Hey Mom!
I have to email you later... sorry :( I just am out of time today. But I'll talk to you soon! Thanks for all the nice photos/letters/shoutouts!
I love you too,
Tab
Tim's letter........
Hey Dad!
Thanks for your letter. I'm really short on time today, but I will reply a little bit to your letter because I liked it - you asked some good questions.
Our new area is great! Most of the work we do, for some reason, is in Newark. I don't know yet if that is because I and my companion are familiar with those areas, or if it's because the people there listen to us, or what. But, that is were we spend a more part of our time. It's somewhat dangerous at night, but we stay in lighted areas where there are lots of people. Our pool of investigators is still small, but we have many potentials. We've done service for probably 100 people and we've had lengthy contacts with at least 50 people a week. The hard part is getting a set appointment with them that follows through. The demographics of the area are somewhat strange. There's Maplewood and South Orange, which are predominately white, middle and upper class families. Lots of Jews and Catholics. Thus, we don't see as many people there. In Newark, it is all over the place. People of the same country tend to group together, and it's funny because they usually take up an entire apartment building so depending on what building we go, there is where we will undoubtedly find people of that race or nationality. But there are large populations of Indians (Hindu), Russians and Ukrainians, Haitians, Ghanaians, Nigerians and Kenyans, and then usually the Caribbean countries congregate together (St Lucia, Trinidad, Jamaica, St Vincent, Grenada, Guyana, Surinam, Dominica, Barbados and I guess Haitians could fit in there too). People are from everywhere! It feels like a foreign land. I don't really contact the Indians much because they hardly ever speak much English and I just don't know much about what they believe. That's bad of me, so I will try to overcome that fear. And of course, the Russians and Ukrainians. They aren't very friendly, and almost none of them speak English. There are a lot of Central Americans in one area, and I have gotten my Spanish to a somewhat fluent level so I can converse with them. I can get a point across, tell them what we do and where our church is, talk about non-Gospel things (my gospel vocab is no that great) and turn it into a referral for Spanish missionaries. We had a small miracle last week that I'll talk to you about when I have more time. It came from just contacting a Spanish woman, who happened to be a member of the church. She spoke no English too! So that was neat.
My companion has been in New Jersey for almost 6 months now. He put his visa papers in last October I believe. And he's going to Brasilia. Ok I have to jet! I love you though, hope that helped you get an idea of what Newark is like. Look it up on google earth!
Have a super week!
Love,
Tab
(Well, actually, I did get a few other little emails too.....with fun comments.....Tabisms. If you know Tab, you know what I mean. Good stuff! I never feel cheated.)
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