Here is the good news!!
We got a few new investigators!
We taught a lot of lessons!
We had an awesome stake conference!
Here's the not so good news:
My knee is pretty jacked up.
Our new investigators are kind of crazy
This cycle is almost over and it went SO fast We haven't taken the sacrament for two weeks and it's making all the difference.
So here's how our week went:
Thursday: we weekly planned according to president Morgans request. It was AWESOME.... but it took forever. We didn't even finish by the time we were supposed to meet Jensen and Hoyos for interviews. We met them at cold stone and I had cake batter ice cream for the first time in probably a year. It was a beautiful day outside too! So so warm and wonderful.
After that we went to a dinner appointment with a member named Jess!
Her husband isn't a member and she said hopefully we will be able to start teaching him really soon. He loves coming to church, so that's awesome.
Then we had an appointment with the elders. They are over the singles ward and they have a less active who just had a baby with his girlfriend so they are trying to pass them off to us in the family ward. His girlfriend and his mom are our new investigators! They are really sweet and they ask great questions. They are in the projects and sometimes it's hard to motivate people to change and make their life better in that situation.
Friday: we finished planning and then went with Liliana to find long enough skirts for church. We found some good things for her at
forever21 actually! Then a single sister took us out to dinner at a Chinese restaurant. She never cooks and always eats out, so she knows all of the best places to go :) after that we went to the church because we got invited to teach activity days. We talked to the girls about going on missions. I am afraid they've all decided to NOT go now... But we tried :) no swimming, no jeans, and no horseback riding was just too much for all of them :) they were cute though. They asked what we do if we don't get along with a companion so I asked them what they did when they didn't get along with their siblings. I was definitely NOT prepared for those answers! Sit on them, lock them in the bathroom, ignore them, etc. it was so funny.
Then we left to meet with Breena, our other investigator. It was an awesome lesson and she ended up moving her baptism up from the 31 to the 10 of May (: she is so excited. And ready.
Saturday: we taught Albert. He's quite the interesting person. He is a security guard at the temple, and a non member. He lives in the Bronx, so the missionaries there really should teach him. But...he doesn't like any of them. When I got here I was really worried that he wouldn't like me and we wouldn't be able to meet with him.. But he does :) so we taught him the plan of salvation. Rewind to Thursday. As we were planning for Albert according to presidents request, we decided that we needed to set a goal for him to be baptized. We set June something or other. Fast forward to Saturday, Edward tells us he wants to be baptized by the end of the year! To my knowledge that's the first time he has talked about it at all :) he has so much faith and desire to know for himself. Oh,interesting note. One Wednesday morning he was working and this tall, white haired man came in to the temple. He talked to Albert for a good 15 minutes about the church and finding answers and all that. Don't worry... It was just L Tom Perry!
NBD! Albert had no idea.
The rest of Saturday was spent doing lookups. It was actually pretty fun to be out doing the dirty work all day. :) we found the first coco helado cart do the year! It's like the best ice cream/slushi stuff.
Ever. So that made our day! Along with some REALLY warm weather. We may or may not have taken a power nap on a bench in the projects. :) don't worry.. It was only 5 minutes.
Saturday night was stake conference. I don't know why I didn't go to more of those at home... It was AWESOME. elder Smith from one of the 70s was there. He shared some awesome stories about missionary work and doing small things that make big differences. He talked about visiting with people in the army. One of the members of a ward where he presided as bishop was there. The soldier told him to tell the first presidency that the Middle East is ready for the gospel... He and some other members had taught and baptized four people over there already :)
He started his next story by saying that one day president Uchtdorf called him. Elder Smith was in the senate at the time. Anyway, Uchtdorf told him that the saints in Italy. He said that they weren't able to enjoy total freedom of religion there and he wanted elder smith to fix it! So some things were pulled and elder smith and president Uchtdorf went to Italy. They talked to someone pretty high up over there about it. They talked about it and one of the assistants to the leader said that he had been to temple square and it was beautiful. He wanted them to build one of those in Italy ;) then they talked some more about alliances between Italy and the United States.
That same assistant said that when he had visited temple square he had been given a tour by two Italian sister missionaries. He said they were amazing women who carried themselves well. He said that if the church raised women like that, he wanted more of them in Italy. So ultimately, it was the influence of these two sister missionaries that fully opened Italy and lead to the temple that is currently being built there.
All throughout stake conference I kept feeling like Heavenly Father has something really special planned for sister missionaries. A unique work that can only be done by us. This probably sounds prideful but that's not what I mean. I don't know if it will be in the mission field or in our homes after... But I do know that Heavenly Father needs women to be stronger than ever before. Why else would our mission be 45% sisters and worldwide be 28% sister missionaries? Those are huge numbers compared to 18 months ago. I think the world is getting crazier and crazier and the church is being attacked by all sides. Even from inside the church.
Sunday: Sunday was kind of rough. I had a really hard time paying attention to stake conference. On a REALLY exciting note, I saw Naomi from the blog rockstar diaries there! She's beautiful in person too, just FYI. Of course I didn't talk to her. I was way too chicken. After conference was over we ended up getting cornered by this crazy lady who is a less active member. She spent at least an hour telling us about her life story and her crazy neighbor that listens to her while she is in the bathroom. She didn't want to listen to anything we had to say... She just wanted to hear herself talk. It was great. :/
After lunch we went to go look up a media referral. He came into contact with the church through a website put up by a member. He watched her podcast about her testimony and was really touched by it.
Anyway.. We showed up to his apartment and it was actually a "facility"... So that was cool. We found out it's a home for the mentally unstable. This guy has gone through A LOT in his lifetime...
Including but not limited to; rape, drugs, male prostitution, stripping, a term in prison, satanic possession... Ect. We heard it all we think. But! The good news is the spirit told both of us that he is really sincere and he wants to change. So.. That's good :) he is really excited to meet with us and has already had good experiences with prayer and reading the Book of Mormon.
Sunday was just the weirdest day. Full of weird things. after dinner we found out there was a fireside for just our ward. They called it something like holding on to faith in troubling times but it was basically a safe environment for people to voice their concerns and doubts about the church. People in manhattan are so interesting. There was a lot of talk about women in the priesthood and Heavenly Mother.
They also made it seem like the church is just one way to be close to God and you can pick and choose "what kind of Mormon" you want to be.
It was so interesting.
I think it's okay to have doubts and to question your testimony...
Everyone does at one point or another. But hold on to the things you DO know and definitely don't dwell on the doubts you have. You KNOW that God loves you and answers your prayers. You KNOW that we need a prophet on the earth to lead and guide us. God has called a prophet from the beginning, so of course we should have one now. Hopefully you KNOW that the Book of Mormon is inspired by God and hopefully you have found peace from it. I think those are the things that truly matter.
The church is run off of revelation and inspiration given to IMPERFECT people, so of course there are going to be faults.
Monday: we had district meeting and then we went on a split with sister Skinner and sister Dunn. I went to Harlem and walked the streets of the hood. It was beautiful :) we almost got hit by a water ballon dropped from the 20th floor of a project building. I'm pretty sure it could have killed someone. They had one scheduled appointment for us to do all day and it fell through... So we did lookups :) it was fun. We walked a TON which wasn't the best for my knees but it's all good. I LOVE Skinner. She is such a beautiful person. We will defs be friends at BYU after the mish :)
Tuesday was pretty blah. I got my Easter package! :D we updated our area book because my knees were kind of... Not feeling too good. Then sister Jensen got sick and they were supposed to teach English class so I went home with her and Campbell went with Hoyos to teach English
:)
Well. That's my week! Love you all :)
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