Life in the Hood

This email came in yesterday, but we were still out of town.  So, I'm now finally getting around to catching up on blog posts.  Sorry for the delay.

Hello everyone! 

So. Yes, I am back in the city! I only got one transfer in my beloved Oxford before I got shipped back to the city. I love the city, though, so I'm happy to be here. It was just hard to have enough time to fall in love with all the amazing people out there and then have to leave so quickly! Oh well, I guess that's part of mission life! 

So I'll give you some highlights from the past couple weeks since it's been so long since I've been able to send an actual e-mail to you. 

First, on Tuesday the 3rd, we had a kindof zone meeting called "Meet the President". That was a blast. I really loved President and Sister Evans so I was very sad to see them go (as you know) BUT, as usual, it all worked out because I love President and Sister Packard too! They are so young. He's only 43! I'll tell you a bit about their amazing family.
President Packard comes from a very missionary-minded family. He is the 4th of 14 children! 

His father served in South Africa and got sent to open up a new area in the boonies. He didn't see another missionary (besides his companion) or his mission president until his YEAR MARK. During that time, he baptized 50 people and organized a branch. They just found out that that same branch was just split into two WARDS! Whoa. What a cool legacy. Elder Packard the elder (my president's father) only got one piece of mail his entire mission. It was a fruit cake that was sent for Christmas and arrived in April. 

He (President Packard) served an ENGLISH SPEAKING mission in California.  After his mission he went to BYU and met Sister Packard on the first day of Law School. They were married and graduated from law school together. She was first in the class, as well as captain of the Cougarettes. She served a mission in Uruguay but got sick after about a year and finished her mission in Texas where she "gained a huge respect for stateside missions because it's hard to be around and trying to teach people who HAVE heard of Mormons before." Yes! Exactly how I feel! I love them - they are just such an amazing couple! They have 4 kids.

Anyway it was just a really cool meeting and I loved getting to know them. They all had to sacrifice a lot to uproot themselves and move out here away from all their friends. But they are doing it with a positive attitude. And they are being blessed for it! At transfer meeting last Thursday President Packard told us that if someone came to him 6 months ago and said, "You'll be a mission president for the next 30 years and the only compensation you'll get will be the blessings that your family will receive in the first 2 weeks of service." that it would be worth it and he would absolutely volunteer. What a great attitude! 

Wow. That took longer than expected. Moving on to the 4th of July… 

It was a ROUGH day. It was hot and humid. Our barbecue cancelled on us, then our other afternoon appointment cancelled on us. So we spent a lot of it just trying to find people that would talk to us. Turns out, not a lot of people are out wandering around. Instead, they just hang out in their backyards with their families. And they don't like it when you interrupt them. MAN it was a frustrating day. But guess what? God came through. We were stopping by a less active's house (who - SURPRISE - was in the middle of a barbecue with her family and didn't want to talk to us! Who'd have guessed?) and her next door neighbor was outside on his lawn. I wanted to just go back to the car and drive off angrily and pound my fist on something and start crying. But inSTEAD, I went over and talked to him! Well, he was very open and we taught a lesson right then and there and even got a return appointment. At the end he asked us, "Do you guys have like any pamphlets or anything that I can read before we meet again?" hahahahah. Yes, yes we do, C*. So that was just another episode in the series known as God is a 4th Watch God. 

Saturday night we got our T-texts. I really wasn't that concerned. I was pretty confident that we would stay just as we were in a trio for at LEAST one more transfer. But no! When we found out that Sister Jordan and I were shotgunning it was a complete shock. Exciting stuff, though! And is was really cool because Sunday night we got a call from President Packard (*gulp* who died?) and he told us, "Well, I just had a prompting that I should call and talk to Sister Burr and see how she's doing, and I thought I'd better not ignore that." But first (as in before we handed the phone over to Sister Burr) he told Sister Jordan and I that he wants us to use music. Basically he told us that that's a major reason he put US together to go open this area up - so that we could use our gifts together to bless people. Then we heard from Sister Burr that he hadn't planned on making very many changes. He thought he'd just deal with the necessary changes of departing and arriving missionaries and then would pretty much leave everyone else the same, "but when I looked at that [transfer] board, God just started talking to me!" Very interesting. 

The Oxford half of last week was really nice. We got to say our goodbyes which was hard, but good. Brother D* hugged me and I didn't stop him. Don't tell. His was the hardest goodbye for sure. My allergies were really flaring up if you know what I mean. We also got to have a lesson with a former investigator from Kenya that we've been trying to reach since I got there! Finally, 2 days before we left, he responded to our voicemail and we got to have a good lesson with him on Wednesday night - just the night before we left! 

Transfer meeting was really good. We took a little detour on the way up to Belmont so that we could drive through Brighton. That was weird to see again! Very weird to be driving where I used to only walk and take 40 bajillion buses! But it was fun. At the actual meeting, President Packard made a really good point. He said, talking about the prayers offered on the rameumptums, "Let us not do this as missionaries. Don't pray things like, 'Oh God, we're so thankful that we have the gospel and we're so much better than these heathens here in New England who just tell us they're all set. We're so thankful that we're so much more enlightened than them and that we have the fulness of the gospel and we're so much better than them.'"  

And since transfer meeting Sister Jordan and I have basically spent all our proselyting time going through our area book! There are 10 towns (Boston, South Boston, Jamaica Plain, Roslindale, West Roxbury, Hyde Park, Roxbury, Mattapan, Dorchester, and Dedham) divided into to companionships North and South. So we took Spanish and English work divided north/south and changed it into Spanish vs English for ALL 10 towns. Very exciting stuff and we're just about done. Finally. Now to get some appointments! haha. I was a bit worried at first because I can imagine that if new sisters came into my area and took half of my investigators away just because they spoke English, I'd be pretty upset. But I was relieved to find that there's so much work that they were actually THANKFUL to have us here! What a delight. So we live in Roslindale. It's a pretty okay area, but there are many very sketchy places in our area. The house is really big and nice, though there's one mirror for 4 girls... not the best situation logistically. We live with Hermana Lopez (who came out with me - she's from Puerto Rico and SO nice!) and Hma Hales (from SLC). So far it's a good combo with us four.  

Church yesterday was great. It's very different from both the Oxford ward and the singles wards. I just love diversity. Our chapel (which is only a 15 minutes walk from our house! Score!) is home to the Boston 1st and 3rd wards. The Boston 3rd Ward is the Haitian ward and it's the only Haitian ward in the WHOLE WORLD outside of Haiti. Isn't that cool?? Yes, it is. The Boston 1st ward has about 60% English speaking and 40% Spanish speaking (though obviously there's lots of crossover between those two groups). The Spanish group meets together for their own meetings, rather than translating the English meetings, and they're hoping to become their own branch sometime soon so that they can meet at a different time. It's a very diverse ward and just awesome to get to serve here. Everyone is very welcoming. There are Spanish speaking Elders in the ward, too, which makes this ward the only (as far as I know) ward in the mission with 6 missionaries in it! That makes for very exciting coordination meetings haha. Our WML [Ward Mission Leader] is really nice and on the ball.  

Anyway, that's a lot of info that I've dropped on you. I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting but that's good for now. We're heading up to Park Street now to get Sister Jordan a new bag. Yay for having giant malls in our arear! 

I'll try to remember to type out some BoM insights for next week's e-mail. 

Love you all,
Sister "I really do love riding the on the T - it feels like I'm at Disneyland!" Broekhuijsen