June 24, 2015 Here and Safe!

Hey what's up? 

I bet you weren't expecting to hear from me today.  Wednesday is my P-Day. I'm in the Inwood zone, Washington Heights area.  Inwood is the northernmost part of Manhattan and I hear it is like a little Dominican Republic. I'm pretty excited because I really didn't want to go to a place that speaks a lot of English for my first place.  My Trainer is Elder Buckley from Ogden.  From what I hear, he's a beast.

So everything went well traveling, except the Atlanta airport doesn't have any pay phones, which really distressed 2 of the sisters in our group, but we were able to use the delta help desk and a sunglasses store's phone so that everybody could make a quick call home. 

When we got to White Plains President and Sister Morgan were there waiting for us with 6 missionaries. The AP's, the office missionaries, and 2 native speakers that went straight from home to the field because their language is good enough and they were living on the East coast. After meeting everyone and getting our bags, we were whisked off to the mission home in the mission van. The mission home is this beautiful old White House that is really big.  You would love it, Mom. 

After we had a little health and safety lesson by Sister Morgan, we got our Ipads, but the AP didn't have the paper that we needed to have to set it up so It just sat there until this morning. These things are gonna be sweet.  I won't have to carry around very much at all. After the iPads we waited around until President Morgan and the other AP got back from waiting for 2 missionaries returning to the field. Turns out that flight tracker told them they had taken off, but really they were on the runway for 2 hours in Virginia waiting for some weather to clear. 

Sister Morgan made us Thanksgiving dinner because "We are so thankful for you". We are their last new group so she was really happy she doesn't have to make a Thanksgiving dinner every 6 weeks anymore. After dinner we had a little testimony meeting, then went to bed on some really small beds on the third floor. I slept better there than I've slept since I've left home, probably because I was running off of 4 hrs sleep.  

We got ready, then had our interviews with President Morgan where he told me who my companion is and where I'd serve. Then we took pictures, ate breakfast and left for the city for transfer meeting. When I got there, Chandler gave me a 4 limbed jumping monkey hug. He's a ZL. My trainer adores him. Then after the transfer meeting, Elder Buckley and I went to unpack, since its P-Day and now I'm here sitting in the lobby of a legit NY City apartment building writing you. We're about to go to a really "cheap" grocery store to get food.  We don't have a ton of members in the ward to feed us, so we get a lil extra money every month. We only have 2 appointments tonight with a member and with the 1st counselor of the ward, 1 in English, 1 in Spanish. I'm excited!  My comp is really good at Spanish.  He spoke a little bit of "Dominican Spanish" to me and its very interesting, so this is gonna be fun. 

I love you all! Wish me luck!

Con Amor,
Elder McBride