Bodegas and Bubonic Plague Week 29

Hey ya'll!

So like I said last week I love Elder Holzer. We don't talk too much because he doesn't have the best social skills but we get along great. His parents kind of kept him in a bubble his entire life. He went to Woods Cross High School so a pretty small school but he still was never exposed to too much. He didn't know really what swear words were until he came on his mission, he never had "the talk" so he doesn't know anything about the Law of Chastity so it will be interesting having to teach it with him. We are both still trying to learn our way around the Bronx. He has been here for 2 cycles already but he still gets lost and it still takes us a while to find places. I get lost because I am not used to only seeing buildings. It doesn't help either that almost all the buildings are identical and that on each corner of every street has a little bodega/grocery store. The worst part is they use the same sign they just change the name so it is hard to tell the difference. At least here though the streets are marked pretty well, up in Poughkeepsie the streets weren't marked hardly at all! It is still interesting getting used to all of the cultural diversity. You will see someone who is black walking down the street and you go to say hi and they only speak Spanish (the person is Dominican), you see another black person walking down the street go to say hi and they only speak French (the person is from Ghana), you see another black person walking down the street you say hi and you don't understand at all what they say (they grew up in the Bronx), you see another black person and they say ayyy man 'ow yaa dooin' todaay (the person is Jamaican and you still can only understand about every 3 words, so you can at least get the gist of what they are saying). Then you have a ton of Latino people who only know Spanish so when you knock on their door they just stare at you having no clue what you are saying so you just hand them a card (in Spanish), Smile, Wave, and say Buenos Dias or if you really want to shake it up you can say Adios! haha

My stomach is still getting used to being here in the Bronx as well. You can't walk anywhere without seeing pee and poop everywhere. I am surprised that another Epidemic of the Bubonic Plague hasn't spread around New York City and don't be confused.... It isn't animal excretions everywhere that I am seeing!!! I am pretty sure I will come home with lung cancer too. I smoke probably a good 4 or 5 cigarettes a day. Some people feed you pretty normal food but others... not so much. I have never had so much fried chicken and pizza in my life and they have both for you to eat at dinner. They expect you to eat both and a couple pieces of each and the pizza isn't a small little piece it is a New York slice of Pizza that you almost need two plates to fit it on. Then you go walk around and burn it all off so at least I am not getting fat, my stomach just won't digest it all as quickly as I would like. Then I tried probably the nastiest food in the history of man-kind! It is called a pastelito (pasta-lee-toe). It is a Puerto Rican delicacy it is the peel of a plaintain (a starchy banana) ground up with some salt made into a real thick paste (similar to a really thick baby food) then they put chunks of meat inside to give it some texture smash it into a blob like a burrito and then cook it. It looks and smells much like what I see all over the street. I was on a split at this point in time and they served it to us we both took about 3 bites because they were sitting and watching us. After gagging it down and not being able to finish eating it the person feeding us walked away. Thankfully they left the roll of paper towels on the table. Well you know where this is going. We ended up wrapping pieces of this nasty food into paper towels and hiding them in our backpacks.

Sorry but I have to go. I will tell you some more next week. Take care and have fun.
Love Elder Fuller

Yankee Stadium Week 28

Hey guys!

So the area is AWESOME!!! I love it so much! It is so crazy and busy and new and exciting! Totally different from home and Poughkeepsie. We went to church on Sunday and it was the first time in my life that I had ever been the minority. haha I love the people though and it is fun trying to figure out how to get around by subway and bus. Our apartment is super cool it is pretty nice and super clean (which is hard to come by in a mission) only because it has only had missionaries living in it for a week. It is a 5 minute walk from Yankee Stadium so it is cool to walk past it every day to get to the subway. My new companion Elder Holzer is a great guy. I can't remember if I told you but I had served around him up in my last zone. He is a little socially awkward but I love him and he is SUCH A HARD WORKER! It is great for me to finally be with someone again who wants to work hard.

So what does it mean to be a bus attendant? What exactly is Spencer doing? You said he did a route but he isn't driving them is he? That is scary to hear about Cara hopefully everything is alright with her! So I already got the Valentines package. Thank you for sending it! Momma D. thank you so much for yours as well! You all saved my life! haha We were all starving because they had just moved we didn't have any food in our apartment so it was good to get a little more! :) Needless to say we did a bunch of shopping today!

So on Wednesday we got a special training from the guys who wrote Preach My Gospel. It was super good and only about 40 of us got the training. They are testing out some new things and they chose us to be the guinea pigs. I am so glad we got to go to it. Spencer when you see the District 2 movies watch for the Mission President he is in the episode about "going heaven-ward". He was the one to give my group the training. The training was such a success that they decided to do it the following day as well for a few other missionaries. Some missionaries from the first day went the following day and said it wasn't as good because they had already cut some stuff out. I was so lucky to have been able to go the first day!

Thanks for all that you guys do! I will talk to you next week! Love you all! I'll try and send pictures next time.
Elder Fuller