Hey everyone! Hope your week has been good. I've decided to start getting a little more descriptive so that my emails are a bit more entertaining, so hopefully I do a good job.
So Wednesday after we finished talking, Elder Potter decided to go shopping, so we went to all sorts of sports stores (which I had no interest in whatsoever, and we also ran into that member who took our picture and sent it to you guys), and then we went and taught Alex, and then went home.
Thursday, Elder Potter went and got a haircut in the morning while I sat around and twiddled my thumbs for about an hour, then we went over to the Hermana's and helped them move out of their apartment to one just up the stairs. It was a tiny little Chinatown closet apartment too, so we had to take a lot of stuff apart to get it up, getting the couch up took us pretty much an hour on its own. So that took up a lot of the day, and we went to lunch with the ASL and Sisters afterwards to this really good dumpling place (got 15 a-little-bigger-than-eggs sized dumplings for under $5, I feel super fat), and then Elder Potter and I went over to the Chinatown chapel to get some weekly planning done. We started heading to an appointment with Andre, but on the way there he postponed it due to him having thrown out his back, so we went back to the chapel and did some more planning. After our planning, we had an appointment with Isaac, so we walked up the east side to get there. We were a bit late (we'd tried to take a train initially, but they were being really weird service wise so we ended up walking quite a ways), so our appointment was pretty short. We showed him that Because of Him video that's been going around and talked about it, and then traveled over to Union Square to go treat ourselves to a dinner at a place called Max Brenner's. This place had super nummy food, and the whole place smelled like chocolate (they're apparently famous for it), so we had some nice dinner (I got some kind of chicken wings with waffle fries, Elder Berryman got an enormous sandwich, and Elders Potter and Kroff got some amazing macaroni and cheese), and then we all had milkshakes for dessert (Elder Potter got chocolate hazelnut, Elder Kroff coconut cream pie, Elder Berryman cookies and cream, and I got banana hazelnut).
We then traveled home from there, and ran into some crazy old man who talked to us kind of like this "My brothers, you don't need to pray for me, because you already prayed the prayer, cause God knows the heart and prays the prayer. So don't pray the prayer because you've already prayed the prayer when you think about praying the prayer," and this went on for about 15 minutes. So after that, we finally got home.
Friday, we did personal study, and then traveled over to Andre's for a lesson. We taught him about a lot of the commandments, focusing mostly on the 10 commandments (with a little bit of the law of chastity thrown in), scripture study, prayer, sabbath day observance, and following the prophet. He had a knowledge of all of these already and is keeping them and says he will continue to keep them, so that was good. Andre is super solid doctrinally since he's been taught a lot over the years, and I think it was just mainly getting him over his word of wisdom problems that was needed, which he also has been doing. We also talked about moving up his baptismal date again, and he said he prayed about it and was willing to, so his date is now set for May 17th! We then headed up to church for a lesson with Vlad, but our lesson with Andre had run a bit long, so when we got there (about 20 minutes late), Vlad was already offline. We managed to reschedule for this Thursday though.
So instead, we finished up planning, did some online proselyting, and then had an APF at Union Square. It was a pretty big one that we'd been planning for a while, so I'll break it down a bit. So, it was another chalk drawing one, where we drew out "Faith is Like a Seed," and then the process of a seed maturing into a tree, and on the bottom area just a bunch of random spring stuff (this was soon intermingled with random stuff random people were drawing as they stole our chalk while we weren't looking, but it was still good), so I was one of the people drawing because apparently I'm good enough at art to be worth it, so yeah. I drew pretty much the whole 2 hours, while some of the other people in the zone contacted. There were a few members who came out (mostly from the YSA ward, though an Area Seventy was there, Elder Gary S Price), and Jason came as well so it was cool. I think we then went to Subway for dinner and then went home, but I'm not exactly sure at this point, so I'll just say that's what happened.
Saturday we had personal study, and then went to correlation meeting with Brother Barrett and Brother Hanlon, and we talked a lot about how the members can get involved in the Spanish work (so much Spanish discussion), and then we went to lunch with them at a place called Giovanni Rana's, where I had probably the best pasta ever. So, cool story, apparently Brother Barrett is in charge of the food stuff for all of the public schools in New York City (possibly all of New York, not entirely sure), so he's been working with Rana's to make a deal to use their pasta in public schools (makes me wish I'd been going to public school here when that happens, sigh), so not only did we not end up having to pay the check, they also gave us free desserts, but also took us on a tour of the facility and gave us about 4 pounds of pasta to take home. For free. So we've been living pretty well the last few nights for dinner. After that, we went back to the church for an interview with Elder Marshall and talked about our area and stuff. Elder Potter then worked on his mission experience a bit more, and then we traveled up to a baptism. So that lasted a while, then we stayed at the church and organized our referral information, and then went home and cooked ourselves some of that pasta we'd gotten.
Sunday, we got up, I got ready, did a little studies, and then we went off to church. We got there a bit early to help set up, due to it being a special "Come and See" Sunday, in which we have an hour and a half long sacrament meeting, and then a dinner afterwards (so none of the regular block meetings). So we set up in the gym for afterwards, and then went to the main meeting. Andre was supposed to come, but wasn't showing up or responding, so we figured he'd skipped again. We got to bless the sacrament, and then waited outside in the lobby for Andre to possibly arrive, as well as friends of two of the members. One of the member's friends came, but there was no sign of the others, so we went back into the chapel. After the meeting we went upstairs and had dinner, and we also helped a member get his instrument out of one of the bishop's offices, and then went back up. While eating, we got a text from Andre saying that he was stuck in a bus about 30 blocks away, and so the story goes that he'd been stuck in awful Easter traffic on a bus for about 4 hours. Ew. So he got there just as the dinner was beginning to wrap up, but he still got there, and was able to meet Brother Barrett, Bishop, Brother Winder, and others. That one guy Alan also came again, so we got his information so we can refer him to the New Rochelle Elders.
After the dinner was done, we helped clean up and then had a lesson with Andre, answering some of the questions about the things he'd been reading in the Book of Mormon and such. After that, we traveled downtown a little and looked up a few of the referrals we had (mostly addresses that didn't even exist, but hey, we tried), but we saw some interesting things while we were out and about. We saw some guy getting tackled to the ground by five police officers, got yelled at by some random person in a taxi about we're trying to take away their birth control, saw two performers in the subway have a sort of turf war (one was a little old man playing a violin with a microphone attached, the other was a drummer and they were both trying to drown out the other), and then saw some crazy old man trying to chase down some poor fast food delivery guy on a bike. Fun stuff. After all that excitement, we then went home and had dinner.
Monday we got up early, got ready, and went to a "specialty training" that was being held by President Morgan. There'd been a mission president training in Washington DC over the weekend, so this may have been part of that. The theme of the meeting was "Focused Faith Generates Power," and so we discussed a lot about faith and how we exhibit our faith. The first speaker was one of the AP's Elder Kerr, and he talked about the resurrection and Easter and examples of faith in his life that stem from the belief in the resurrection. We then heard from Sister Morgan, who shared a scripture (Moroni 7:33) and then expounded on it for a little. That was then followed by President Morgan, who talked about the faith that we as missionaries should have. He used the missionary purpose as an example, and talked about that if we're inviting others to come unto Christ, wouldn't it make sense that we should already be there? He also talked about how our faith is exhibited in our goals we set and the plans we make. The goal that he's set for us as a mission as well is by the end of May to have had 100 baptisms. Eek. That's apparently about 40 higher than the highest the mission's ever had in that period of time, but if we do what the Lord has asked us we can achieve that and more. It was really invigorating and got us all really excited for the upcoming month.
After that, we went to lunch at Steak & Shake and took our food to Central Park and enjoyed seeing grass again, and then Elder Potter and I headed to my doctor’s appointment. After that, we did a survey based on the training we received in the morning, and then worked on the less active list for the ward, putting in our information and sorting out which ones we need to go visit again. Afterwards, we went out and did some lookups, then picked up my medication from a CVS pharmacy, and then came home for dinner.(more pasta).
Tuesday, it was Elder Potter's 21st birthday, so he'd received a large amount of balloons in the mail so we blew all those up, and then we did our studies. We then went and helped someone get out of a treatment center (they needed an escort to show up just for formality's sake, so we came and dropped by and got him to his bus), and then we got taken out by one of Elder Berryman's friends from back home to Max Brenner's again (so much chocolate, I had the mac and cheese and a caramel milkshake this time), and then we went over to the chapel to do some online proselyting (mainly planning online events, we got new training saying we're supposed to do about 3 per week, each focused on conversion, retention, and reactivation respectively and to have target audiences as opposed to kind of a blanket invitation), and then we went out and did some lookups (none of whom were home, one of which had moved, and so on).
We then went to dinner at the Smith's (the one who's grandfather's name was Ralph, don't think he's related though), and had some nummy pulled pork sandwiches as well as chocolate banana muffins (and they gave us bread made out of the same stuff, yumyumyum), and then we went to a place called Magnolia's Bakery (apparently super famous for its cupcakes), and we all had some red velvet cupcakes (we as in us and the zone leaders) (they were also quite rich and delicious and fluffy), and then we came home.
Today, we got up, did our laundry, then headed over to the temple (Elder Potter, since he's going home in a week, gets to go with all the other dying missionaries to a temple session with President and Sister Morgan, and then go out to lunch afterwards), so now I'm upstairs emailing!
Hope everything is going well for all of you, training calls are tonight (hope I'm not training), and we'll find out Saturday if I'm leaving/staying as well. Woohoo. I'll have hit 6 months as of next Wednesday too. It's so crazy to think that I've been out for this long already, I'll never get used to how fast time goes out here.
I heard about Max's call to Las Vegas Spanish, hope that goes well and congratulate him for me! Also got Papa's letter saying Jacob's call is pretty much on its way as well, so we'll see where he ends up.
Anyhow, talk to you all later!
Elder Ralph Smith
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