Man, this place is cool. My first few days have been great. Providence is one of the dirtiest places I've ever been. Check that, it's definitely the dirtiest place I've ever been. There's trash everywhere, lots of hobos, super old buildings all graffitti-d up. It's awesome. I told my comp the other day that I don't feel like I'm in America anymore. haha. There are lots of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans. There's supposedly a good chunk of Cambodians, although we haven't found many yet. Lots of Italians too. There are whole chunks of town that are run by the mafia. Apparently like 2 weeks ago one of the restaraunts got shut down for being mafia-operated. Sweet, huh? So far I'm likin this place.
My companion is awesome. His name's Elder Pierson. He's from Denver. He's been out 16 months. He played lots of video games, and played percussion in high school so we've got a good bit of similarities. He loves Muse so that's a plus too. haha. He's really funny too. He always tells jokes and just does lots of funny things. I think we're going to have a great transfer together. I'm excited. We serve in two wards here like I did in Lowell. Well, I guess one of them is a branch, but same thing. There is a family ward, and then a YSA branch that is mainly made up of Brown University students. Apparently Brown is this super nice, really rich ivy league school. And apparently all the non-members that go there hate us. haha. The wards are really cool though. I got to meet a bunch of the members yesterday and I'm really excited to see how they can help us. I had heard that this ward doesn't help us out very much, but I didn't get that feeling at all yesterday. I bore my testimony and told them all that I was excited to serve in their ward, and mentioned that I speak Cambodian. Afterwards, I had tons of comments from members telling me that they'd love to help out. It was great. There's this one guy in the ward that is super awesome too. His name is Greg. He was in a cambodian gang back in the day, but then he converted and then all his cambodian friends converted too. And now, they are all inactive except for Greg and his family (he has a Cambodian wife, and 3 daughters). So I talked to him, and he was SUPER excited that I can speak the language. He wants me to convert his mother in law, and his brothers in law, and he was telling me about all his friends that he's gonna introduce us to. He was so excited, it was ridiculous. haha. And there is another Cambodian guy in the ward that talked to me a little bit after church. So yeah, I'm excited. It's crazy to see how similar the stories are between here, Lynn and Lowell. Hopefully next week I'll have some more news on it.
There is another guy in the ward named Don. He is a convert of 8 years, and is one of the coolest people I've ever met in my life. He has a crazy awesome conversion story that I'll have to tell later cause I'm running out of time on the computer. But basically, he is one of the legends of the church out here. At least for the missionaries. He is on disability so he doesn't work, and he comes out with us all the time cause he loves the missionaries so much. We share our car with the other Elders in our area, so we have it Sun-Wed, and on the days that we don't have the car, Don drives us everywhere, and he drives the other Elders when we have the car. He's a super good cook and he feeds us whenever we don't have a dinner appointment, and he is just awesome. I've only known him for 4 days, but I feel like we are best friends already. To prove how much of a mission legend he is, the previous Connecticut mission president, before he went home, bought Don a car (the mission president is the CEO of Intermountain Health Care - he's loaded). And he also bought him roundtrip airfare to Utah this next week so he can go to Conference and to the mission reunion so he can see all the Elders. He's such a cool guy! Maybe I'll give him our address cause he's gonna be in orem for awhile. I'm sure he could make a stop and meet you. Maybe. haha.
Our apartment is one of the coolest in the mission too. It's the one that everyone else in the mission wishes they could live in. It's pretty sweet. It's a renovated mill. It's pretty spacious, and is surprisingly really nice considering the part of town it's in. haha. We are surrounded by government housing projects where all the bums live, but we live in this really nice place. It's funny. The address is 304 Pearl St. #209 Providence, RI 02907.
Well, I gotta close up cause I'm about to get kicked off the computer cause times up. That was a bad sentence. haha. Ok well, I love you all, and hope you have a great week!
Love,
Elder Hammer
P.S. No update on the BYU game this week? :(
Oh yeah, and I'm super excited for Conference this week! Can't wait!
Monday, September 26, 2011
Goodbye, Lowell
Well, we got our transfer info this week. I was not expecting it, but I am leaving Lowell. It's kindof a bittersweet feeling. As I'm sure you know, I've been really frustrated with this place, so in that sense, I'm happy to leave. But, these last 2 weeks have been pretty good so I'm kinda bummed that I won't be able to teach the new investigators we've found and see them progress. And I'm also not officially in the Cambodian program anymore, but I guess you could say that I'm being sent to my new area to be a spy and find all the cambodians and see if they really exist down there, as we've heard rumors that they do. My new area will be..................Providence, Rhode Island! Crazy, eh? I was pretty surprised to see that as my new area. I'm pretty sure that we cover all of Rhode Island, which is pretty sweet to say that I cover a whole state. haha. So yeah, I'm pretty excited about it. I have no idea what the address is for our apartment there, so I'll get that to you next week. I guess you could just not send anything until then, or just send it to the office. So that's the big news this week. Oh yeah, and I'm going to be a Zone Leader. And I'm closer to Elder Hawks, so maybe I'll finally get to see him at a zone conference or something. That'd be sweet.
Other good news - Borida, our cambodian investigator, came to church last week! It was the first investigator we've had at church in like 3 months, so it was a great feeling. You should have heard our opening hymn in our cambodian sunday school class. It usually sounds pretty terrible cause almost all cambodians are tone-deaf, but this week it was worse, cause Borida was trying to sing and obviously she didn't know the tune, so it was just really funny. I recorded part of it on my camera. haha. It was great. haha. But, I think Borida enjoyed church and when we met with her lastnight, she said she was coming again this week, but by that time, I'll be in Providence.
It feels like there was a lot more stuff I was going to talk about, but I didn't write any of it down so I don't remember it. haha. oops. Let me think... I heard about the BYU game. don't want to talk about that though. I honestly can't think of much else to talk about. Congrats to Coby and Candice on their new baby.
Oh yeah, I have to mention how awesome the weather has been lately. This last week was in the high 60's - low 70's all week long. I love it. It totally feels like football. Makes me want to go play football. Maybe we should do that today. hmm. That's a pretty good idea. Anyway, I'm tired of sitting here not thinking of anything else to say, so I'm gonna go look at mormon.org for the 2,834th time. Maybe there'll be someone new on there... haha. You should all put profiles on mormon.org. I've got one. It's cool. check it out. yeah. Ok, goodbye. have a good week. Love y'all
Love,
Elder Hammer
Other good news - Borida, our cambodian investigator, came to church last week! It was the first investigator we've had at church in like 3 months, so it was a great feeling. You should have heard our opening hymn in our cambodian sunday school class. It usually sounds pretty terrible cause almost all cambodians are tone-deaf, but this week it was worse, cause Borida was trying to sing and obviously she didn't know the tune, so it was just really funny. I recorded part of it on my camera. haha. It was great. haha. But, I think Borida enjoyed church and when we met with her lastnight, she said she was coming again this week, but by that time, I'll be in Providence.
It feels like there was a lot more stuff I was going to talk about, but I didn't write any of it down so I don't remember it. haha. oops. Let me think... I heard about the BYU game. don't want to talk about that though. I honestly can't think of much else to talk about. Congrats to Coby and Candice on their new baby.
Oh yeah, I have to mention how awesome the weather has been lately. This last week was in the high 60's - low 70's all week long. I love it. It totally feels like football. Makes me want to go play football. Maybe we should do that today. hmm. That's a pretty good idea. Anyway, I'm tired of sitting here not thinking of anything else to say, so I'm gonna go look at mormon.org for the 2,834th time. Maybe there'll be someone new on there... haha. You should all put profiles on mormon.org. I've got one. It's cool. check it out. yeah. Ok, goodbye. have a good week. Love y'all
Love,
Elder Hammer
Better Week
So this week turned out to be one of the better ones since I've been in Lowell. We were finally able to find a new person this week! Wahoo! haha. He is a headquarter referral we got about a month ago that we haven't been able to contact for awhile because his family got in a big accident (a backhoe fell off a trailer and landed on their car, killing his mother in law and injuring his wife, son and daughter) and he has been pretty busy with all that since it happened. But, we were finally able to meet with him and talk to him about the Church. We watched part of Together Forever with him and talked about it, and he asked us a bunch of questions and it was a really good visit. We set up another appointment with him so that we can teach him about the Plan of Salvation. So that was one of the good things that happened this week.
Another one comes from another headquarter referral we got this last week. We drove out to her place to contact her since she didn't answer her phone. She answered the door and told us that she was super busy with her 4 kids, but asked us who we were. When we told her we were the missionaries, she got a huge smile on her face and was super excited to see us. We talked to her for a few minutes and she told us that she is Catholic, but that she doesn't agree how lots of the leaders in that church preach what they don't live. She said that she thinks there is more than what the Catholics have to offer, and for some reason, she thinks it's in our church! Booya. I love when people tell us that. haha. She took a Book of Mormon and we set up a return appointment to begin teaching her as well.
We are also in the process of setting up an appointment to teach someone that some of the other Elders met at water festival. We called and talked to him. He said he was interested in the Book of Mormon, but that he was busy at that moment, so we are going to call him back soon. So overall, things are looking like they are going to start picking up sometime soon. Hopefully :)
Oh yeah, and we were planning on dropping one of our cambodian investigators cause she won't commit to church or baptism, but after 30 minutes of talking about church and how she doesn't want to go, the member we had with us said "well I could take you" and then she committed to go to church next week. So if she comes, we'll keep teaching her and if she doesn't then we're dropping her. I'm hoping for the best.
Well, I guess that's about it for this week. Mom told me that Kasey's expecting that I'll forget her birthday so I won't mention anything about that:) Happy Birthday to Justin, though. haha. Oh yeah, and apparently there's a new term in our mission. It's called "pulling a Hammer". It means staying in one area for a really long time. haha. I've heard lots of other missionaries use that term. It's pretty funny. Good to know that I'm leaving my mark on the mission. haha.
Ok well have a good week everyone. Love you all. Bye.
Love,
Elder Hammer
P.S. Hope BYU creams utah this week!
Another one comes from another headquarter referral we got this last week. We drove out to her place to contact her since she didn't answer her phone. She answered the door and told us that she was super busy with her 4 kids, but asked us who we were. When we told her we were the missionaries, she got a huge smile on her face and was super excited to see us. We talked to her for a few minutes and she told us that she is Catholic, but that she doesn't agree how lots of the leaders in that church preach what they don't live. She said that she thinks there is more than what the Catholics have to offer, and for some reason, she thinks it's in our church! Booya. I love when people tell us that. haha. She took a Book of Mormon and we set up a return appointment to begin teaching her as well.
We are also in the process of setting up an appointment to teach someone that some of the other Elders met at water festival. We called and talked to him. He said he was interested in the Book of Mormon, but that he was busy at that moment, so we are going to call him back soon. So overall, things are looking like they are going to start picking up sometime soon. Hopefully :)
Oh yeah, and we were planning on dropping one of our cambodian investigators cause she won't commit to church or baptism, but after 30 minutes of talking about church and how she doesn't want to go, the member we had with us said "well I could take you" and then she committed to go to church next week. So if she comes, we'll keep teaching her and if she doesn't then we're dropping her. I'm hoping for the best.
Well, I guess that's about it for this week. Mom told me that Kasey's expecting that I'll forget her birthday so I won't mention anything about that:) Happy Birthday to Justin, though. haha. Oh yeah, and apparently there's a new term in our mission. It's called "pulling a Hammer". It means staying in one area for a really long time. haha. I've heard lots of other missionaries use that term. It's pretty funny. Good to know that I'm leaving my mark on the mission. haha.
Ok well have a good week everyone. Love you all. Bye.
Love,
Elder Hammer
P.S. Hope BYU creams utah this week!
September?
Wait, hold on. It's September? Weird. What happened to August? haha. I can't believe how fast things are going. Timewise, not work wise. Cause the work is definitely not going fast. Unfortunately. Anyway.... GO COUGS! So happy to hear that they beat Ole Miss! Booya! So guess what? I don't have a lot to talk about again. Neither of our 2 investigators are progressing. We met with one of them a lot this last week, but not a whole lot of good came out of it. She won't commit to baptism, so we focused this week on getting her to church. She won't commit to that either. So I think we're going to drop her if she's not there this week. Maybe if we do that, she'll wisen up and change her mind. Our other investigator is a whole different story. She is also cambodian. She has NEVER heard of Jesus Christ, so we are started from nothing with her. Which could be good though, cause she'll get the truth the first go around. No corruption for her. However, we have to teach her very slow. One principle at a time, actually. She wants to learn, but has a hard time taking it all in, so we are going slow for her. Hopefully she'll be able to remember it and start to progress. She also has an aunt that lives with her. She's like the funniest cambodian lady ever. She always tells me how good I am at speaking the language. It's really funny. She reminds me of Grandma Hammer. If Grandma was Cambodian, she'd be this lady. haha. But that's about all for people we are teaching. We are in a rut right now for finding new people and it's starting to get on my nerves. I don't like it at all.
So, remember last week when I said my watch broke? Well, I made a new strap for it. Duct tape. Yeah. I made a strap then realized I didn't have anything to keep it together so it'd stay on my wrist. Well, I found a golf glove and took off the ball marker snap and taped it to the strap I had made and now it stays on my arm. haha. It looks pretty ghetto. I'm hoping I can get a new watch. Maybe I'll find one in the gutter, or one will fall from the sky. Or maybe someone I'm related to could send me one...... *cough Coby cough* haha.
I don't remember if I said this already, but last week for pday we went to a driving range and hit some balls. That was like the best pday ever. Except for yesterday. The temple is always open on the monday holidays so we went and did a session there. After our session, I saw some of the people from my last area (he's a sealer in the temple) and got to talk with them for a few minutes, and then we did some sealings with them as well. That was great. After the temple, we went and played soccer with a bunch of the missionaries. That's always fun. I love soccer. Then we went into Boston to go to Jamba Juice. We recently discovered that they had one of those out here, so we decided to go. It is on the Boston University campus, and it was welcome week, so we got all sorts of free BU gear while we were walking down the street to get there. It was great to have Jamba Juice again. I haven't had it in forever. It was so good. mmmmmmmmm.
Good news - Remember Rose who I started teaching in Lynn and then she and her family got baptized after I came to Lowell? Well, last Sunday, Rose's sister and her son and daughter were baptized too! That is SO cool! I love seeing the gospel spread. Makes me so happy. I love it!
Well, that's all folks! Hope you have a great week. Love y'all!
Love,
Elder Hammer
P.S. my new zipcode is 01851 by the way, not 01854.
So, remember last week when I said my watch broke? Well, I made a new strap for it. Duct tape. Yeah. I made a strap then realized I didn't have anything to keep it together so it'd stay on my wrist. Well, I found a golf glove and took off the ball marker snap and taped it to the strap I had made and now it stays on my arm. haha. It looks pretty ghetto. I'm hoping I can get a new watch. Maybe I'll find one in the gutter, or one will fall from the sky. Or maybe someone I'm related to could send me one...... *cough Coby cough* haha.
I don't remember if I said this already, but last week for pday we went to a driving range and hit some balls. That was like the best pday ever. Except for yesterday. The temple is always open on the monday holidays so we went and did a session there. After our session, I saw some of the people from my last area (he's a sealer in the temple) and got to talk with them for a few minutes, and then we did some sealings with them as well. That was great. After the temple, we went and played soccer with a bunch of the missionaries. That's always fun. I love soccer. Then we went into Boston to go to Jamba Juice. We recently discovered that they had one of those out here, so we decided to go. It is on the Boston University campus, and it was welcome week, so we got all sorts of free BU gear while we were walking down the street to get there. It was great to have Jamba Juice again. I haven't had it in forever. It was so good. mmmmmmmmm.
Good news - Remember Rose who I started teaching in Lynn and then she and her family got baptized after I came to Lowell? Well, last Sunday, Rose's sister and her son and daughter were baptized too! That is SO cool! I love seeing the gospel spread. Makes me so happy. I love it!
Well, that's all folks! Hope you have a great week. Love y'all!
Love,
Elder Hammer
P.S. my new zipcode is 01851 by the way, not 01854.
Hurricane Irene!
Woot! I got to experience a hurricane. Well, I guess that's a lie cause when it got here, it was downgraded to a tropical storm. But whatever. It was still pretty cool. It wasn't as cool as I was hoping, or as bad as they said it was going to be but I guess that's ok. It rained the whole second half of Saturday and then basically all day Sunday. There was a point when the rain was coming down pretty dang hard. It was impressive. I got a video of it, but the video doesn't do it justice. The wind didn't really start until yesterday evening. It was not as strong as we were anticipating, but once we were allowed out of our apartments at 6 o'clock (we weren't allowed to be out before that. And church was cancelled too.) we were driving around trying to contact some of our potentials and we saw a pretty decent amount of trees that had broken in half or uprooted or had branches broken off of them. I didn't think it was blowing that hard, but apparently it was. haha. There were two really big trees that we saw that had fallen over. One of them just broke in half and fell right between 2 houses - it didn't hit either one of them! Then there was another tree that fell into the street that they cleaned up before we got to see it, but other people were telling us about it. So that was pretty cool. The worst part of the storm though, is that our power went out around noon yesterday and is still not back on. Don't know what's up with that. It's not too bad except all the food in our fridge is probably going to go bad unless they get it back on soon. I've never had the power out for this long before. At least not that I can remember. It's kinda funny too cause the other Elders that live in Lowell have power in their apartment and they live like 3 minutes away from us. But I guess we are on a different power grid from them. Our whole neighborhood was pretty dark lastnight, except for the few people that have generators. So I think that's about all the news from that.
The other big news is that we moved apartments this week! For anyone who cares, the new address is 71 Robbins st. #6 in Lowell, MA 01854. haha. Yeah, when we were told we were moving, they gave us a big list of things we needed to do before we left. It was basically a deep clean of the apartment. We planned on doing it all on pday last week, but we came nowhere near finishing in just one day. Mostly because it was a huge mess. I am pretty convinced that the Elders that had lived there the 4 years previous never cleaned it. I found a couple receipts from 2008 on the floor behind some furniture. It took up way more time to clean it then it should have, had the other Elders taken proper care of it and it gave me the motivation to always keep the places I'm in clean so that the future Elders don't have to go through that ordeal like we had to. Ugh, it was terrible. But, we are out and moved into the new place. I like it. It's a bit smaller than the old place and the office Elder that came to help us move told us we couldn't keep the big comfy couch we had because the only place we could put it was in front of the sliding door that goes to nowhere other than a 15 foot drop to the outside ground. I don't understand why we couldn't keep it but I'm over it. haha. The only problem with our new place is that there are only 2 lights. So we have to go get some lamps from somewhere. But other than that, I like the new place. It's cool.
Other than that, there is really not a whole lot to talk about. Not much happened this week with all the moving prep and the move and the hurricane. We did get to teach our investigator a few times this week. Sad news is that she told us she doesn't want to be baptized even though she knows she'll receive a remission of her sins and be able to live with God again. ??? Don't quite understand that, but I guess that's her choice. Sad.
Oh yeah, one more bit of news. About 5 days ago, I woke up with a sharp pain in my back. I rolled over and groggily reached behind me to find a scorpion....no I'm just kidding. I did wake up with a pain in my back though. But it was my watch. I guess I was having some sort of destructive dream or something cause my watch had been broken. The strap was in three pieces. The watch still works, I just can't wear it anymore. Cool, eh? I wish I knew someone that might have an extra one that he could send me.... :) haha. I also realized that I have a sweet tanline from my watch. Cool.
Okeydokeythen. I can't think of anything else to talk about so I'm not going to try. I hope you all have a great week! Love ya!
Love,
Elder Hammer
P.S. Oh yeah, and that CD I asked about last week? I was hoping I could get it asap from whomever wants to be the kind soul that gets it for me. I'm in a Christmas music mood, and I don't have any Christmas music! haha. Thanks!
The other big news is that we moved apartments this week! For anyone who cares, the new address is 71 Robbins st. #6 in Lowell, MA 01854. haha. Yeah, when we were told we were moving, they gave us a big list of things we needed to do before we left. It was basically a deep clean of the apartment. We planned on doing it all on pday last week, but we came nowhere near finishing in just one day. Mostly because it was a huge mess. I am pretty convinced that the Elders that had lived there the 4 years previous never cleaned it. I found a couple receipts from 2008 on the floor behind some furniture. It took up way more time to clean it then it should have, had the other Elders taken proper care of it and it gave me the motivation to always keep the places I'm in clean so that the future Elders don't have to go through that ordeal like we had to. Ugh, it was terrible. But, we are out and moved into the new place. I like it. It's a bit smaller than the old place and the office Elder that came to help us move told us we couldn't keep the big comfy couch we had because the only place we could put it was in front of the sliding door that goes to nowhere other than a 15 foot drop to the outside ground. I don't understand why we couldn't keep it but I'm over it. haha. The only problem with our new place is that there are only 2 lights. So we have to go get some lamps from somewhere. But other than that, I like the new place. It's cool.
Other than that, there is really not a whole lot to talk about. Not much happened this week with all the moving prep and the move and the hurricane. We did get to teach our investigator a few times this week. Sad news is that she told us she doesn't want to be baptized even though she knows she'll receive a remission of her sins and be able to live with God again. ??? Don't quite understand that, but I guess that's her choice. Sad.
Oh yeah, one more bit of news. About 5 days ago, I woke up with a sharp pain in my back. I rolled over and groggily reached behind me to find a scorpion....no I'm just kidding. I did wake up with a pain in my back though. But it was my watch. I guess I was having some sort of destructive dream or something cause my watch had been broken. The strap was in three pieces. The watch still works, I just can't wear it anymore. Cool, eh? I wish I knew someone that might have an extra one that he could send me.... :) haha. I also realized that I have a sweet tanline from my watch. Cool.
Okeydokeythen. I can't think of anything else to talk about so I'm not going to try. I hope you all have a great week! Love ya!
Love,
Elder Hammer
P.S. Oh yeah, and that CD I asked about last week? I was hoping I could get it asap from whomever wants to be the kind soul that gets it for me. I'm in a Christmas music mood, and I don't have any Christmas music! haha. Thanks!
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