HELLO!!!

 Well I'm sure you all saw the pictures of Linds visiting. It was SO fun. Seriously. I hadn't seen her in 12 whole months and not one single thing had changed.

Thursday was my birfffday. We woke up and tried to go fly kites at the park... But we got downstairs and it was POURING so we ditched the kites and jogged in the rain. It was perdy fun. Then sister Campbell made me breakfast! She made waffles for everyone and it ended up taking way longer than we thought so we did interviews with our roommates while we ate and pushed our studies back an hour.

We weekly planned and then went to meet Nick. He straight up juked us on my birthday!! It's okay though. We were waiting at the Harlem chapel and there was a bunch of missionaries there. Sister Campbell told everyone it was my birthday and they didn't even miss a beat, they just started singing to me :) we went to go see why Nick didn't show up and he thought it was Wednesday and not Thursday. He is so cute... He felt so bad for getting them confused!

After Nicks house we went to see Karen. She is seriously the funniest black lady I have ever met. I need to send you some videos of her making racist jokes. She made us a pineapple upside down cake that was actually pretty good. She is so funny and so amazing. Gosh, I love her so much! We talked about our divine nature and how we were born to be queens.

Then we went to dinner at a members house. They live in a studio with
3 kids. They've lived there since they got married. So... I'll just let you think about that one for a quick minute. They were so sweet!
They made cupcakes and sang to me. We talked to them about prayer and family prayer. The kids are so cute! They talk SO much. We didn't even get to talk to the mom at all... And the mom had to tell the kids to take two bites before they could talk again. It was so funny.

After dinner we did some lookups and did some tracting. We went to a building that only had buzzers and no doorman. I asked sister Campbell how we get into doors like that and she said just watch. We walked up to the buzzer pad and she pushed like 15 different apartments and we waited a few seconds and the door buzzed open! Magic. We didn't have any birthday miracles though :(

while we were walking to the lookups we were taking about the work in our area and how not a lot of things are happening. Nick needs a LOT of help to overcome his addictions, Lilianna is not progressing at all... And we don't really know what to do. We decided to fast for those people and for a stronger desire to do missionary work. I think we have kind of gotten into a missionary rut, it has been really hard to be motivated to go out and do things. I've never really been like that until I came to south man. I think the work here is just SO tough.

Friday we had a special training by the zone leaders on working with the ward. It was really good! It made me excited to work with our ward, so that's good. :) then we stopped by Nicks house because Friday was his birthday. We took him a cupcake! :) he was so excited. Then we went to mcdonalds so we could teach him the word of wisdom. Nick didn't really love it. He understood all of it except the coffee thing. Halfway through he told us he was really tired and he was having some really strong gut reactions to what we were saying so we wrapped up the lesson as soon as we could. Then he told us we didn't need to walk him home. It felt like we were getting broken up with!

We tried to do some lookups after that but no one was home, so we went to dinner to break our fast. After dinner we stopped by Breenas house.
She is our recent convert. We talked to her about Joseph Smith history. :) I am pretty sure she is getting engaged soon! She doesn't know that, though. After dinner we had correlation with our ward mission leader. Did I mention it rained ALL day? We were soaked. On our way to the Havrrenes it started pouring rain. We were dripping when we got there! He is such an awesome ward mission leader though.
Together we prayed about people to call as ward missionaries and he gave us some great advice about the people we were working with.

Saturday was the street fair at the 87 street chapel. Nick and Lilianna were supposed to go, so we headed down there after our studies. We spent most of our day there. Nick loved it and got to meet some more ward members. Lilianna never showed up. :/ we went to her house later to teach her Lehis dream. Her dad made us some nasty Dominican food.... Not my favorite. She loved the tree of life though, so that was good.

Sunday was awesome. We went to church and we were expecting a lot of people to come. Sacrament meeting started and there was no one. We had some investigators text us and tell us they were coming and they weren't there either. We sat in the back just waiting. Right before the sacrament, in walks 1 less active and his investigator girlfriend AND his investigator sister, her boyfriend, and their little brother!
We were so excited. We still didn't see nick and we were really bummed because we had just had that not so great lesson with him. As they were passing the sacrament sister Campbell hit me and told me nick was there! We were SO excited!

We also has this weird guy walk into church so we invited him to gospel principles. He sat next to me and kept looking at me all through the lesson. I think he is a little crazy. After the class our WML's wife said something to me about it. Sister Campbell asked what we were talking about and she said "oh, that man was just eating her with his eyes!" She is so funny. She worries so much about us!

After church we did our studies and went to dinner. After dinner we had an errand to run and then we went to the park to contact. We took a minute to just sit on a bench like the Jay-Dubs. These guys walked past us so I said hi to them. A couple minutes later one of them walked back to us to ask us if we had a light. We said no... And then he asked about our tags. We talked to him for a while, turns out he almost lived in Salt Lake and he has seen the movie at temple square.
He seemed pretty interested in what we were saying, so we gave him our number. It was 830 so we needed to start heading home. We needed one more lesson to hit the standard of excellence for the week so we told ourselves we would do everything we could to teach one more lesson before we went home.

On the train our phone rang. Nick always calls us from random numbers so my companion answered it. Turns out it wasn't nick at all.... It was that guy and his friend. Turns out they were much less interested in what we were saying and more interested in who was saying it. They invited us out because we had worked hard and needed to relax. Gag me.
Sister Campbell hung up after she was sufficiently creeped out.

We were almost home when we passed a security guard. We said hi and kept walking across the street. We were about to walk across when he yelled "watch the light!" Jeez. I know I am white but come on. I am not that stupid. We talked to him for a few minutes. The lesson was going pretty well until he said he would come all of the way from queens to go to church with us. :/ the good news was that we got our goal for total lessons taught!!!!

Monday we went on a split. I stayed in the area with sister skinner.
We taught Lilianna... She really isn't progressing and she has no idea what the priesthood is. :/


Tuesday we taught seminary!! We had to wake up super early... But it was pretty fun :) then we did our studies and taught Nick. Everyone that meets nick and talks with him about the gospel is so amazed by him. The people who don't talk about the gospel with him think he is pretty crazy and kind of scary... :) the elders met us at the church before our lesson yesterday and after meeting nick they told us they would hang out at the church until our lesson was over. :) he really isn't dangerous though. Just mentally unstable.

Anyways. That was my week! I'm 21, and I've been wearing a tag for a whole year. I guess that's kind of a big deal. :) this week I've been thinking a lot about the things I have done in the last year and the person I have become. I hope some things have changed about me. I hope I have let the gospel and the atonement change me like I've seen it change so many people.

Love you all!!

 

 

Long time no see!

Since I just talked to you on Sunday I don't have much to say. :)

Monday was district meeting. We had leadership meeting right before with the district leaders and zone leaders. I used to just assume the leaders of the mission worked super hard and were always diligent in getting things done. Then I became a leader. I think they all hate me because I am constantly pulling their attention back to the things we are actually there to talk about. :) after district meeting we split with sister Hoyos and sister Brog. I was with sister Hoyos in her area.

We had to go to their apartment because the owner of the building is redoing everything and people were there to put in an intercom. It was good because we had time to talk about how things are going in her area and we worked on planning an APF in their area.

After they put in the intercom, we went out to an appointment with a less active. I love splits because I get to meet so many people and be strengthened by their faith. We did some lookups and ate dinner after that appointment and by then the day was over.

Tuesday we woke up and ran to the pier to watch the sunrise over the Brooklyn bridge. It was kind of foggy, but still beautiful! Then we had personal study and an awesome companionship study and even some Spanish language study :) then we took the train to Roosevelt island to visit a sick member. Roosevelt Island is seriously the coolest place. There is like one road on the whole island and it is SO quiet!
You can see the whole city from the island.. I love it!

We do a district APF every Tuesday and this Tuesday it was the elders that are over the YSA ward. They took us to Chelsea to tract. We were looking for the building when someone said "Fashion institute of Technology? What is that?" I grabbed sister Campbell and I might have screamed a little. We found it!! And it's huge. They have a museum even. Everyone in the district thought I was going crazy but eventually I calmed down.

After the APF we went to visit Karen who straight up fell asleep during our lesson... It was hilarious. Then we went to an investigators house and she had the whole family there. We taught 6 teenagers about god. I was really nervous at first because all of these teenagers have tattoos and piercings and potty mouths and one is a teen mom. They all dress like they are from the hood and they listen to loud rap music. We felt really awkward and pretty unwanted at first... But then we started our lesson and things completely changed.
Every single one of them believe in God. We had a great lesson about always remembering Him and by the end the daughter asked us if we could teach them how to pray. We invited all of them to church and they committed to coming! It was just amazing, there really are good people everywhere.

Our investigator fed us dinner and then we had dinner at an active members house so by the end of the night I wanted to die! We had an online lesson with Lilianna. She is doing okay... Kind of flaky. Her aunt still doesn't want her to get baptized so she wants to wait till she is older. When we asked her how much older she said 17... But she turns 17 at the end of the summer... So it doesn't really make that much of a difference. We are struggling to know what to do with her.
She has really strong faith and desire but she is really young. Our online lesson was awesome. One of the first ones that I felt was actually a success!!

Well. That's my week! Love you all!


-Sister Toone

:)

Well folks. Safe to say this was probably one of my least favorite weeks so far!

First let me start by telling you a little about metro cards. The church gives us 112 dollars each month so we can buy a 30 day unlimited use metro card. This month mine expired on the 28 of April so I had just bought a new one right before transfers.

Wednesday, after all of the upstate people made it back to the city, we took the train back to our apartment. I had my metro card then.
After Pday we went to a members house for dinner and I didn't have it.
I have NO idea where it went. It wasn't in my jacket or my bag. I had only had my new card for 3 days and it was GONE! Losing my metro card has been the biggest fear on my mission, I am pretty sure. Next to an investigator dropping us right before their baptism, but that happened on Tuesday. :/

Thursday we woke up to a text from Breena, who is another investigator with a date to be baptized on May 10. Her text said "hey guys, can I get baptized on Saturday? The 10th isn't going to work anymore.. Oh and by the way I finished the Book of Mormon." uh. Sure? You can't tell someone no if they want to be baptized sooner. So we threw together a baptism in 3 days on top of everything else!

Friday was supposed to be MLC but they cancelled it and did a conference call instead. It was kind of a blessing in disguise because President pretty much told us we are all slacking as leaders... So that was pretty awesome. Not exactly what I needed but it's okay. We have a goal to reach 100 baptisms this month, so we talked a lot about goal setting and following up and keeping people accountable. Then we spent FOREVER with the zone leaders trying to plan zone meeting.

Saturday was the Revlon run, so we woke up at like 4:40 to be in Times Square by 6 am. It was pretty rough. We handed out signs to groups of people who were running. It was pretty fun but it made for a really really long day. We had our baptism that night and it went really well. Here are some of my favorite signs:

Sunday was fast Sunday. Nick made it to church and loved it! After church we went to visit Lilianna. We talked a little more about baptism and we asked her to pray to know if God wanted her to get baptized. We knelt done and she prayed. In her prayer she never once asked

Monday we taught zone meeting. It went okay. We talked about revelation through church attendance and the sacrament.

Tuesday we had an awesome lesson with Nick. He is kind of amazing.
I'll tell you more about him on Sunday, but as of yesterday he has a bap date for May 31. :)

This is kind of short and boring because I want to have a few things to talk about when I skype on Sunday :) hopefully you are thinking of some good questions and things to talk about too!

Love you!

-Sister Toone

Transfers!

Well hello again. This last week went by so so fast. It's really scary actually.

The rest of Pday was fun! Hopefully you all saw the picture from Clarissa. We went to lunch and then walked the Highline Park. It was so windy but beautiful. Then we went to visit a potential/new investigator. I think I have emailed before about the Haitian family we are trying to teach... It's a mom and dad and 5 kids. The kids are between the ages of 19 and 11 so it's an awesome opportunity to teach a family! Then we went to dinner with an active member family.

Thursday was good. Nothing too exciting happened... Weekly planning sucked up a good portion of our time. The only other exciting thing that happened was I got my skirt stuck in the door of the subway..
So..,that was cool.

Friday we were on a split. I stayed in our area for the second time. I still have NO idea where we are going. Good thing we have a map! (And yes, I have actually learned how to read a map. Sort of.) I was staying with a sister who is pretty new and pretty intense when it comes to missionary work, so I was really nervous. We planned a really full day with some awesome appointments.

Before we split I made a comment like "I love splits because miracles ALWAYS happen." We had to come home first to do companionship study and to make a game for a family we were going to teach. Our first appointment was in the projects and I wasn't 100% sure how to get there so we left early. We got there just fine and had time to tract so we got in the elevator just her and I, and I pressed 17 which is the top floor. (Yeah, I know. 17 floors of projects. Don't worry, that's the usual). The elevator stopped so we got off and started tracting. There was a lady mopping the floor (miracle 1. Projects are
DISGUSTING) we knocked on two doors and no one answered. This weird guy came out of no where so we were going to go to another floor when we got the prompting to talk to the lady who was mopping.

We talked to her for a while and she told us about the miracles she has seen in her life. She talked about her youngest son and how she felt like she had one more child waiting to come to earth. Then she talked about how she finally got her son and he has always been really interested in going to churches. We talked to her for like 30 minutes and then I realized we were on floor 9. Not 17. We have no idea how the elevator got to there but we are chalking it up to a big fat MIRACLE!! :)

The rest of Friday was kind of a joke. By the end of the night we were over an hour behind because nothing went like it was supposed to, but we worked so hard. We taught 9 lessons that day! The Lord really does know so much more than I know and has much bigger plans for us than we do. At the end of the night I was talking to sister Groberg and she said that this split was exactly what she needed. I thought it was a pretty garbage day but obviously The Lord knows better. :) she talked about how she needed to learn how to slow down, and that when we are doing our very best, The Lord will bless us. It was awesome. I love being a sister training leader!

Saturday we woke up at 5:15 to go play gator ball in Harlem. It was really fun and probably the highlight of our day. We had an appointment with Albert and he told me I am too pushy and then he yelled at sister Campbell and by the end of the lesson he was so mad he wouldn't even pray. On our way to the appointment I realized I forgot my tag and sketchy things kept happening. There was this guy that sat across us on the train and he was straight up rolling his weed. Seriously. He spilled it all over his pants once and it didn't even phase him. Then another group of druggies got on and I'm pretty sure they were making deals with their drug lord. It was just sketchy as crap.

After Albert made us feel horrible, we went to do another chalk APF.
This one was just with the singles ward. It was pretty fun, but I liked the faith one better. After the APF we got juked once and then had a few other okay appointments. Oh. Saturday was also transfer calls! Campbell and I are staying! Get this. My trainer, sister white is coming to be in our zone (so my mission mom) and sister Orme is also coming to our zone and she is going to be my roommate! (She's my mission baby) and I am just stuck being their sister training leader.
Yay me.

Sunday was a good day. Nick came to church and we had dinner at an awesome members house! I finally feel like I know. Few people and it's great. I do love it here in south man.

Monday we had our last district meeting. We met with Liliana in the afternoon and set plans for her baptism on Saturday. She said she was really excited and ready, so of course we were really excited too.
Nothing else too fantastic happened Monday.

Tuesday takes the cake for crappy days on the mission I think. We woke up to a text from Liliana saying that she can't be baptized because her aunt got really mad about her being baptized again. Then she didn't text us back all day. We went to the church and Albert was there (he is a guard for the temple) and he wouldn't even talk to us.
We got juked by a less active and our investigator family. We even called the investigator family to confirm and they still juked! Not to mention it rained all stinkin day. It ended better, though. We took Liliana to a dinner appointment at our ward mission leaders house and she said she would ask her aunt again to see what she said. Liliana said that her mom would probably be proud of the decision she is making so hopefully her aunt will understand.

Okay. Enough about me. Let's talk about the work for a minute. If you haven't noticed, the work is hastening. Our mission taught 1700 lessons last week. That's more lessons than this mission has ever seen. EVER! We have 108 people with dates to be baptized in the month of May. People are walking up to us on the street asking to be taught by missionaries... I have witnessed it first hand. What are you doing to help the work? Are you reading PMG like the apostles asked? If not, today is a beautiful day for you to start. I love this scripture. I think if each of us tries a little harder today to follow it we can each do our part in the hastening.

Alma 25:26
And we talk of Christ, we rejoice in Christ, we preach of Christ, we prophesy of Christ, and we write according to our prophecies, that our children may know to what source they may look for a remission of their sins.


Love you!
-sister Toone

Ps, some pictures for ya!
We found a tulip festival