New York!

Hello from New York! 

Well I left the Provo MTC at 3:30AM Tuesday morning and arrived in White Plains, New York later that night. My Mission President, President Morgan was there at the airport with a couple other missionaries to welcome us. After getting our bags and everything we headed to the mission home which is in Scarsdale, New York. We got there and Sister Morgan had prepared a very good home cooked meal! Turkey, stuffing, corn, yams, mashed potatoes, etc. It was awesome! In total the New York New York North Mission welcomed 21 new missionaries so it was a pretty crowded house last night. After we all ate we had a testimony meeting and we all got to share our testimonies of the gospel and why we are on a mission. It was such a cool experience to be with 20 other missionaries that are just starting their missions as well. There are 7 of us missionaries that are here in this mission waiting for our visas but all the other missionaries were assigned to New York New York North originally. President and Sister Morgan are awesome!! They are from Sandy, Utah and they have been here for 1 year. Elder Larkin and I helped out around the house moving things and cleaning up and we got to spend sometime just relaxing with both of them also. They are the nicest! We stayed there last night at the mission home and transfers for the mission were today.

We spent the morning at the mission home, eating breakfast, studying, and taking pictures and then we all loaded up and headed into New York City. There were two transfer meetings. The first one was for all the missionaries that were serving in the city. We arrived at the Kingsbridge LDS Chapel in the Bronx and there were about 120 missionaries there. It was awesome to be in New York City! Everyone received their assignments and President Morgan spoke. After that, those not serving in the city headed to Upstate New York for the second transfer meeting. That included me, so we arrived in Ossining, New York and there were about another 120 missionaries there at that LDS Chapel. We all got our assignments and headed on our way.

I got my assignment to serve in a little city called New Paltz, New York. My companions name is Elder Atwood and he is from Payson, Utah. I've only been with him for a few hours now but he seems super awesome and I think we're going to work well together. I just arrived in New Paltz about 2 hours ago so I can't tell you much about it yet. But it is in Upstate New York and I think we're about 3 hours from NYC. It is pretty rural here and there are a lot of trees! We share an apartment with two other missionaries so that's fun. Before today there were only two missionaries serving in this city so now there are four.

I don't have too much more to report on because I just got here but I am very excited to start working and think I am really going to like it here. I hope everything is going well for everyone back home. Thank you to everyone for their support and love.

Until next week.

Love,

Elder Helvey

(New address is on the right side of the blog)

Kingsbridge LDS Chapel in the Bronx