First Transfer- West Reading

hey guys,

so i got transferred and it was only to the other side of reading. we live in a town called wyomissing and have the west side of the area and my old companions have the east side. so my new companion is a greenie like me and so we are learning together. i wouldnt say im the senior companion but when it comes to decisions about what to do i usually have to make the final vote cuz i know the area and the people.

but its a really different area that we are in right now. we have half the inner city but then the whole rest of west reading and everything west of 5th street. but the fun part is we dont have a car and so weve been walking a ton everyday. also we have bikes so that is awesome. we didnt have them the first day so that sucked but the past two days weve been biking a lot and getting good exercise in. the first night we were riding back home from our appointment and it was so cool flying down the sidewalk and street, it was like moutain biking a little bit because the side walks are so jaggedy. but its funny cuz all the people say "oh cops" when we come cruising by cuz of our nice helmets and bikes.

our apartment is really cool. it is really nice and we have the whole set up of kitchen, living room, porch, bathroom(theyre fixing the ceiling though because it leaks), and another room for storage. its really sweet and the area is a lot nicer than before.

my companion is from bountiful ut and his name is Elder Bateman, and no hes not related to the batemans in our ward, but hes really cool guy and works hard so thats good. he likes to hunt to and play some sports too so i think its goin to be a good transfer.

but everything is goin great and the spanish is coming great. we had a really great week before this transfer so things are goin good. one funny story and then i got to go but so we have this family from puerto rico who is awesome and they are progressing really well. there are five kids a mom and a wife to one of the kids who all live in this house. but so they have had a lot of crazy stuff happen to em and weve had to help them through these but on tuesday elder merrill my old trainer calls me and is all guess what happened to brendas family? cuz me and elder bateman dont teach them cuz theyre not in our area. but so he tells me and at their appt it was just chaos the whole time. the son brian whos 18 was fighting with his wife and she ran out the door, he was freaking out and grabs a baseball bat as he goes out the door to find her, he grabbed the baseball bat because some gangsters are looking for him and want to fight him and he didnt have his pistol on him right then so he needed to grab the bat for protection. but the elders found out that the other son whos 12 and another daughter whos 15 are both on parole and the mom brenda wants to move to philly. so it was drama the whole time and they just sat back and tried to help but nothing really happened except a closing prayer. haha so that was pretty funny.

so thanks for your letter and i got the package slip but i just have to go pick it up somehow. my new address is 1100 Wyomissing Rd Apt 18B West Reading 19610. thanks for everything and keep working hard.

love you guys
norman