Thursday, February 3, 2011

Hardest thing to hear as a missionary...

Well, you were right about the weather.  It didn’t snow too much though.  The worst part is the freezing rain.  It just makes everything super slushy, and all the snow on the side of the road gets a nice layer of ice.  But the roads are still good, because they do such a great job of cleaning them.  Anyway, it still really sucks, because it impedes our work, since we need to drive to get to most of our appointments.   kinda unfortunate, but, it's still lots of fun.  On Tuesday we walked around Peekskill contacting people and doing all we could to stay busy.  That’s really all we try to do when it snows.  Just show the Lord that we are doing all we can to progress the work no matter our circumstances.
Unfortunately the bad weather wasn’t the only bad news we've had.  Yudelka (the single mother) called us last night when we were on our way to her appointment, and told us that she doesn’t want to listen to us anymore.  Probably one of the hardest things to hear as a missionary.  Because when you’re teaching these people, you really develop a love for them, and when they don’t want to accept it, that hurts, because you know what they're missing and turning away from.  But we've just decided to take comfort in knowing that God knows his children, and he has a plan for each of us. 
I think the hardest thing for me to do right now, is sit here and write this email.  I pretty much have nothing to write about.  One cool little fact that I've found out recently is that the crime rate in the town I'm currently located in was worse than the Bronx, and that was pretty recently!  Apparently when they made a big push to remove the crime from New York, all the people that left came to Peekskill, so that’s pretty cool, but don’t worry, it's much better now.
That’s cool that Sarah is officially a UTEP Miner.  When will her name be up on the website?  Oh, and tell Brooklyn to say "Hi Jason" for me, and "congratulations on the baby girl".  Good to know all is going well back home.
I'll definitely need to send a letter to Sam.  That’s awesome that he gets to go to California.  He'll love that.  I'll bet his family is super excited about that.  Is the church still having missionary visa problems?  Either way, I'm sure he'll get his visa on time; he's got like 5 months.  He also enters the same date of the month that I entered the MTC.  Also, don’t worry too much about my sub and amp…as long as you can sell the car. 
So far we haven’t had a whole lot of zone conferences; about 4ish.  But that’s including goal meetings.  I've only had one mission conference, and technically it was only half the mission.  But that’s just because it's hard for the city elders to come upstate, so they just do the same thing twice; one for upstate and one for city.
But anyways, Elder Lopez and I appreciate any prayers, and are working really hard to progress the work in this area.  How are the Elders in Heritage Ward doing?  I can imagine the work being pretty hard there too. 
Anyways, my mind is about out of things to ramble on about.  Hope everything is going well back home.
Love, Carson