Welcome to New York: the land of people, pizza and patience! Nov 10, 2025

Hola todos!!!!

This will be one of my longer emails, so just let yourself brace for the worst. But buckle down!

K so Wednesday morning on the 5th, I left the CCM! Didn't sleep that night cause we were all a bit anxious ( those of my casa that was still there) so we played hide and seek and the scary flashlight game for like 3 hours instead! So great. Then we went to the airport, there I said bye to hermana jack who was in my district and literally the GOAT!! It was legit like saying bye to my sister, hard. But me and 6 other missionaries all went the rest of the day travelling! From long flights of resisting Satan to watch movies, to eating burger king on the airport floor, it was a great day!!

Arrival: k so flying from Orlando Florida, to new york city was so sick, we flew straight at the city, so you couldn't tell when you were gonna get there. We watched from ocean to flat ground, to slowly more populated, then boom! We were over the city. One of the craziest moments of my life. It just felt awe-inspiring and overwhelming, we flew over central park and downtown Manhattan and there was silence. Then we passed the city to go to the airport and we all started cheering, great ppl and flight ahah!

We landed and our Ap' s met us ( they are like the leader missionaries of missionaries) they're so cool and helped us get our luggage, and then we turned around and president and his wife were right there! They gave us big hugs and it was so so so cool to finally meet them. They're incredible human beings! So we all put our luggage in this big bus and then the ap said to us, "because it's NYC we have a rule here, talk to everyone" so quite literally every SINGLE person you had to talk to and invite to church. So you have to stand in front of them and move in there way to talk to them, those people are going a mile a minute! Very hard to grab there attention, like it was wild! So we did that all the way back to the mission chapel for 45 min and then had pizza and a meeting and a goodnight sleep in a hotel! Best sleep of the week.

Next day was transfer meeting on thursday, I'm assigned to the Bridgeport area and my comp is named elder swallow!! Bridgeport is on the outside of the city but has a beautiful view of the city and is way more chill, which honestly i need for my first bit. My comp is just like me in so many ways!! He's so nice, fun, courageous and a goof! We've had a ton of fun and I know we will be great friends!! He like did have saminilla poisoning so he fainted twice and threw up, but it's ok! We're all good here

Spanish is wild. Wild. We went out to the streets and you have to a) stop people to talk b) do it all in Spanish. Very humbling, very fast. Some quick highlights cause this is already mega long;

- getting my first person to say yes,and then not knowing how to respond because I had never got to that point

- having a homeless guy dance and sing at me

- discovering we have a FIREESCAPE in our apartment

- going to a Spanish market, and target.

- going to a beach ( the edge of the area, not really a beach but it made me happy to call it that)

- discovering for p days we get ' manahatten' days where we go in and explore the city and sight see!! We also get to go there for christmas!!!!! No matter what.

Lastly Sunday was so special. So on Saturday I met Dora and meyer! A son and mother from lima peru! The son ( Meyer) was baptized this past year. And is in a wheelchair. His mom got baptized on Sunday. She's about 94 years old and 4'5 she's adorable. When she sits on the bench at the church her feet dangle and she just sings to herself and swings her legs. I got to baptized her and we couldn't understand each other but she was smiling the whole time, and was so happy! We had a translator tell us what she said, but she bore testimony of God's love after. Also their family hates the church and has already kicked out the son of the house so he's been sleeping outside in the cold in a wheelchair for about a year, so him and his 94 year old mom will be homeless pretty much and are deciding wether to get help from the church or go back to Peru. So hard. I love them to death and I cried a lot yesterday.

Spiritual thought: faith is real. To have faith it needs to be excersized, faith is hard work but to be able to apply it, is beautiful, even if you have horrible life circumstances like Dora does, you can move forward in faith. With this faith, life becomes blessed through all the hard work!! It's extremely humbling! Faith=power! Keep finding ways to show and exercise faith in your lives!

I love you all, sorry for the long email, but it was my first of this beautiful mission! Everyone in my area feeds us and doesn't take the word no as an answer!! I know I'm here for a reason!! Have a wonderful week everyone, let me know anything individually I should add to my prayers!!

Lots of love, Elder Spencer

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