Dear Mom,
Happy birthday this week!
My new address is:
2029 Bergenline Ave Apt.#3
Union City, NJ 07087
I'm in a place called Union City. Something special about this area is that it's a walking area. :) My area is from 15th street to 30th street. It's about 15 streets wide and 15 streets long. A very small area. Don't worry. I hasn't been too cold. My temperature clock thing tells me that it's about 37 degrees in the morning. During the day it gets to low 40's. I've been told that it'll get colder. Snow hasn't been here yet either. I'm sure it'll get colder but all my gear is keeping me warm. The Mr. Mac jacket is really warm and I love those finger gloves that I bought. For Christmas, several people gave me scarfs, so I'm stacked on those. I also received some hats. Although I'm not a huge fan. Today I want to go get some ear muffs. There are some really nice ones that I've seen that other missionaries have. They cost like a buck. I'm excited for this area. We're also in a ward. Finally! The ward boundaries are split up between two other companionships besides us. So there are six of us total. We're very close to the Hudson front. Union City is on somewhat of a hill. On the eastern edge of my area, there is a cliff which overlooks a small section of a town called Hoboken, then it's the Hudson front and NYC. We can walk to the edge of our area to this cliff, and I'm pretty sure that it's there that they take all the pictures of the NYC skyline. Way awesome!! I would send you a picture, but I'm trying to figure out something with my camera. It's having troubles charging the battery. It won't stay on for three seconds before it tells me that the battery is exhausted. I'm trying to figure it out. Hopefully it's a battery issue. I might have to go get it checked out and maybe buy a new battery. For now, I can't really take any pictures. As soon as I get it back up and running. I'll take a few pictures of the NYC skyline and send them! I have to tell you, seeing the NYC skyline where we were is really cool. There's nothing like it. Remember that feeling when you reach the 'G' on the mountain in Utah and when you finally get up there, you look out over the valley?? It's that same type of feeling. When we travel to NYC, we'll have to come into NJ and look at it.
By the way, I remembered about halfway through this last week what I sent Kelsie for Christmas. I can't believe I forgot! Haha!
The change to Union City has been interesting. I still miss Plainfield though. I think it was a good change though. I needed it. I was getting to accustomed to the area. It'll still take some time to change to this area. In Plainfield, I had the whole Branch in my area. Now I only have 1/3 of the members in my area. Getting to know the city is a little different than getting to know a driving area. In my past areas, you get to know the area as you follow the GPS to members' houses and investigators' houses. Here, we don't use a GPS really, so we just walk. I'm still just following my companion around the area. I've actually been doing pretty well with getting to know the area so far. I'm not so disoriented now. Also, we can see the Empire State Building from almost anywhere in our area. It lights up red and green at night. I'm going to like Union City a lot. I just still have to get to know the members and investigators. Something else interesting about Union City, is that the chapel here is actually one of the chapels I found on Google Earth before my mission after I got my call. I don't know if you remember when I was looking up different places in New Jersey like where LDS chapels were and when I found Linden, NJ. Well, I found the Union City chapel on there too. So it's really cool to be able to actually be here now. The chapel is actually in my area too! It's pretty close to our apartment. The chapel's address is 2501 New York Ave, NJ if you want to look it up. It has two levels of underground parking. The first level of parking is the one you will see under the chapel when you look it up.
Nothing too interesting happened this week. I've just been getting to know everyone in the area this past week. We met with a lot of members so that I could introduce myself. It's really cool, because some people think that I'm new in the mission for some reason. But, when I start talking to them they say, "Wow, you already speak Spanish perfectly!" in Spanish. That's a good sign that I'm doing pretty good on Spanish! Then I tell them that I've been on my mission for about a year. It's cool to think that I've already been on the mission for about a year. For me, it's gone pretty quick. Now it's the countdown. I'm liking the mission a lot though. All the departing missionaries have a bitter sweet feeling about going home. They're definitely ready to go see their families again and do 'normal' things again, but at the same time, they just love to teach people about the Gospel. I'll be the same way. It'll be a very bitter sweet time.
Well, that'll about do it for this week. Love you mom! Happy birthday. Talk to you soon.
-Justin
Q of the W:
1. What is your companion's name and where is he from?
Elder Romrell. He's from Idaho Falls. He's really cool. His trainer is actually my trainer! We had the same trainer! So we're 'brothers' in the mission. He's a lot of fun. It's going to be a good transfer!
2. What is your new apartment like?
It's small. A little messy and unorganized. We're working on it though. We're cleaning a little bit everyday. It's also a 2 man. We're the only two in the apartment. Not as fun as a 4 man, but we can focus better.
3. How was the diner you ate at last week?
We went to a place called Friendly's. It's a New Jersey chain diner. Weird. But it was pretty good. Not too expensive. It reminded me more of like Ihop or Denny's then a real diner. I think you have to go to the expensive diners to get the real 'diner' feel.
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