Monday, April 25, 2011

Elder Carr and Elder Ahumada are on fire!!!

Yep, that's my new companion's name, and that's what people keep noticing about us.  WE ARE ON FIRE!
 I had a great and safe trip here.  We got to stay our first night at the Mission home.  President Wilkey is AMAZING, and he really has a lot of faith in me; at one point he pulled me aside and mentioned how he feels that I am an answer to his prayers.  Sister Wilkey is INCREDIBLE and she just loves us so much; she takes care of us too, and hounds on us like a mom to keep us healthy, haha.  On Tuesday, we went to the transfer meeting, and I was assigned to be with Elder Ahumada (aw-maw-duh).  He's my trainer; he grew up in Conneticuit, but in a Chilean home, so he speaks fluent Spanish and English.  He's so awesome, he's been out 20 months, so he knows what he's doing, but he still listens to my opinion and really respects me as well. 

Me & Ahumada

Basically, we are in the Georgetown, MA area, which is one of the 3 Spanish-speaking areas in the mission, but the only Spanish speaking branch is in Lawrence, so anyone that wants/needs a Spanish-only ward from the Georgetown or Methuen area just goes over to Lawrence.  We basically only speak English around here, except when we go to the Haverhill area which has a lot of Spanish speakers - mostly from the Dominican Republic.

So the previous missionaries lived in Haverhill, and that is where all of their work was centered. Our apartment is in Georgetown now, and that is where President Wilkey wants us to spend over half of our time, so we are essentially opening up a new area.  Oh and by the way, Elder Ahumada is also new to Georgtown (he was in Methuen before)  so since he and I are both new, we are doing what is called "shotguning an area".  It's good and bad I guess.  It's hard because we have little to no information/organization with which to get started working, but it's great because we get to start with a brand new clean slate!

So with that said, we've been working SUPER hard this week on getting things organized and getting acclimated to the area.  We haven't had much success at all, but we've finally established a great foundation with the ward members and with our knowledge of the area; now we are looking forward to this next week to be full of hard work, and hopefully success! haha.  It's so fun out here too, because as we work hard, the members are able to notice our efforts, and it makes them want to help us more, so we just continually get pumped with our work!  Oh by the way, tracting has been interesting, we've been threatened several times, and on our very first night; we were just tracting across the street from our house and got the cops called on us for no reason (silly neighbors).  Haha, figures that would happen with my luck.

Well, I'll tell you all more next week, but be sure to let me know if you have any questions for me.  You can write to my mission office address and they will forward it to me, or for at least the next 5 weeks, my home address is:

Elder Dustin Carr
256 East Main St.
Georgetown, MA 01833

Well I love you all!  thank you for your love and support!

Elder Carr

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