Week 9 and 10

I'm counting this as two weeks, since it's been a while since I e-mailed! So much has happened since the last time I wrote home. I sang twice Sunday the 21st. Once in sacrament meeting, "Brightly Beams Our Father’s Mercy" and then at my farewell devotional sang "A missionary's Prayer". The last week at the MTC flew by. We were pretty busy with meeting etc. Then I flew out here to the mission, met my mission president whom I love dearly. He gives hugs smiles and has a testimony so strong you can almost see his halo. Right after we landed we went straight to a wonderful baptism (in English) and the spirit was so strong there. The Lord had definitely been working on the women that got baptized. After that, we had dinner at the mission president’s home, spent the night there and then headed out to a busy day. We did some orientation, and then we went to our first transfer meeting. I met my companion, and found out where I would be serving. My companions name is Elder Morales, and he's from Guatemala and his English is only a little bit better than my Spanish. The area I’m serving in is Lawrence, Massachusetts. We have the only Spanish ward in the mission. It’s crazy; Lawrence is so different from the rest of New England. It’s like a foreign country. There are mostly Dominicans. Anyways, Lawrence has a lot of Hills, and the city layout was literally designed by cattle. I have no idea where I am half the time. Oh, and Lawrence is one of the only biking areas in the mission. Sometimes I feel like Elder McCready, riding a bike up and down hills to find people to share the gospel with in a hot humid city filled with extremely poor people. The city is really quite poor. When we were in a car with Elder Hymas (senior missionary) getting a ride down to our area he asked if it was like New York. I responded, yes, it's kind of like Brooklyn or Queens, then my companion (who lived in NY before he came to the mission) said, no, it's more like the Bronx. He’s right; the people are quite poor here. But they are so humble. They are always willing to listen, the only question is, are they willing to Pray and Read and go to Church. This area is the busiest in the mission. So busy that they gave it an extra companionship to help keep things moving. There are 5 of us living in the apartment now. We need more bikes, but one of the other missionary's is still learning how to ride one.

The church started a new program for new missionaries, called the first 12 weeks, and it's really good. The only downside is that we have to study longer each morning and this area is so busy. We already have 3 investigators with baptismal dates and we think we'll have 7 by the end of the transfer. Plus a ton of progressing investigators. I miss home a lot. I miss school and the dogs and the horses and my home ward...I miss my home ward so much...Lawrence is so different from what I’m used to, everything is in Spanish and a lot of people don't even speak 2 words of English. I’ll get used to it though...the Hurricane was very wet here. I got soaked as did all my stuff in my backpack. It came on all of the sudden. It was hard to see while I was biking too, I almost got hit by a car (by the way, if there's a time I’m going to get hurt on my mission it's now, because these bikes aren’t that good, nor are the streets, and everyone is crazy, so I can see myself tearing some pants and scraping some knees...). I wish I could send pictures but I don't see an easy way to do it right now, maybe next week, plus I’m almost out of time. I got your e-mail, but not the letter. I’ll let you know next week.

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-Elder Matthew D. Evans