First week in Boston!!

Hey all! I've made it here safe and sound! Boston is so much more beautiful than I could have ever even imagined!! Plus there's like a billion haitians here, so it's wonderful! I speak creole everywhere I go. Let's hop into the letter!

So my address is:

524 Hyde Park Ave Apt 6

Roslindale, MA 02131

I actually need someone to send me a letter! You have to prove you live in Boston to get a library card here. So feel free to write me... :)

Alright, let's just start off with the basics. I'm living in the super ghetto part of Boston, two of the guys in my district actually saw someone get shot last week. But I am right in the heart of the city! My companionship (I'll talk about that in a minute) covers Central Boston, East. Our section isn't nearly as dangerous as the other companions, so don't worry mom! But all of the Haitians here rule, and they love it when you speak creole to them (especially if you're white like me)

I'm in another trio companionship for the first 3 weeks of my mission. My trainer is Elder Robert Giordano and he's a good guy. He's from Wisconsin and he's been out for about 15 months. My other companion is Elder Skylar Deweese from Riverton! He's the one that knew who I was before I was coming out. He's such a funny guy, we're always laughing and joking about stuff. There's two other guys in our apartment, Elder Coulson who's from Idaho and Elder Bordeau who's actually a native haitian! He was called English speaking but the Creole program here is actually lacking missionaries so they changed him for now. Pretty awesome stuff. 

Sitting down ... Elder Giordano on the left and Elder Deweese on the right.
Standing ..... back Elder Coulson and Elder Bordeau.

First cool story of my mission: When Elder MacJanet, Sister Cope and I were flying here Sister Cope needed to go to the bathroom. She was gone for just second when she quickly came back to us two and said that there's a sister in the back of the plane that is really sick and wants us to give her a blessing. So both Elder MacJanet and I have never given a blessing, but we went back there and she sat down, we laid our hands on her head and gave her one. It was awesome. Just shortly after that, she went and sat down and fell right to sleep. We talked to her after we landed and she said she was doing so much better. Pretty awesome stuff.

So we were quickly greeted by my mission president, President Packard and his wife and family at baggage claim. (All of my stuff made it just fine!) He has an incredible family and he's just an awesome guy. His rules for the mission are just great. He doesn't have senior/junior companions, and he doesn't have expectations about how many people we meet with or baptize each month. He basically just told us to always do our best, always be expanding our teaching pool and he really emphasizes the use of members in teaching, finding, and helping investigators. Which is perfect! I love it. 

I was told that our apartment is the crappiest one in the entire mission, and I can say that that is without a doubt true. It's disgusting. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad we have a place to stay but it's pretty gross. It smells really bad, it's infested with mold and cockroaches, and we have 5 people in one apartment. 4 beds in one room, one couch in the study. So hopefully I don't spend a lot of time here specifically, but if that's the worst it's going to get i'll be just fine. 

So I was told that I will not have a single English speaking transfer on my mission! Which is awesome, because I can't understand a dang thing right now. I still love it, just because their Haitians...but a usual conversation goes like this. I'll walk up to someone, ask how their doing and then they'll respond with some question that I don't understand and then it just gets awkward so I smile and walk away. :) Like all the Haitians have said to me, l'ap vini. It'll come. They all say that soon I'll be speaking like a rat. (I guess that's a compliment. I dunno.) But the people are so awesome. The Creole ward doesn't have boundaries. Basically the rules are, if you're Haitian and you live in Boston you go to the Creole ward. It's pretty sweet. And like I figured before I came, the Haitian mission is a lot of strengthening members and a lot of service for the ward. Which is perfect in my opinion. It's really hard to tell if someone on the street is Haitian or just black... 

Haitian food is SO GOOD. We get fed by members every single night, and they always give us food on Sunday to take back to our apartment. Now, I love being fed by Haitians but here's the one problem. Haitians believe that the fatter you are the healthier you are, so they just STUFF the missionaries. It's VERY impolite to not finish all of the food that a Haitian prepares for you, not just what they put on your plate, and if you don't finish it all then odds are you won't be invited over for dinner again. They say that in the Bible it says men of god need to be fed, and if we don't eat all of their food than the Bible isn't true. So the church isn't true. So they threaten to not come to church on Sunday. But I really thought that the food I had here wouldn't be as good as the food I had in Haiti, but if anything it's even better. It's the same kind of rice beans and chicken that I ate in haiti, but we always have fried plantains, salad, and some kind of juice as well. If we have a Haitian dinner that evening i'll usually just skip lunch. And I'm definitely going to need to utilize my exercise time in the morning.... Haha. 

So unless you are a Haitian missionary in Brockton, MA you don't have a car. So odds are I'll never have a car on my mission, but that's totally fine with me! They gave us money for something called a "T Pass" the metro line in Boston is called "The T" and you get this one pass and you can pretty much ride everything. So I'm constantly on buses, subways, trains and things like that. I personally think it's awesome! Just a cool experience that I've never had before, and personally I wouldn't ever want to drive here in Boston... The roads are so skinny and there're so many one way roads! That, and there's no way to find your way around here without a map. That reminds me, mom and dad, you don't need to send that GPS. I don't want to walk around with anything valuable in my bag. We've got a map, so we're good. 

Oh and also, I can't use my camera unless it's P Day or we're in a safe spot. So odds are there won't be many pictures of us out and about. I took a picture of the sunset in Mattapan, MA (the super ghetto part) and Elder Deweese told me that I probably shouldn't do that because that was the neighborhood that he and his comp saw a blood trail for a solid couple blocks.... Yeah.... But really, don't worry about me. Our apartment is in a safe spot in Boston, and no missionaries here have had any trouble. None have even gotten mugged or anything. It also helps that we've got the big man upstairs on our side. 

Side note: There's definitely some dude getting wasted here in the library next to me. 

Church RULES. The Haitian creole ward is awesome! Everyone was talking to me and asking me where I was from and everything. And the Haitian kids here are just as cute as the one in Haiti. So we're great! Haha. Oh and mom! That reminds me! There are Haitian shops all around here that sell all kinds of stuff like the people who come up to you on the beach at Ocean View. Oh, and they sell Haitian Cola here too (the orange soda). So I bought a bottle of that yesterday! I was in heaven. But really, I just love the Haitians so much. They're all so wonderful and I love it here! 

Oh and since the Red Sox won on Wednesday the parties have not stopped at all here. I have ran into so many guys on the T that are just drunk, decked out in Sox gear and they always try to relate something to our church and then they tell me about Baseball and David Ortiz. It's hilarious. The people here are generally super nice though, and they respect the missionaries a lot. So that's good. 

I accidentally hit send, but I'm done writing. 

Love you all so much!!

Elder Halling