Nov. 30, 2015
Hi everyone!
I'm doing good, all is well! So, picture the most crowded busy city street you can, then think of the opposite. And that's where I am, haha I didn't think that a place like this existed in my mission area. So I'm in a town called Riverhead, smaller than Wenatchee by a bit and really spread out, we've seen several deer on the road since I've been here. It's on the very end of Long Island. There isn't really a main industry here, it's just kind of an average town, there are wineries and even some farms. We live in a little house right next to a river. Our branch (congregation) is one of the few bilingual branches in the mission. About 60 or 70 regularly attend each Sunday. Sam's house below. You can see the river in the backyard.
My companion and trainer is super cool! His name is Elder Honey and he is from Vegas, he's been out on his mission for about 10 months, here for five months. In our area there are four missionaries, elder Honey and I are the Spanish speakers, and elder Hendrickson and elder Hunt are the English. We are teaching quite a few people right now, and they are all super cool, There are the peñafiels who I haven't had the chance to teach yet but met at church, brother banks, Jose Martinez, the Cerna family, the Areolla family, Oscar and Blanca and a few others, and I've been able to teach several of them in Spanish!
Since it's thanksgiving we haven't had too many lessons because people are with family, but we've done a lot of service, lots of raking leaves.
On Thursday I'm going to Manhattan! My companion has an appointment there, super excited to see what the city is like and ride the subway!
Starting tomorrow we are gonna be sharing the new church Christmas video. Look up the "savior is born" video, it's 2 minutes long, I'm already getting tons of chances to play piano for church things.
Just a quick spiritual thought: As I've really left all I know and have behind I feel like I've grown spiritually faster than I ever have before, and I know that is because I have sacrificed, God promises to those who sacrifice that they will be blessed with his spirit and I've really noticed the difference. Everything is going great! Below: church messages in NYC Time Square
Dec. 7, 2015
This week actually went by pretty fast, I got a little sick last Tuesday but nothing to worry about, I was all better by Thursday, it wasn't anything to stay home for.
I have to admit I miss setting up the Christmas tree. So as far as missionary work goes we are kind of in a rut, there is one family that we are teaching that is doing really well, but just about everyone else falls through on their appointments, so we do a lot of driving around to meet people, and when they are not there we go somewhere else to try to establish contact with another family that is in the same position.
The other day we were up in green port, a smaller town, and almost as far east on Long Island as you can go, and so this one family let us in after a long evening of nobody answering, and this family is probably one of the coolest families I've ever met, it's this super humble chef named Israel, his wife, 3 kids and his father, but they let us in and we shared stories and taught them, and I've gotta say I learned about as much from them at least, as much as they learned from us, the room was just filled with the Holy Ghost as we talked with them. Afterward they told us they knew we were messengers from God and that we were welcome back anytime, that was really cool and humbling for me to see God work through me like that. I mean that was not the best lesson I have ever taught, my Spanish wasn't that good during it, but yet, it was an awesome experience. We are headed back up there on Wednesday, and since we don't really know anyone in the area, we are going to ask this family if they have any friends who would want to hear our message. I think this will be a great opportunity for us in the area because we really need to change our approach, since we aren't getting anywhere right now.
If you look on google maps, Sam's area is from Ridge to Orient Point, top half of Long Island. The branch (congregation) is pretty small, he wrote, lots of Spanish members but most aren't active, but this last Sunday we had like 10 Spanish members, about 50 people total. I'm good being in the country, but I'm excited to eventually be in the city.
Dec. 14. 2015
A quite a bit has happened this week. It doesn't really feel like Christmas time yet because it is so warm here, people are saying it's record highs for temperature. Hope it snows soon though. As far as New York stereotypes go, the pizza here is incredible, but I was disappointed how easy it was to understand the intercoms on the subway, it didn't quite live up to the tv shows haha!
Anyway, we've been teaching the peñafiels quite a bit, they are an amazing family and they are willing to do so much to follow Christ, they all want to be baptized in January!
We are still doing a lot of service raking leaves, that's actually a lot of fun, but we are pretty limited on time because it gets dark at like 4 pm, and people normally don't appreciate missionaries knocking on their door when it's pitch black outside, even if it's only six o clock. We also had the church Christmas party on Saturday.
The missionaries all helped a lot to put that on, we hung up all the snowflakes, it was also really cool because most of the people we are teaching were able to come and meet all the members, including the peñafiels, gato, Heidi, Kevin and his family and Jose Martinez. Jose martinez is super cool, he's super intelligent, his way of thinking and his interests are very similar to Graham's so I'm almost able to hold my own in a conversation with him, but he is super fun to teach although he goes on crazy tangents about quantum physics and politics, and his life story. I really love the people here especially all of the people from Latin America, they are all super friendly, even if they don't want to listen to us they still invite us in and treat us well. Im really starting to love spending time and teaching the people, and surprisingly I'm really starting to like to meet new people even though in the past that was way out of my comfort zone
Also if you haven't seen the church's new Christmas video you need to watch it. Also look up the song oceans (where my feet may fail) super good song we listen to it all the time!
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