7-5-2011

Hey Madre, 7-5-2011

It's very different here in the Boston mission! Just FYI, my P-Days apparently ARE on Mondays, but if we have a transfer meeting, they change to Wednesday. A little confusing, I know.

My area is Gardner Massachusetts. We live in an extension from a members mansion! It's a really nice place and the laundry is free! The Members are Brother and Sister Stokes. They are really great people -- Brother Stokes is a software engineer of some type but works mainly with Government Computer Security. We mainly stay in Leominster (Lemon-stir) and Fitchburg and we live in Lunenberg. So far I have met one peruvian man... :S. Our ward is completely english-speaking except for two families, and one of them basically refused to speak to me in spanish when I tried, so -- scratch that one! It's a little frustrating but I'll deal.

Our first appointment we had we had at a members home, my companion (Elder Horton, who is awesome!) asked me how often I taught spanish in CT, my response was simply "I think this is actually my first time doing an english lesson." So it's quite different here. If someone wants to come to church that speaks spanish, we have to translate everything!

p.s. Elder Horton is from Utah (forgot which part) and he entered the MTC also on Dec. 9th. So we've both been out 18 almost 19 months.

I got up and bore my testimony at church so that people would recognize me when I'm walking around. I think it also helps ease the awkwardness of a first impression to get up and show people my personality etc. The members are really nice people and have been very welcoming.

Yesterday we had the opportunity to go to Boston for the 4th of July fireworks! It was really neat! It was very different because we were told not to wear proselyting clothes and the crowd definitely wasn't either haha. I'm sure it's something that I wouldn't have even dared to ask permission to go to from President Pehrson haha. It was really a cool place though. We saw a lot of cool shopping centers and enjoyed the sights, there are some really cool street performers as well!. We got to Boston about 10am and got home about 1am! It started by getting to the church where we had to pick up the chains in the parking lot to get under them! The cars BARELY made it under. We walked over to the subway and hopped on to get into Harvard Square. We went shopping a little bit and got hungry so we headed over to China Town where we ate at a neat little Chinese rest. that only charged me $1.50 for a canned soda! What a deal!

After lunch we went to a really neat street of which I don't remember the name that had a ton of shopping centers (Chanel, Nike, you name it.) I bought some pins from a place called Johnny Cupcakes. It's a T-Shirt store that is set up like a bakery but when you open the fridges and stuff it's plates of shirts. We also found a used-book store where I found, for a great deal of more than 50% off, Joseph Smith: A Rough Stone Rolling -- I had to buy it! So I did.

We headed over to the river after shopping and got our places with some ward members near the edge and waited 4 hours for the fireworks. It was a loooooooong wait. But it was worth it.

I think that's about it for the update today. I love you and miss you. Hopefully I can keep using my spanish out here, but it seems that resistance is futile.

I'm going to include pictures from New London, our apartment, and the fireworks show.

Love you! -Elder Conner Allred

Conner David Allred to me
show details 11:48 AM (3 hours ago)




Mom, also -- Elder Walkenhorst wants to buy my D70. Could you send that out? The body, charger, battery, and CF card should all be in the box. He has a lens that I sold him already. Just send it to my old NL apartment addressed to him. Thank you!!