Rain and Fall in New Jersey (October 1, 2008)

Dear Family,

So another week has come and gone over here. It is really great here and I am loving every minute of here in New Brunswick. We are working really hard and we set up a baptism date with Edin (he is from Honduras) for the 18th of October. The missionaries have been working with him for over a year now and he is finally getting baptized. The thing that has been holding him back is that he is not married to his esposa; but he is going to get married on the 10th and then baptized the next week. He is a really nice guy and has been coming to church for the past 8 months he just is not married, but that is getting fixed soon. He is kinda hard to understand when he speaks along with all other hispanics from Honduras; they seem to mumble and drop of the ends of their words but I am getting better at understanding everybody.

We have a goal of three baptisms this transfer so we are working really hard to make that goal. We are teaching a girl named Alirice and she is really coming along well. She lives below the ward mission leader, and we think that she is really for baptism but we need to talk to her parents about it first. We just found out that her mother was baptized in Mexico about 20 years ago, so we are also trying to get her to come back to church with us. Hopefully Alirice will be baptized this coming month also, we'll see. We have a couple other people that we are also considering but we will see how that all pans out.

The work is great and nothing can stop it. We have ridden our bikes in the rain for the past week and it is really fun. We get wet but we are never cold because we are riding fast and it is not a very cold rain at all. The constant humidity keeps us pretty warm and the transition from hot houses, to humid outside, to back into hot houses keeps it interesting. I am having the time of my life. My trainer is really cool. He is from Boulder Creek, CA and we both work really hard together. He knows this area really well and that really helps so that we don't waste time trying to find places. Our area is pretty small and takes in New Brunswick and parts of North Brunswick. There is a huge contrast from downtown Brunswick to where we usually work which is in all of the run down houses just south of downtown. For example there is a childern's hospital downtown which is reall nice and is you go 10 blocks away you go into the ghetto where the only white people around are us on our bikes.

It is reall great here and I am learning lots and having a great time.
Love,
Elder Haslam