Thursday, May 10, 2012

People Waiting to Hear the Gospel in New York City

This week has been suuuuuper legit!!!!   Not to say that we got a lot of news, and that we found a really awesome prepared person, which we did, but that it's just been a good week.

So I guess I'll start off with Last Thursday which involved going down to Central Park to do some volunteering.  The Revlon Run & Walk (a women’s cancer fundraiser) took place this weekend, and on Thursday I and twenty other missionaries went down to Central Park to unwrap medallions for the people involved.  Over the space of about 4 hours, the 21 of us opened 15,000 medallions, and so we all got an idea of what it's like to work in a factory, and how to get carpel tunnel syndrome.  But it was fun just chillin’ in a tent with the other missionaries and talking and unwrapping the medallions.

Thursday wasn't the only day we helped with this Revlon event.  On Saturday we had the privilege of waking up at 3:30 and going down to...TIME SQUARE!!! woot woot!!! It was way cool.  That’s where the start of the event took place, and we were in charge of making sure the different teams got their signs.  Some of which had pretty funny names.  The teams are groups of people who raised donations and participated in the run...normally a family or group of friends.  So yeah, a few of the names were: Friends on a Mission, Yushka Babushkas, Breast Friends and Black Girls Run NYC.

It was a lot of fun.  All the missionaries from Manhattan were there, and so that went until 9 in the morning, and after we went to lunch with some of the other missionaries and I got this super delicious steak burger with spicy guacamole.  It was SOOO good, and pretty fairly priced.  Then the rest of that day was pretty slow because of how tired I was, but I can definitely say I slept well that night...

Then nothing much happened until Monday, which turned out to be a great start to this week.  On Friday we received a referral through the Sisters in my District, which they received from the Ward Mission Leader in the Bronx, who happens to work right next to our chapel.  Anyways, we made an appointment with him, and saw him on Monday.  His name is Francisco.  He's Dominican, speaks pretty good English, and has had some health issues but is doing well now.  Anyways, so we went over, and got to know him a little, and found out that he's wanted to get back into a church.  He grew up Catholic, but doesn't agree with it.  And he really likes the Ward Mission Leader from Olmsted (one of the wards in the Bronx), who's name is Brother Mota.  He likes how much Brother Mota has changed since joining the church, because before, Bro. Mota was a big drinker, and now the Gospel has had a strong influence on his life.  So that's how Francisco got interested in the church and stuff.  It was just so cool to see how the Lord is helping us, and giving us those little things to say “Good job, just keep going, there are people here who are waiting for the gospel”.  He also committed himself to going to church on Sunday which is always super awesome.  So thanks to all of you for your prayers.  They're definitely being answered.  But it would still be nice if we could change that free agency a little bit.  But yeah, that's about it for me.

Love you all, and I'm excited to talk on Sunday (Mother’s Day),

Carson

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

One of the best weeks...

Hey Y'all!

So the week went pretty good.  We had one of the best weeks we've had in a while.  So that was way sweet!  But it didn't start out the greatest.  The day after I wrote you and told you about the lady we gave the blessing to, I called her to try and set up an appointment before the weekend.  So I called her and I was super excited to get to meet with her again.  She answered her phone, and I said “Hey how’s it going”...and then when I asked if we could come by on Saturday, and she said “well, I prayed and God told me that I need to return to the Catholic Church...please don't come by.  I'll give you a call when I want you to come back”.  At that point it felt like a semi had slammed into my chest and I was like NOOOOOO (in my head of course) and It just sucked so much!!  She wrapped up the conversation quickly so I couldn't say much, and then once she had hung up, the NOOOOOO became audible.  Then when I told Elder Head, he did about the same thing.  It just was not any fun, especially after we had just finished talking about how awesome she was, and making some sweet plans to help her progress.  Then to put the icing on the cake we ran into another of our investigators a few days later, and he informed us that he was going back to the Dominican Republic, and that he leaves tomorrow.  So two of what I thought were our best investigators have just fallen through our hands.  Not a very fun thing if I do say so myself.

But hey aside from that life is great.  You know what they say “when life is going great Satan works his hardest”.  So that must mean things are going pretty good if Satan's gonna work that hard to make me lose two investigators in one week.  But yeah I really don’t have a whole lot to talk about this week.  Oh, I found out yesterday that my Support Card for my mission was compromised (someone copied it), so I had to put a freeze on my account, and it was just a hassle, so I lost my funds temporarily.  Luckily they were able to release some funds so that I could buy my metro card this morning, but yeah, that's a little annoying.  And as for the weather here, it's been pretty bipolar.  It's rainy and muggy one day, then sunny the next.  Currently is raining.  Once it stops and gets warm it makes the heat suck even more because it gets super humid and disgusting.  It would be great though If I weren't a missionary and didn't have to wear a white collared shirt. 

So today Elder Bartlett and I are gonna go down to Macy's because he needs to buy some new shoes with a little more ankle support, and his companion didn't want to go.  So that should be fun.  It's cool, because normally we can’t go south of 59th street, but Macy's in on 34th street. 

Oh, and also this last Sunday we had this great 5th Sunday lesson from the bishop about media and sharing the gospel.  And after when everyone was leaving I walked out the back of the gym, and turned the corner, and found a bunch of members surrounding this lady that had strait up passed out in the middle of the hallway, and unfortunately no one caught her.  So she fell pretty hard, and it took about 2 minutes to pull her out of it, and it was pretty crazy.  She was so out of it, and I'm pretty sure she might have a small concussion.  Luckily she seemed pretty good by the time I actually left the church, and the Relief Society sisters where doing a great job of watching over her.

But yeah, that's about all I've got to say for this week.  I hope all continues to go well, and that you have a super awesome week.

Love, Carson