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