Oct 19

No mom i havent been to the mission home what they
do normally is you send stuff
to the mission home they stick a little sticker on
 it with my address and the
mail man takes it to where i live because the mission
 home is a long way away we
can't go there. unfortunately the mailmen got upset
 at having to reforeward all
the mail the the mission home gets so now we get mail
 roughly once a week at
zone/district meetings the assistants bring it the all
 the individual zone
leaders and the zl's give it to the district leaders
and the dl's give it to
each missionary right now the zl's have my package they
 told me about it a few
days ago i just haven't gotten it yet. and about the
 whole jackekt thing i just
decided i don't really care anymore if i get cold i get
 cold if i'm warm i'm
warm i'll find out how cold it gets this winter than
next winter i'll know
whether or not i need anything... its really kind of
amusing this whole combined
letter thing. it makes me laugh... your goofy email thing
 with the word wrap
thing thats a little frustrating.... i couldn't open the
 window big enough to
read the whole thing with one i copied and pasted into
word then shrunk it down
but the other it wouldn't let me do that so i just had
to scroll back and forth
the whole time... oh no i'm running out of time... umm
well everything going
cool here we had a mission conference yesterday that was
 pretty cool and after
that we had a fireside for the rest of the night we didn't
do much missionary
work at all yestarday because elder Pace from the 70 came
to talk to us so that
was pretty cool. umm. i'm not sure what else one of the
members already told us
she wants to feed us for thanksgiving she way cool she
always plays pranks on
the new missionaries its way fun :) but yeah everythings
 going good umm i can't
think of anything else and i need to go write brigette
still i don't know if it
will extend my time or not... so i'll talk to you next week!

Cameron.

Sept 30

hey i sent an email last week i don't know what
 happened i sent one to you and
one to brigette too but oh well... thats so cool
 that there's two full time
missionaries in the family now :) i would tell you
exactly what time it is right
now but i don't have my watch i've been way out of
 it today i don't know why...
i'm doing great we had transfers today and i'm still
 with Elder Godfrey six more
weeks with him then we're pretty much certain he's
gone. thats kinda ridiculous
about alex's teacher i reallyy don't think thats a
 very good way to teach. but i
guess i really don't have much say in the matter...
i hope it gets better
though. we had two baptisms this last saturday we
 baptized kayla finally and
this guy named jose they're both way cool kayla knows
 and has known that the
church is true, jose has a pretty strong testimony
 but he loves learning about
new things and he is almost always reading the book
 of mormon so its really
cool. then last night we had a cottage meeting at a
 members house with one of
our investigators and he had all these weird questions
 like he pointed out how
in the bible it says that cain was kicked out or
cast out and then like two
verses later it says in his new land he found a
wife so the question is where
did the wife come from if cain was the first to be
 cast out? it was crazy so we
answered it with the pearl of great price it
basically says it was a daughter of
seth. but like he just had a bunch of questions
 like that and it was really cool
we haven't given him a baptismal date yet but we're
 going to go for sometime in
october he basically knows the church is true but he
just doesn't under stand
why so we're just answering his questions that he
 has. usually our day consists
of about two investigator visits a few member
 visits and an hour of street
contacting we almost never tract we've practically
been told not to tract just
because its so ineffective our mission right now is
 trying to think of new
creative ways to find people we every once in a
while play guitar and street
contact we'll play dominoes because the dominicans
love to play dominoes so we
play a llittle and then start talking about the
gospel its sweet :) but yeah we
almost never tract the weather is starting to get
 colder its funny my companion
is from canada so he loves it but the other three of
us are from mesa phoenix
and las vegas so we always want the windows closed
i personally really don't
care right now because it still feels good i guess
 you could call this like fall
or autumn something like that.... but it does feel
 good one thing i need is a
good jacket i don't want to buy one here cuz it will
 be way too expensive it
would probably be cheaper to buy one and send it to me
 let me know how much
money i have on my debit card. i don't want to use it
 but i want i at least know
if i can use it if i need to. just send the package
that you have the longer you
wait the more stuff i'm going to ask for and the more
expensive its going to be.
oh ok so we have cockraoches in our apartment its not
 bad but everyonce in a
while... so last night we got home and on was on my
desk so i just smashed it
and left it there cuz i didn't want to do anything with
 it. so this morning i
went in and turned the light on and it jumped up and
 started running around!! so
i sprayed it with raid and threw it away but it was
weird. i hope you guys get
this letter i'm doing fine everythings going good i
hope everything goes well
with getting brigette to the mtc the mc is going to
be pretty interesting right
now with the swine flu again. oh ok cool story. i'm
getting closer to being
bilingual i was at the lds employment center we do
service there we like
translate stuff and make phone calls. but the lady
had me call some one who said
they spoke and understood enlish and so i was like
ok cool whatever. well she
answered the phone and i could tell she did't speak
 english so i tried to talk
to her in english and she just didnt get it so i
started talking in spanish she
aparrently understood spanish she started blabbering
about how a bunch of stuff
but it was really cool :) so yeah the spanish is still
 coming along it takes a
lot of practice though and a lot of saying t
hings wrong. last week we learned
that constipation in spanish means you can't breath.
 that was weird... but
anyways i think thats about it so i'll write you again
next week i love you all

Elder Shumway

Sept 16

Ok so I'm going to start off by saying that i
 love being a misionary in new york
but there is no way i would live here...
its great to visit but no way... so we
moved a couple of weeks ago and our shower
was pretty much garbage... like it
looked great it was newly remodeled and everything
 it looked great you turn the
tub on water works fine... but when you turn the
 shower on its pretty much
garbage... it was like a mist like impossible to
 shower type of mist so i took a
little thingy out of the showerhead and it was a
little better then we decided
to just take the whole showerhead off and it was
almost worth fighting with i
just took baths but i'm one of the shortest ones
 in the apartment and the other
elders can't fit in the tub so we told the
superintendant and she was like that
fine thats normal we're like no its not so we
called the mission office and they
called the super and the super was like there's
 a new water conservation law and
thats how the showers have to be now and the
 mission office sister farnsworth
was like thats a lie get some one to go fix the
 shower. it was so awesome so now
our shower works and our superintendant pretty much
 hates us. so let me see what
else happened oh yeah we were supposed to have a
baptism on the 5th of sept. and
we got verything ready everyone was there except
 kayla who we were going to
baptize. so we waited about an hour which is like
spanish standard time and then
i took another elder with me to go talk to see her
 and help her with like her
baby and everything and she basically had the worst
 day of her life on saturday.
she was late getting home from a meeting she had so
she had to rush to get ready
her baby was crying for like 3 hours and she couldn't
 figure out why the 5 year
old that she takes care of was crying she had no idea
why her aunt and mom both
had to go help her cousin who is about to give birth her
 husband had to go to
work she lost the money the she was going to use to get
 a taxi and her phone
died so she couldn't even call us to tell us. so it was
kind of a bad day for
her... since then she went to new jersey for a while and
we haven't seen her
since then she pretty much fell of the face of the
 planet... we don't know she
won't answer our calls she's never at home oh yeah and
 we talked to her brothers
mother-in-law and she told us that kayla's 19 year old
 sister in the dominican
republic is lost and no one knows where she is so
basically satan will not let
kayla get baptized and its kinda annoying so we know
 that once she does get
baptizd she'll be a verry faithful member for the
 rest of her life and her newly
born son will be the most incredible missionary ever :)
at least thats what
we're telling ourselves :) so yeah we've had a lot of fun
 recently oh on
saturday i ate more rice than i ever have before and
 probably ever will again we
had three dinner appointments on saturday the first
 one gave us rice beans and
chicken the second lady Daisy gave us beans chicken
and rice. the last lady gave
us arroz abichuela y pollo or rice beans and chicken.
so it was pretty much a
fun day :) i'm so excited for lissa's baptism i can't
wait to see pictures. its
such a huge moment for her i wish i could be there to
see it :) hey i've got a
question... who if any one is going to post our emails
 after brigette leaves? on
the little blog thing? oh so recently our apartment has
 been getting way
interested in geocaching but we can't go online to see
 the website or anything
so we can't really do any we have a gps and eerything
 but we can't get the
coordinates or anything like that so its kinda lame
but oh well we'll figure out
something to do. we just like want to do it on a pday
or something like that
because we aren't supposed to leave our area so the
only places we can go are
like mcdonalds. but we have parks in our areas so
we're pretty sure theres at
least one geocach somewhere oh um if some one from
new york calls answer it. i
gave your phone number to a lady named glennys she's
 way nice she gave us like
four boxes of cereal last week and two gallons of milk
 and just a ton of food
she always feeds us she speaks english obviously or i
 wouldn't tell you to
answer it. she said she called and no one answered and
 i guess she like got
offended by the answering machine cuz it says "we just
 don't want to pick up the
phone right now." she told me thats just rude. i'm like

 sorry its the truth :)
they probably all watched the phone ring when you
 called too :) she's such a
nice lady though :) now i think thats it i'm pretty
 sure... ok have a nice week
i hope everything goes well.

Elder Shumway

Sept 9

Dear Family,

I'm glad you all had a wonderful time
 taking brigette to the temple :) I'm
 doing pretty good here just trudging
 along there's not much new stuff
 happening. we've got two solid baptismal
 dates right now and we'll hopefully have
 another one soon the problem is she's
 been bptized already by another church and she
believes that that church had the authority
 to do it so thats the problem we're
facing now... but we taught her the word
 of wisdom last night and she accepted
it without even questioning it it was
really cool :) i have no idea what we're
going to do today we're going to mcdonalds
 or burgerking i think but i don't know for
 sure. i need to get a new watch its a good
 thing they sell watches on pretty much
every corner :) i can't think of anything
 else .... i hope eerythings going good
 and i hope brigette is getting ready to
leave :) don't forget to take a towell
 i forgot to bring one they sell them at
 the mtc but yeah just try to remember
 the stuf you'll need other than just
 the stuff on the list :) like a towell...
 i love you all i hope you're doing well
i'll write you again next week :)

Elder Shumway

Sept 2

We've been having issues with the email for the last couple of weeks,
Cameron was sending them on Wed, but we weren't getting them until Friday!
I may have missed a couple of postings!!


Thats awesome about jenny! :) she needs to learn about the
gospel! thats what the gospel does it flls those holes that
 people have if she's looking for something like that she'll
find it in teh gospel, but if it takes too long she'll try
 to find it somewhere else. so lets go! :) i'm so excited about
Brigette thats so awesome :) thats going to be so cool to have
 us both be onmissions at the same time i wish i could be
there for her going through the temple though. i did get
the emails from cory and holden i'll write them back if
i have time today but i don't want to email them so it
will be hand written in case i forget to tell them make
 sure they understand the whole email thing... i can get
 emails from whoever. it doesn't mater so they can email
 me from their email addresses i just can't respond to
them through email i have to hand write them. which is
a little lame. but oh well oh and the package thing
 oh wait! i need to tell you all about mail. i don't
 remember if i told you or not but the mail men at the
mission home are complaining about how they deliver all this
mail to the home and then the next day its all in the
mail box again going somewhere else. so we don't get mail
 except for like zone conferences mission conferences so
 like twice a cycle. so its a little lame... i could give you my
apartment address but i don't really feel like it...
 so anyways :) oh yeah we moved this week thats about
all we've done we moved from the sixth floor to the
first floor of the same building. it was a little bit
 involved :) but we mostly moved in i had to take out
 those screws that are impossible to turn left that
was pretty interesting :) it was a first for me :)
 but yeah everythings going good i have awesome
room mates its always a party when were all four together
its so much fun. i don't know what else to say hmm.....
i don't know i have a bunch of letters to write today
or maybe just three i haven't decided yet...
maybe seven. i don't know we'll see how much time
 i have... oh yeah! yesterday we had our interviews
 with president smith. well most people did i was on a
slpit with one of my roommates and the two of us took
 president smith to an appointment with us he neer went
 on a mission so he does this to like see what
its like i guess i don't know... but it was fun he was
 so uncomfortable that was like all he said the whole
 time was how he really stood out. which is totally
true we really stand out we kinda live in the ghetto
 so for us to walk around in suits and ties we kinda
stick out a little bit but you just kinda get used to it
after a while :) but it was really fun thats why i didn't
 get an interview because we had to leave for an
apppointment so yeah but it was pretty cool.
especially because he doesn't speak spanish so i got
to translate for him it was cool. we got a free
 stereo this week its almost exactly like the one
in my room we visited a member who didn't want it
anymore so we offered to throw it away
and as we were going we thought i wonder if this
still works so we took it home and it works great
 so we now have an awesome stereo in our sweet new apartment!
i think thats about it if i think of something else i'll
 write you a letter later today after i write to
 everyone else. thanks for everything!

elder shumway

OK So it's been along time since Cameron actually left, but I haven't put up any pics about the airport and Brigette took a gajillion pictures for me, so here are some of them.


Getting out of the car. Brenton came along to see him off.




It was a long wait at the airport, you have to get there 2 hours before and then there's nothing to do but look at each other.



We left so early that Cameron didn't get to eat breakfast, and Cameron ALWAYS eats breakfast, so Darci treated him to some morning Pizza!!




Since she was just barely pregnant, she needed to eat too!!




This is the "Girly" camera that I bought for Cameron. I honestly thought it was a darker blue. I obviously was mistaken. We told him to tell all the other missionaries that his girlfriend gave it to him.






Everyone got hugs before he left, He did hug Brigette too, but she didn't give up the camera.













Then you have to go through all the ropes, even though you are the only one getting on the plane.....










Then the long walk to the boarding area...



We went up to the top of the parking garage to see him off



And here's his plane taking off


And in the air



WE MISS YOU CAMERON!!!!

July 29

ok so today was kinda fun. we went to the library
to do our e-mail and the server at salt lake was
down so we couldn't do it. but then we found out
that you're only allowed to use a computer once
a day at the library so we were pretty much hosed...
but now were in like some sort of travel agency and i
don't know how much its going to cost or whatever like
that but yeah... we went to applebees today it was good.
 we go out to eat too much i think but its probably
just me... oh thank you for asking questions so i have
 something to answer... :)
i'm doing good. my companion is american but he is from
canada. he says he loves it there and it sounds pretty
 cool. he's from over by the rocky mountains so we
can relate there. i am definately getting better at
 understanding the language my "test" is this one
 lady named maria like half the city. shes a really nice
mexican lady that feeds us a lot if i can get to where i
 can understand her i'll bee good. she talks way too fast.
 so yeah but i'm getting to where i can at least follow what
shes saying. were teaching two people right now one just gave
birth so she can get baptized it was pretty sweet she's
 like two weeks overdue so we gave her a blessing and
that night she goes into labor it was pretty sweet.
plus her aunt has been listening to the lessons and now
 maybe her husband will too. then there's maria reyes
 who knows everything and is now getting ready
to get baptized. oh and we just started teaching
this mexican guy last night named jugo which is litterally 
translated to juice. but he's awesome he said he was
walking down the street thinking about God and the sisters
 stopped and talked to him and after they left he was
like " what just hapened i just gave them my phone number
 and addresss and everything." so it was pretty sweet. right
now new york is pretty amazing but i wouldn't want to
 live in the city its not bad but i would just want
 to make it quieter... but its really cool theres like
random parks that are really nice. pretty much every
 building in my area has about 6 floors so none are
 huge theres occasionally one with like 15 but most
have 6 the elevators are nasty if they have one but
 the people are so nice. i haven't gone to the temple
 yet or seen it and we didn't go to the yankee's game
last week or whenever it was but were going to try for
the next one on wed before 6 :) its not asking much...
but yeah there's actually another one this
cycle so i may go in my first six weeks. :) please give
 them my address i got a letter from the Hallstroms a
couple days ago it apparently takes a really long time
to get here but yeah give out my address i can't send
 e-mails to anyone but i can read them from any one
so you can do that too. thats crazy that Holden is
an elder! :) i still remember feeling so old when he was
blessing the sacrament for the first time. oh how's brenton
doing with his papers? i know hes moving but he still needs
to get that done. if he doesn't i'll smack him. in a couple
years... :) thats funny recently we've been eating about
 every 2-3 hours too :) especially on sundays :) dominicans
are so nice! oh we were fed by this lady from peru it was
SO good! ok i was thinking today theres three people that i
could call ma in this area. three different ladys each one
is from a different country. its so cool this is probably
the only place that could happen. i've got a flag for
 the DR and mexico. oh i bet you had some nutso parties
going on in the neighborhood on sunday! i heard that
mexico won the world cup like 5-0 thats crazy one of
the recent converts from mexico said he could have gone
to the game but he would have had to miss church so he
 didn't go :) we were so happy! its been raining a lot here
 its not hot just way humid and my comp doesn't know the
difference... its just sweat... but yeah i like the rain but
i wish it would thunder more. oh it just did... :)
 ok well i think thats it but i still have a bunch more
emials to go through so i may write more after all the others. :)


Elder Shumway