Tuesday, July 19, 2011






Well, things sound to be going pretty swimmingly back on the home front.  Things here in New York are also going way good.  I'll be tearing up the cheque right after I get back to the apartment, and I think the Bank account would actually be the best way of sending me money from now on.  Cash is always nice, but the bank way just seems so much easier.
Anyways, congratulations Mom on your test thing.  That's probably quite a load off your back.  Also, that plaque is really cool, is that sitting on one of the showroom shelves?  If so, I'm sure that’s a good conversation starter and could give you lots of missionary opportunities.  I'm also putting up some pictures that you can enjoy.  I don’t have any with Elder Hampton yet, or of the apartment, but I do have a picture of our toilet that you might enjoy.  Elder Bowker caught a little friend in his study room, so we tossed him in the toilet.  It was pretty sweet.  You can also see his attempted and failed escape plan.  This week was just an all around fun enjoyable week.  Saw and met lots of awesome, and crazy people. 
So let’s start off with the crazy.  On Saturday I went on a split with Elder Miller and near the end of the day, we were walking to a look-up that we were going to do and then on the way, some guy sitting on a bench calls us over, which isn’t really all that uncommon.  Anyways, he just asks us to talk to his friend who is obviously homeless and has set up shop on this particular bench.  His name was Carmile, and he's a pretty nice guy, just a little confused about some things.  So we get over to the bench and he's trying to tell us that we're missionaries for a catholic church here in the area and that he's seen us serving dinners at said church (If you want to look at the church it's on the corner of University and Fordham Road).  Anyways, after we cleared all that up, he started telling us his life story, about what his parents did and what he and his brothers did and all sorts of fun stuff.  So here's some of what he said in his story.  For one, his father built Manhattan and was the biggest construction boss in Manhattan.  He was producer of the movies,” The Producers” and one other big movie.  When he was a kid he worked in the subway tunnels and often got lost.  His mom was a seamstress and she was also the lady who found Marilyn Monroe, John Travolta and many other movie stars.  In fact, if you named one, she found him/her.  He informed us that Al Capone was also the Indian Geronimo, the very same who beat General Custer at Little Bighorn or something like that.  And that there was only one plane at the two towers, the second tower was set on fire by some isotopes from the computer room in tower one and that it was the result of the computers.  He also told us that the Italian Indians walked here to America when the world was all together in Pangaea.  He also came up with the idea for color TV and gave the idea to his uncle to create one.  He also had his uncle bring Hollywood over here to New York, because it was better here. 
He was just one funny fellow, who kinda ate up like 1hr of our time, but we both decided that it was time well spent.  I think he was just happy to have someone to talk to who was also willing to listen to him.  It really is a rather sad story and I kinda feel sorry for him.  But hey, what can I do for him right now, aside from pray for him? 
Other than that I had another split this Monday, but for this one, I stayed in my area and my Zone Leader, Elder Deitz-Hermosa came with both Hampton and I.  Hermosa is also Canadian, he's from Montreal, and has been in the mission about the same amount of time I have.  He's just an amazing missionary.  Anyways, we had him with us all day and we were kinda winding up the day.  we had had two of our appointments juke us and so we just decided to knock the building that the last appointment lived in, even though we knew that is was a big drug center and a number of drug and gun dealers live there.  We started at the top floor like normal and I knocked the door and through the door told the person we were missionaries (people always ask "who" before they open their doors).  She told us that she couldn't open the door at the time, but that we could leave a card in the door.  So I stuck one in the door, but this time I pushed it into the door a little more than I normally do.  I don’t really know why, but I did.  And because of that she was able to grab it from the inside.  So we continued knocking the building and just before we were about to walk down the stairs to the next floor, the first door opened and the girl inside told us to come in.  So, we entered and met Darlin and her husband Herman, who both looked VERY black, but they're from Honduras.  So we were excited to have found a new investigator for us, things had been a little dry here lately.  So we started getting to know them and find out that they are very poor and that they have had to choose whether they want electricity, or an apartment to live in.  Suffice it to say, they decided to pay the rent instead of the electricity bill.  Which is sad for them, but they seem really awesome.  I mean, REALLY awesome.  They have committed themselves to coming to church on Sunday, and also to the English classes on Wednesday’s and Thursday's.  We even bumped into them yesterday and she told us without us saying anything that she was going to come to the church tonight.  So yeah, they're way legit and I'm super excited to work with them and help them receive the blessings of this gospel.  They also have a young girl, like 1.5 yrs old.
Aside from that though, not a whole lot of new stuff has been going on.  One of the ties I got from Grandma Smigel is a huge hit with all the elders here, all of them were commenting on it the other day and umm.. yeah, that’s about all I got for know.  Umm, oh yeah, the other day we caught a mouse in our apartment and I know that most of you aren’t going to approve of this, but we killed it too.  He did put up a pretty good game of hide and seek though; it took us like 30 minutes to find him once we first saw him.  He was super fast, but we did catch him and dispense of him shortly there after.  We’re hoping he was the one and only mouse, fingers crossed.
So yeah, I hope you all enjoy this email and that you have a great week.  I look forward to next Wednesday and remember I put up some pictures, so you can enjoy them too.
Les Quiero Mucho,
Elder Dilling