, running to someone's house. Siempre! It keeps us awake though and this week we doubled how many lessons we had the previous week so we're definitely getting work done!) ... we're at least home by 10:00 which ain't late at all here in NY. We make sure we never get on an empty bus though and besides that, we just keep our eyes open for suspicious behavior. Luckily since we're out during hours that everyone else is out it hasn't been bad at all. (knock on wood)

Wow, way to do your research on those trains! What else should I expect from you though pops? I think you know it better than I do! We are doing companion exchanges on Tues-Wed and the Sister who is coming with me (I stay in my area and my comp is going to Staten for the day) has never once served in the city so I get to be her guide! Meaning yes, I got maps of all the buses and trains since I'm no pro yet. But yes, D train is out of our area but not out of our zone technically though it does go out there pretty far. We have taken it twice for D.A. but that's about it. We are normally on the R train or N train and we usually just use B70 or B9 for the buses.

Yes!! The picture with like 9 brides and 9 groomsmen! That was from conference and it got me so happy! Rosa and Luis went to the morning session of conference on Saturday and the morning session on Sunday as well. In both sessions they talked about marriage and they had some awesome talks! This Friday we are going to find out if it's a yes or a no. Oh they are so sweet and I know they know it's the right thing to do, Luis is like 70 though and hung up on already being married. I know Heavenly Father will answer his prayers though. My mission dad (the DL, Elder Jensen) leave in about 3 weeks or so and so our goal is to get him a wedding and a baptism before then. I'm not normally into pushing stuff like that because if you need time than take it, this is serious stuff, but they are sooo soo ready! They are faithful and keep all the commitments and they love reading the stories in the B.O.M. They are giving up coffee and it's hard because they are so addicted but they said they prayed and they know the Lord has asked it so they will do it. Perfect response, right? So wedding, here we come!!

Story for this week:

This Saturday we (as a district) decided that one of our new "finding" activities would be to play soccer every Saturday from 11-1 and have all the members bring friends and invite our English class participants to come too that way they see that we as missionaries are oh so totally normal and they can become more comfortable with us. Well we went and started playing and boy oh boy have I missed that sport! I haven't played since being out here (except in the hallway at the MTC a time or two) and so being out on the field was refreshing. It was just way funny because EVERYONE was impressed. A hermana that plays soccer?? "unheard...ubsurd" (fiddle quote for ya). And so even though I couldn't talk to any of the people I was playing with I totally bonded with them and now have the respect of all the guys. wa-hoo! And instead of being "the new sister" at church yesterday I was known as "the hermana that plays soccer". haha. Of course I'm looking forward to the day I can talk to them but for now I just play soccer and we're friends :) Who knew soccer would be so handy on the mission?

On top of that Elder Hernandez (Jensen's comp) is a beast at soccer! He got a scholarship to Brown for soccer. He declined it but still, crazy huh? So soccer with the missionaries is a definite success. They all said they would bring more friends next time. Yay!

Challenge of the week:

Having a phone. Every other day my comp and I switch off who has phone duty and who has key duty. If you think talking to people in a foreign language is hard try talking to them over the phone. Oh golly. Especially when they use words like "tardecita" why not just say "tarde"? They like to add "cita" onto random words. Anyway, little by little it's coming.

Also, this week it decided to be rainy and windy. eww. But hey "no weather is bad weather" so we resumed the normal schedule. Needless to say, I miss Cali weather. I have never walked in so much rain before.

Love you all! Thanks for keeping me in your thoughts, you're always in mine as well. I got quite a few letters this week so I felt popular. If I respond back slowly I'm sorry but know it's coming! Can't wait to hear where Ciara gets her mission call too!!! :D How oh so exciting!

-Hermana Watts