July 20, 2016 A Lot of Learning

This last week and a half has been such a roller coaster. It's like last week we started off going straight into a set of loopty loops. Since Thursday its felt like we've just been climbing with a little drop every once in awhile until tomorrow, when we start zone conferences, we'll hit a big intense drop with a bunch twists and bends. It'll be fun, we're excited.

Probably the coolest part of this assignment is the time we get to spend with President and his family. It's super weird, we kind of feel like part of the family. Example 1, we went out to dinner for President's birthday and it felt almost like when we would go out to dinner as a family, other than when the conversation changed to planning for zone conference and President drew up how he wanted everything to be set up with chopsticks. Well I guess that's not too crazy, Dad sometimes would do things like that. Example 2, Elder Mackintosh is sick right now and when we went by the mission home yesterday Sister Smith went into concerned mom mode and made sure he had the right medicine and some fancy oils. Example 3, William Smith sometimes just comes and spends the day with us, over transfers he was with us for 2 1/2 days straight, day and night. He's like a third little brother, except he knows what I'm supposed to do as an assistant better than I do.

The ward here in New Rochelle is awesome. It's super diverse because there are some really wealthy areas in the boundaries and the southern border of our area is Mount Vernon which is like north Bronx. So with diversity like that, we are having some cool experiences on both sides of the spectrum. On Saturday we had breakfast with a Canadian family in a beautiful, massive house then the next day on Sunday we went out in Mount Vernon with this awesome member, who was one of the OG members in Jamaica, to go try to make contact with some less active members. Its pretty awesome.  

One of the weird things for me about this area is that it's an English Ward.  Sunday was the first Sunday in more than 60 weeks where I heard both sacrament prayers in English. Also the building here is a ton like the ones from back home. It's been quite the readjustment for both Elder Mackintosh & I.

We have a crazy schedule this next week. Tomorrow we have a zone conference with all the missionaries from the Bronx and North Manhattan (about 55), on Friday we have the New Missionary Meeting, then on Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday we have zone conferences and we finish the week off with MLC on Friday. It's going to be a lot of early mornings and a lot of planning but it'll be awesome. I have no clue what day I'll be able to write next week, we're not sure if we'll be taking Pday on Saturday or if we'll just have to squeeze our chores in when we can. I promise I'll write though.

Thanks for being awesome family! I'm sorry to hear about the house problems. I hope everything worked out. You're the best, I love you!

Con Amor,
Elder Sam McBride

Elder McBride with an Ecuadorian Buddy from Danbury