Thursday, July 7, 2011

Why are P-Days on Wednesday?

OK, so first the money thing.  When I arrived in the Bronx I had to buy a Metro card (bus card) which costs 30 dollars.  All I had left of my mission money was 34 dollars, so when the next P-Day rolled around, we hadn't received the money for the next month, so I had to use my card, and I just decided to pay for everyone, and then have them each pay me back.  So I'm not really lending out money, it just made grocery shopping a whole lot easier.  Also, I got a cheque from Grandma and Grandpa Smigel on my birthday, but I have no way of cashing it.  I've tried multiple ways.  So what I was thinking is that it would probably just be easier if they put the money in my RBC US account, and I just rip up the cheque.   So let me know about that.

As for my Mr. Mac shirt, I haven’t received anything as of yet.  But I'll keep an eye out for it though.  Some more sponge pudding would also be great, but maybe you should hold off for a couple months.  I ate almost both packages on my own.  It was delicious, but not so healthy (the other elders didn’t want too much of it).
In response to your question about the Bronx, I live in "The Bronx Little Italy" which is pretty cool, and one of our members works in that bakery you saw across the street on Google Earth, and gives us deals occasionally on the $1 pastries, which are super good.   And then as for the Bronx Zoo, we plan on going there later on today.  Just need to go and get a haircut, and we're good to go.  So that should be way sweet.   I'll have some pictures to send home next week - a few of my area, and then of the zoo and stuff.  The really cool thin, is that on Wednesdays everything is extra cheap in NY.  It's called donation day, so you can go to museums or the zoos, and all that fun stuff for like $1.  That’s the reason we have P-Day on Wednesday’s.
And the carding technique is only to get into the building, so that we can knock the peoples doors.  We don’t try and get into their actual apartments. We only do it to get into a building if there isn’t anyone around to let us in, or if no one is leaving the building.  I've only had to do it like 3 or 4 times, mostly on the old crappy apartment buildings that don’t really have good security.  If you pulled hard enough you could probably force the door open.  Also, the buzzers don’t always work.  It's pretty ghetto here.  We’ve got a few projects in this area too (a project is a government owned building).  They're super dirty, and for some reason the tenants/ guests like to use the elevators as bathrooms.  EWWW!  They smell pretty bad.
This week has been pretty good.  We've been focusing a lot on finding people, and last Thursday I was able to confirm someone a member of the church, which was pretty cool/hard.  Giving blessings in Spanish is way hard.  Aside from that we've been having a little bit of success from contacting, and my district is doing great.  We also got special permission to go with the ward to a special service project on the 23rd.  We're going down to the super ghetto area of the United States to an area called Hunts Point, which is located in the poorest zip code in the United States, so that should be pretty cool.  I've heard there's some pretty cool graffiti down there as well.  Maybe I'll get some pictures of that.
I have a quick funny story.  Yesterday Elder Bowker and I were on a split in his area, and we decided to knock an apartment building, so we go to the top floor and start knocking.  It was pretty normal, lots of "no's" a few "no thank you’s" but there was this one door which was kinda propped open, and a dog was standing there looking like he wanted to be pet, but we didn’t pet him.  We just knocked on the door and kinda peeked into the room.  And when the lady saw us she said (in Spanish)"Oh no, who left the door open, the Mormon devils are here!!"   Her husband comes up and says they're not interested, and closes the door.  Elder Bowker and I just kinda look at each other like “what the heck that was funny”. 
Anyways, I gotta get going now, but I hope you all have a fantastic week and I look forward to hearing back from you next week.
Much love,
Elder Dilling