Letter #7: First Week in Boston!

Okay first of all im SO SORRY that it’s taken forever for me to email this week. The libraries were closed on Monday and then we didn’t have time yesterday so we finally made it over today!! ahhh im sorry I hope you weren’t freaking out mom. Dad... nice pink pants. You’re turning into grandpa Tantillo next thing I know you'll be coming home with a fresh pedicure. um email time is still stressful and short... sorry if I don’t reply to you personally but I really really do appreciate all the love and ill do as much as i can in the time that i have. but i definitely will reply to handwritten letters I PROMISE. also CONGRATULATIONS TANNER!!!!!!!!!!! super super super exciting that you'll be going to BYU!! love that place. you'll do great!

So here's the update. I'm serving in the Revere 1st ward. Its spanish speaking. not even joking right now. I am temporarily a spanish speaking missionary! hahah like WHAT i was shocked. so thats absolutely crazy and im still trying to process that one but its all good. so yah dad any advice you have about that would be much appreciated. i have two trainers though! we're in a trio. Hermana Hileman is from Colorado and she's 23. and then Hermana Brown is 24 and from Utah. they're both super short and different but i love them both. sister hileman has trained three times and all of her trainees have been visa waiters. we're serving in the same ward as a trio of elders and we work really closely with them. they have a visa waiter headed to brazil in their trio too.

I didnt get to my area until thursday though. i landed here on tuesday. it was just me and two other elders on my flight and we were greeted by President and Sister Packard. They're adorable and they have these great texan accents and were so excited to see us! so eventually we get all of our luggage together and head over to the mission home and meet up with everyone else that got in that day. we were on a different flight since we're visa waiters. sister packard sent you a pic of all of us. so yah we spent that night and all of wednesday at their house being trained and having interviews. we slept at the sister training leaders apartment. on wednesday they took us to the Boston Commons to do street contacts. they assistants to the president called it our "hazing". so that was reassuring. but it was. haha we got into random companionships and just walked around and started talking to people and they were rude mostly. but thats okay it was a good experience. and its not like that in my area at all. so i guess its a blessing im not serving there. 

Thursday we went to the transfer meeting where they assigned us to our companions and thats where i met hermana brown and hileman! and then we've been at work ever since. all of the members here in the spanish ward are so friendly and they hug us and kiss us on the cheek and try to feed us way too much food. last night we were at a dinner appointment with the elders and freaking elder freeman kept telling the lady that i wanted more food and so she kept bringing tacos and i was going to die but i couldnt say no cause thats rude and i was mad at him. 

Even though its spanish speaking here i still run into a lot of portuguese which is cool. and one of the elders in the trio, elder sousa, is actually from brasil so he's offered to practice with me and help me keep it up. about half of our lessons so far have been in english too. it just depends on what they prefer to speak. and all of the kids speak english cause of school. but its been interesting. i can actually understand most of whats being said cause its so similar to the portuguese. its just saying something myself that is the issue. i tried so hard to forget spanish in the mtc cause it was messing with my pronunciation of everything!! haha so now ill have to relearn all of that. 

We live in this po-dunk little apartment as sister hileman calls it. and all three of our beds are crammed into this tiny room but i love it! i love all of the buildings here cause they're all that new england style and i just cant get over how cool they are. theres so much character. we have a car which is super nice cause its the first time that this area has had one. hermana hileman says we're getting a lot more done in a day than they were able to just walking and on the bus. except she got a parking ticket our first day out with it and we've already had to have it jumped cause she left the emergency lights on all night. she was having a rough day haaha she also clogged our kitchen sink trying to dump a ton of rice down it. so we've made friends with our landlord cause we keep having to call him to do things like jump our car and fix our sink. 

I want to tell you about this lady! We decided to go visit her a couple of days ago cause she hasnt had contact with the missionaries in a while. She’s inactive but when we showed up at her house she was SO HAPPY to see us. she invited us in and cooked us this amazing meal and basically just told us that she's ready to make a change in her life. she's been exploring a lot of other churches and has realized that she couldn’t find the happiness and the truth that she once had. shes had a rough life though and is really struggling. she had a little five year old daughter and the father of her daughter lives with them. so last night she asked us to bring the elders over to give them all blessings. so we all went over and each of the trio gave a blessing to them. jenny recieved hers in portuguese, the father in spanish, and the daughter in english. and that was SO COOL! gospel is true in every language. but jenny and her daughter are leaving the country soon for about a month. she says she's going to go to church while shes gone. so the elders are going to work with Leo (the dad) in the meantime. He was close to being baptized several years ago and we dont really know what happened with that. but i know their whole family is going to be just fine! they'll get through all of this. 

Oh haha also i am now the ward chorister/pianist (sister hileman and i switch off) and also the primary pianist. the primary program is this sunday so ive gotta learn all of those songs by then... yeah. haha i love it though we practiced this past sundayand all of the kids are so excited and sing with their whole hearts! its inspiring :) sister hileman said she was praying for a piano player to be transferred here so that she wouldn’t have to do it haha. 

Alright well I LOVE YOU ALL!!!!! Im so thankful for this opportunity i have to be serving a mission right now. its hard but its wonderful and there is nothing better or that i would rather be doing right now. ill write again on Monday :) miss you and keep safe.