Weeks 15 through 18

January 18, 2016
This week has been amazing! To start off on last Monday, we started with going on exchanges with zone leaders. This started at three, and our preparation day doesn't end until 6, so I admit I was a little ticked at first. The zone leader Elder Johnson told me we'd be blessed in missionary work if we skipped some of our pday time. But anyway, we ended up able to teach six lessons, get in contact with many other old investigators and find new people to teach too. It was a crazy night. The rest of the week was pretty great too, now we have another on date for baptism, Heydi, and we taught over twenty lessons this week!

Feeling great! Eating good! We have that cheap grocery store so it's easy to eat good here, but I'm stocking up for when I get to the city because food is really expensive there. No scheduled dinner appointments, but we do go to the Leons' house to teach Kenia once a week, and they always have food for us, last week we had papusas there, super good el salvadorian food. Love you, heading out to a lesson talk to you later!

The duck is one of the tourist attractions out on Long Island.

January 25, 2016
Been a bit of a crazy week! Mainly because the storm, which I'm sure you heard about, starting Friday night it started to snow and didn't finish til Saturday night, we were pretty much trapped inside the whole day, it was kinda boring, but we made the best of it. Apparently the storm almost broke records in New York but didn't by 1/10th of an inch, and there was a travel ban on all of Long Island and probably more, but all is back to normal now other than the roads are still un poco peligroso.

Yesterday pretty much all we did was service, first we shoveled ourdrive way to get out which took about two hours getting stuck twice because of how ridiculously narrow and steep our driveway is, but then we drove around just making sure everyone was good and helping people with snow that couldn't do it on their own.

We also had a lesson with Jose Martinez yesterday, I think I might have already talked about him some, he's super intelligent, but a little crazy too, but when we walked in to the lesson once, he had
this huge stack of boxes against the wall with his stereo facing the wall and classical music playing, so his neighbors in the apartment complex always have their tv on 24/7, he's always talking about how it's destroying their minds and stuff, so we asked him about the stereo, and he said that they may be destroying their brains by watching tv but at least they have good music, we thought it was pretty funny but he was serious about it. But Jose is actually doing very well, despite his vast knowledge and little bit of stubbornness, he's becoming more and more open every time we teach him.

Let's see, and also on Friday we had a Spanish activity at the church. It's funny, it was pretty much planned on the spot this last Sunday, in Sunday school by sister Arreola, she told everyone 7 o clock, and not Hispanic seven o clock (730ish) but actual seven o clock, let's just say it still started at 745, but still it was a great activity, and a lot of investigators were there and fellowshiped very well by everyone. It's a great family here within the Spanish members of the church.

Don't know if I've talked about Matt yet. Matt Troy is a new member, and he loves the missionaries. Every pday we meet him at the church and play board games with him. He is a board game enthusiast, he has about 195. It's crazy.

Feb. 1, 2016
My week was great, really bus. We decided to do lots of knocking doors and talking to people in the streets and such. That's actually pretty fun, I definitely couldn't picture myself doing that a year ago.
The families we are teaching are doing great! We will have four baptisms on February 13th! The Penafiel family and Kenia, I will have to send you some pictures of them and us!  I don't have any yet though. And he other main two families we are teaching are doing great too!

Not sure if we've talked about Israel yet, but he is super cool, only talked with him a couple times. But he loves the missionaries and looks forward to every time we come. The only problem is he is about as far away as we could go in our area, like a 45 minute drive, and he's about the only one out there right now that we are teaching, but we are focusing on finding more people.

I'm doing great, super excited for these next two weeks, there is a lot planned and a lot to do!

So this week I found a talk by a mission president that I've been studying a ton. It's called becoming a consecrated missionary by Ted Callister, very very good talk. Next transfers are on the 16th, my trainer Elder Honey will be transferred for sure because he's been here a long time, but I really
hope I stay. There is a chance that I wouldn't, but I really hope I stay. I love you and am excited to send you baptism pictures in two weeks!

Orient Point. Sam's wearing Christmas scarf knit by Zoe

A shipwreck

Atlantic Ocean

And Sam can never resist finding shells and other beach treasures

Feb. 8, 2016 Hi mom! It's been a crazy and great week! I'll start off with Friday morning with the explosions and fires. So on Friday morning it started to snow really heavy and wet, we were on exchanges, so Elder Hendrickson and I were just sitting in the apartment doing our daily studies in the scriptures when the power went out. Then about 20 seconds later it came back on, and when it did, out of the corner of my eye, out the window, I saw one of those boxes on the power line sparking like crazy, then next thing I saw was a huge blue explosion! Then our power started going crazy! The lights would go dim, then bright, then dim then bright so we ran and turned everything off just in case. We sat back down thinking it was over for now but then saw this bright flashing glow still coming from where it exploded, so we went to go check it out ;) Tons of people were already up there taking videos of this live wire that created this mass of sparks and fire close to the size of a car. It eventually caught a car on fire, and that was when the police shooed everyone out, luckily they got the fire out before there was a gas explosion. But we could see all the smoke and hear the tires popping from our house.

Supposed to be another storm next Tuesday.

Anyways... Things are going very well here besides that, Elder Honey and I are busy planning the baptism for this upcoming Saturday and getting everything ready and perfect.

Today:  Well, we finished laundry, now we are just at the church emailing, then Matt will come and will play some board games with him, then Family Home Evening, then a lesson with a less active family.

L-R: hermana Leon, Kenya, kenya's son (I always forget his name
because they call him pollito) Alex (but everyone calls him gato) then
Elder Honey and me.

Here is Jose Martinez

Sometimes there are swans in our backyard

Not sure if I sent you this picture of the shipwreck last week but on preparation day all of us went the beach, that's when I found those shells I sent you the picture of, but there are actually three or four shipwrecks right in that area.
This week we are going to take lots of pictures with everyone since there is a chance some of us could be leaving on the 16th, so I'll have a lot more next week so you can see everyone.

Weeks 13 and 14

January 4, 2016
This was a really good week! We've been really focusing on increasing our teaching appointments, and even though it was a holiday week, we were able to have 13 teaching appointments, with several people falling through. But I have a lot of pictures for you today!

Don't know if I could pinpoint a certain spiritual experience this, week but we did teach the Peñafiel family tithing! The lesson was great, and this family continues to amaze me how easily they accept
each lesson so well!

One thing I'm becoming a lot better at is learning how to be open and honest with my companion, not letting things get to me and keeping them inside me. Super glad I'm learning this now. He and I still get along really well.

Well, transfers are this Tuesday, (note: transfers are every six weeks) and Elder Hunt is leaving, which is really sad. This next transfer we should have a lot of baptisms, which is really exciting. It's crazy though that I'm three  months into the mission already! Love you a ton!

 Christmas party

Family home evening with the Resabalas

 Sergio's pizza! We will go there for sure after my mission

Reorganized my study area

Sketching at church (sorry, can't get this to flip in post)

January 11, 2016
The families we are working with are doing very well, the Peñafiel family, who I talked about before, are probably going to be baptized this month, and that will be really exciting. Also, we finally met with Israel and his family again, they live up in Greenport, which is a 45 minute drive from here. They are really happy to listen to us and know what we teach them is true. In their words, by the peace it brings into their house.

Church attendance was a little iffy this week, big rain storm and lots of wind, and some people stayed homebecause of that, apparently that's just part of Hispanic culture here, they don't like to go out in the rain, but anyways Kenia made it to church, which was really cool. She is the new person we are teaching this week. She is from El Salvador and incredibly nice. She has a 1 year old boy, and she loves having us teach her. She was taught with the sister missionaries about two years ago,

So in general, the work is really starting to move forward here. I wouldn't be surprised if I saw more than five baptisms while I'm here!

Haven't done service this week because we had so many lessons with people this week, but the mission is slowly putting into effect the Just Serve website, and soon we will be doing 10 hours of service a week. It's been really rainy, so raking leaves didn't work out.

I'm loving it here. I love all the people I am working with, and I can't wait to see what God has planned for this area.

Today Elder Honey and I went to the beach. It was freezing and super windy. I love you!

New Haircut, free from a barber in Flushing, Queens

With his companion at the beach

Yep, it's a crab, Atlantic ocean style.
Sam can't go to beach without looking
for crabs and other sea life.

The Atlantic ocean