Week 63 & 64- Transfer News and 1st Day💌

 For those of you who are new, heres the link to my google photos:  https://photos.app.goo.gl/4tL6ofS7LJfFAd1B6

Hey guys! This email is coming to you live from Marlborough, MA!! My new area is called Metro West. We cover an English ward that has a Portuguese group. Sacrament meeting is translated through headsets. I am also in a trio! My comps are Sis Jergensen and Sis Peterson. Sis Jergy is going home the transfer after me. She started her mission in Brasília, Brazil and had to go home and be reassigned. She's from San Diego. Peterson has 6 months on the mish, and she's from Logan. I'm older than both my comps, crazy!

I didn't write an email last week, so here is a super quick rundown of my week:

• I had my last temple shifts and got released
• Lucy and I hung out and made posters and ate a s'more dip
• My friend Xander got home from his mission!! I went to the airport to pick him up
• I went to Colorado for my cousin's baby shower
• I played games with Connor and Jesina (lost miserably) and met their new kitten
• Started a Twilight rewatch

Now let's talk about this week! It's gonna be a long email (when are they not?) Saturday is low-key funny if y'all wanna skip to there

Segunda: I didn't do an email because I was too busy doing the mission driver's ed course. I had to watch a million videos and take some quizzes. My mission is a car mission, so I need to be able to drive. I think I'm a good enough driver already, but whatevs. After the painful course, my mom and I watched Twilight: Breaking Dawn P1. Fantastic movie, cinematic masterpiece. We adopted that kitten that followed me home the other week, he is such a cutie

Terça: Last day at home! It took me all day to pack, because I hate packing. It's overwhelming and stressful. I got to watch Breaking Dawn P2 and I got Zupas for lunch. My grandparents and uncle came over for a little BBQ, it was great seeing them before I left. After dinner, I had to finish packing and weigh my suitcases. They were 47lbs and 31lbs. Way better than my 2 51lb suitcases that I brought to Brasil!

Quarta: First day in Boston! My parents, Audrey and Steven dropped me off at the airport at 8. I was able to get to my gate pretty quickly, where I met the novinhos headed to Boston. They were all super nice! I got a window seat on the flight and sat next to Sis Stewart and Eld Johnston. I watched the 5th Harry Potter movie and started the 6th. The flight wasn't bad, just a little bumpy. When we landed, we were picked up by Pres and Sis Risenmay and some missionaries. All but one of the Sisters will be going home with me. The other went home this week. I feel super old! They sent us to go Metro finding…which I actually hated. It means hopping on trains and asking everyone in all the cars if they want to come to church. We would get into a new car at each stop. I'm sure Metro finding could be efficient if we weren't dealing with 30 other missionaries all asking the same people. Thankfully my area doesn't use the Metro🙏 After that, we went to the mission office and had dinner. They then took us to the hotel to spend the night. I roomed with Sis Pettijohn and Sis Perl. It was one of the worst nights sleep I've ever had. I'd forgotten my earplugs at home, and one of the Sisters is a sleep talker. Oh well. That's what caffeine is for.

Quinta: We headed back to the mission home for some newbie training. All of the senior missionaries taught us about health, driving, caring for apartments and money. Turns out my mission credit card was deactivated when I went home, so I have to wait for a new one to be ordered. After training, they announced comps and we got lunch and then headed to our new area. We have a car! Our area is pretty spread out, and it's beautiful! It is so green here and the houses are stunning. I could totally live here forever! Our apartment is so nice, it's 2 floors. We have a living room with a sofa and a recliner, a monster wall and a poster of Snoop Dog (this used to be an Elder area), a table and our desks. The kitchen has full sized appliances! We have a bathroom, a washer and dryer and a bedroom with a big closet. Our room also has a sofa. It's chique demais aqui. Our apartment complex also has a gym we get to go to! After we dropped off our luggage, the moving elders brought us a mattress because this place wasn't made for a trio and built us a new desk. We then went to finding in Framingham. We got dinner at 5 Guys and went to the church for English class. No one showed up, so we called some people. We went to Target and I got toiletries and some cereal to last until pday.

Okay, I wanna list some of the differences between my Brasil mish and here. These differences aren't good or bad btw! Every mission has its pros and cons

1: We can listen to non hymns, as long as they are still spiritually uplifting (Lillian PLEASE resend that drive)

2: We have cars- BTW we don't need a backer

3: We can go to the gym 

4: We do a lot of pday activities

5: We start calling family Sunday evening 

6: I've got messenger

7: I've got duolingo

8: We can have group chats with the other missionaries and use emojis

9: We can have missionaries from this mission on our email list and Google photos

10: We can only eat with members on Domingo

11: We can add to Google photos all week and like and comment on our albums and other people's albums

12: We can drink energy drinks (we have a wall of used cans)

13: There is no limit to how long we can use our phones or how long we can be on an app

14: We have 45 min to work out instead of 30

15: My apartment isn't in a sketchy area

16: We have English, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, ASL, and Haitian Creole in this mission. My area alone has English, Spanish and HC. We need to know how to extend an invite to church in all of those language 

16: We can receive packages and mail to our apt and not the mission home

17: We have a Chick-fil-A, trader joes, target, Walmart, Canes, and Cava (jealous Taylor?) all within 20 min of our apt

18: I'm only getting 10,000 steps a day here instead of the 20,000 id get in Brasíl 

Sexta: We didn't go to the gym this morning, we stayed in to finish unpacking and setting up the apartment. We left to go to Marlborough Main to go finding and spent a few hours there. People can't pronounce stuff correctly here!! They pronounce Marlborough Mallbruh and the city next door, Worcester is Wooster. What the heck guys. We didn't find a single person today, which is fine. We talked to the Portuguese group leader from Worcester, he and his wife stopped us on the street and invited us into their office. They had some ideas on how to find people through activities, so we're going to look into that. We did some stopbys and one of the senior missionaries called to let me know I'm cleared to drive, that made Sis Jergy so happy.We knocked on every door on Gay St, and my mom was stalking my location at the perfect moment and saw us on Gay St. We had a lesson with this lady Talita, her husband game in about halfway through and sat through the rest. They wanted to go to church last week but had car trouble. We then had the most frustrating phone call lesson of ALL time. Like oh my gosh. I don't know if he couldn't hear us or just wasn't understanding, but oh my goshhhh. We tried to teach the restoration and invite him to be baptized. He said he'll be at church though! 

Sábado: Happy Birthday Sis Petey!! We went and walked on this super pretty boardwalk at a lake near our house for morning exercise. I can't wait to see this area during fall. After that, we got breakfast at Chick-fil-A! I tried their chicken minis, so good. We ate while we planned. We went finding today in Framingham. We walked main for a bit and then started knocking doors. We found this super sweet girl, Aline. She said she had a church in Brasíl but didn't find one here, she said she missed the community. She doesn't know how to drive, so she needs to coordinate with her husband, so she said chances are tomorrow is a no go but that she wants to come. So if not this week, next! It was actually kinda cold today. It was 73⁰ but cloudy and a little rainy. Sis Petey had an MRI so we went into Boston for that. After her MRI, we went to Olive Garden where we had the WEIRDEST time. Our server did not seem to be having a good day. She seemed irritated by everything. We asked for breadsticks 4 times in the space of an hour, and did NOT get them. But all of her other tables kept getting breadsticks!!! She also brought us to go boxes not even 15 minutes after she brought us our meals AND, miss girl handed us the check. Like we've had 4 bites… On the fifth time we asked for bread sticks, we got them! Only because we asked a manager for them. They brought Petey a dessert and sang to her. We left with our food and NO to go breadsticks. SO sad. We then ran to Wholefoods to get a cake and Sis Jergensen called the Greenline in the back seat (a list of people to call Sat night). At one point, she had me pull over on the freeway bc the gas cap had come loose. She was still on the phone with an investigator!! Pres and Sis Risenmay called us to wish Sis Petey a happy birthday. We told them about the breadsticks and Pres thought we had ordered and EATEN 5 orders of breadsticks. NO WE ONLY ATE 2 BREADSTICKS!!!!!!!!!! WhatsApp low-key got blocked but it's okay. We got home and sang to Petey and went to bed. 

Domingo: Happy fast Sunday! I found out last night that Sis Jergy sometimes sleep talks. Scared the crap out of me. We don't have church until 9h30, but we teach an English class before so we needed to be there a little before 8h30, but that's not bad at all. Btw, our apartment is freezing, and we don't know how to change that. It makes getting up in the morning actually terrible. Makes for some amazing sleep though! Church was great, we had three friends come: Miguel (the terrible phone call earlier), Francisco and Valdirceu. Everyone except Valdirceu stayed for classes. The new class schedule btw? So hard! We got everyone situated on time though. Our ward has a separate Sunday school for the Brazilians but the relief society is joined. They had a cool translator on the screen that seemed to work pretty well. After church, we had a priesthood and temple recommendation interview with Hailton, who was baptized last week by Sis Jergy. Our bishop doesn't speak Portuguese and bro does not speak English. So we had to translate the interview. Sis jergy did most of it, but I stepped in for a few of the questions. Later in the day we had a ward coordination meeting, apparently they happen weekly! That did NOT happen in Brazil. We had an amazing dinner with members, they made ribs. It was also super fancy, like fine china and lit candles in candle sticks. We had acompanhamentos. Our district leader is like the situationship that doesn't actually like you. We were answering a question of him and mid answer bro muted himself and started talking to his comp. Like oh! Okay… and when we called him out, his response was “if you guys really want, I guess you can tell me at the activity tmr”. Dang okay…it wasn't even a random side story, it was a story about missionary work! And then I ended the night w calling my fam.

Spiritual Thought: Matthew 21: 9 - And the multitudes that went before, and that followed, cried, saying, Hosanna to the Son of David: Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest.

I learned from Sis Risenmay that Hosanna doesn't just mean Praise God, it also means Save us. 

That just opened my eyes to a whole new way to look at this scripture. What a beautiful thing, people recognizing Christ as their Savior and calling for Him to save them. They knew He could save them, and they asked for that salvation. They cried out for Him to save them.

Do we ask Christ to save us? Do we call Hosanna to His name? I'd like to invite you all to think about how Christ has saved YOU. He is the Savior of the World, but also your specific Savior.

Love you all! Please write me emails, I love getting them!!! 

Picture Time:

1. Last District Council as a service missionary

2. All hail Snoop Dog! We added 5 drinks to the wall this week. (The monsters came from elders)

3. Our visit to Gay St

4. Morning exercise at the boardwalk

5. Planning bday breakie

6. New favorite car!

7. Curbside planning

8. Olive Garden crash out

9. Dream house right here