Week 27: First week with new companion & Helping out at charity run/walk

[Here is Ralph's e-mail from last Wednesday.]

Hey everyone! Hope everything is going well. Anyhow, into the record of my life.

On Wednesday after emailing, I got together with my new companion Elder Edmunds and we talked with people for a while at transfer meeting, and then we grabbed his luggage and went down to our apartment. It was positively pouring rain outside, so we got drenched (the umbrellas helped next to none due to too much wind). We then ended up having to walk over to the grocery store because no buses were coming, so by the time we got there, every step I took made a gloosh sound (my shoes were plenty waterproof, it's just that when the rain soaks your pants, and then your socks, the insides of your shoes aren't too safe at that point). And then we had to walk back for part of it as well. Lots of wet. So we got home, hung our everything up to dry, and then did our planning and headed to bed.

Thursday, we had studies, then traveled to the chapel to go teach Vlad (I got to break in my new shoes because my usual ones were still soaked through despite having blow-dried them for around an hour). It went pretty well, we got him introduced to Elder Edmunds, reemphasized our purpose and invited him to read certain chapters. We're debating possibly passing him on to the MTC missionaries (there are missionaries there whose whole mission is spent online proselyting from the MTC), so that'd be better for him since he wants to meet pretty often and we really don't have the time to keep talking with him (plus we've been out of new material to teach for almost a month now). After Vlad, we got lunch, and then did our weekly planning for 4 1/2 hours. Blech. It was really good, it was just super duper long. Afterwards, we headed over to Roosevelt Island for dinner with Brother Brown, and then came home.

Friday, we left at about 8 to go help out at something called the Revlon Run/Walk. It's an annual thing that we help out at apparently (it's a 5K run/walk for breast cancer), so we got to take all of the little medals out of their packaging and get them in piles of 25. And we did about 10000 medals. I have much more sympathy for people who work in sweat shops. We did that for quite a while, and then we had lunch (it was provided by them). After that, they asked if Elder Edmunds and I could stay and help them put together signs, which we did. Lots of stapling. We went from there (up in Central Park) all the way back down to where we live to go teach David (the blind less active guy). That went really well, we got to talk with him and see how he's doing, and we're going to see if there's any way we can arrange for him to get a ride to church (first step, finding someone who owns a car). After his lesson, we went back to our apartment and started compiling a more organized less active lookup list, as well as entered in a lot of our media referrals to go lookup, and put in a lot more information on former investigators from our hard copy of the area book. We had dinner afterwards, ran over to the library to sync up all the information, and then went back home for the night.

Saturday, we got up at 4 in the morning. Ew. The reason was that we needed to be at Times Square by 6 for the Revlon Run again to pass out the aforementioned signs to the teams they belonged to. We were there from about 6-9, got some cool T-Shirts and then we traveled over to the 15th street chapel for correlation meeting. Brother Barrett was out of town, so Brother Hanlon kept it nice and short, so we got done with that pretty quickly and then went back home for studies and lunch. I decided to take a nap after I finished lunch (I only took about 10 minutes with lunch, and then went and slept for the rest of the lunch hour). Unfortunately, I was tired enough that I slept through the alarm I'd set and woke up 45 minutes later. Whoops. Apparently Elder Edmunds had tried to start personal study, had knelt down to pray, and then woke up half an hour later still on his knees. Ouch. So after that, we finished our studies, prepared for our lesson we were to have with Andre, and then traveled to said lesson. We talked with him for a bit, his social security thingamabob got changed so he didn't end up getting money until Monday, meaning he was without food for a while. We then decided to run home and grab one of our free food places in Manhattan maps and text him some of the information, and then rushed down to the Financial District for dinner at the Cannon's. We went to a really good burger place, and had a lesson with them, and then traveled up to the 15th street chapel to pick up mail and to put in some more information. We called a few more referrals, and got in contact with several of them, one of whom we ended up passing on to the Sisters. After we finished with that, we went home.

Sunday, we did our studies, and then headed over to Andre's to actually teach our lesson this time, but he wasn't there. We waited around for a bit, and then headed up to church. Testimony meeting was super good, and then we went to Sunday School and Priesthood (Priesthood was especially good as well), and then after church went and entered in yet even more information. After that, we headed over to dinner at the Myres', talked to them a lot about missionary work, and then went home.

Monday, we had studies and then went to zone meeting, which was on revelation through church attendance. Afterwards, we had lunch, and then were going to have a lesson with Vlad, but through a combination of the internet being dysfunctional and the fact that he wasn't there (to our knowledge), we didn't end up having it. So afterwards, we went back to the apartment because Elder Edmunds had forgotten his iPad there that morning, and once we got there I started feeling pretty sick. I called the doctor, who told me that I needed to relax for the rest of the day, so we went on a split since we had an appointment with Julia later that evening, so I stayed home with Elders Aston and Filoso while Elders Edmunds and Marshall went to the appointment. We cooked up some dinner, and then waited for them to get back. They got back and we unsplitted, and then we planned and headed to bed.

Tuesday, we got up, did studies, went to church and had lunch, and then had our interview with Elder Marshall. After that, we went to Doctor Nixon, and that went well. We then went downtown and had dinner at Yanilsa's, then went to see how Andre was doing, ran into a former investigator who was taught about 10 years ago, and got a call back from someone we gave a card to on the bus. We then went home.

Today, we cleaned our apartment, and then went to Chinatown to get some dumplings for lunch, and then came here!

Hope everything is going well!

Elder Ralph Smith

Week 26: Six months already?

[Here's Ralph's e-mail from last Wednesday.]

Woohoo 6 months! It went by super super quickly for me, I'm not sure about how fast it went for all of you. Anyhow, here's the stuff that happened this week.

So, after emailing all of you people, we (as in, Elders Kroff, Berryman and me since Elder Potter was in the temple) went shopping at Century 21 (I got myself a nice looking tie), and then went and got lunch at Subway. We then came back to the temple for a while, played some basketball, a game called gatorball (basically soccer + if the ball goes into the air and someone catches it, you can run with it and throw it to other people until you get tagged), and we did that for pretty much the whole time until they got out. Once Elder Potter was done, he wanted to go to the NBA store (again) to go buy himself a hat, so we went, and ended up spending half an hour there without him actually deciding on a hat. Sigh. We then headed over to our dinner appointment at the Engs, and were late (stupid nonexistent hat), and had some nummy food there. Their daughter also made some super good cupcakes (they looked like hamburgers, vanilla cupcake on bottom and on top with different colored icing and a brownie in between), and after that we headed home. No one in the zone got training calls (really odd), but I heard that Elder Jensen got one, kind of to make up for not being able to do it the last time I guess.

Thursday, we did our studies, and then headed to the chapel for a lesson with Vlad, which went pretty well (we avoided swimming in super deep doctrine by reading a chapter of the Book of Mormon with him), and then we headed to lunch at a place called Katz's Delicatessen (apparently super famous New York place) with a member from the YSA ward named Jessica. She brought one of her friends (a member named Eric), and we had lunch and a lesson there. They're renowned for their sandwiches, and the one I ended up getting was pretty much 5-6 inches thick. Yeesh. It was pretty good, but REALLY BIG so I didn't quite manage to finish all of it. After stuffing ourselves, we went back to the chapel and did some weekly planning, and then headed down for a lesson with Andre. We went over the Plan of Salvation, and he remembered pretty much all of it from the last time he was taught it (however long ago that was), and didn't really have any concerns about it. We then went from him over to Isaac, and read some from the Book of Mormon with him. After we finished with him, Elder Potter decided to go to some place called Flight Club (another place that sells hats), and still didn't decide on one, so then we went home.

Friday, we did our studies, had lunch, and then went over to a less active named Petra's apartment to help her move a TV (it was enormous, I'm surprised I still have a back), and then we talked with her a little bit. She is what the mission refers to as a "Hajje Special," due to the fact that she was converted by an Elder Hajje. The reason why there's actually a distinction between those he converts and regular ones is because he was so charismatic that people would get baptized, but not actually have a testimony. And apparently this happened enough times for them to have their own category. So anyhow, that happened, and then we went and finished weekly planning, and then went out to dinner with Brother Barrett at a place called brgr. He then treated us to Magnolia's cupcakes again, and I got some delicious banana pudding. After that, we headed back to the Flight Club place and once AGAIN, indecision defeated Elder Potter. I, on the other hand, got a nice $10 Mariners hat, interesting colors, but nice. After that, it was home for the night.

Saturday morning we went over and helped someone from the YSA ward move (the zone leaders had two people that needed help moving so they asked us if we could help), so we did that, and then we went and grabbed lunch, and then did some more service over at Andy Lam's (he's in a wheelchair and needed some stuff moved off of his balcony), so we did that (and of course it started raining), and then we were going to go do some service for Andre, but he had to go help his sister with something, so we instead went and got dinner, and then went up to the NBA store one last time and Elder Potter finally got a hat, and then went home. Transfer calls came that night, and I found out that I was staying again and that I'd be getting an Elder Edmunds, who trained Elders Fronk, Thompson, and Filoso (all of whom are still in our zone). So we'll see how that goes.

Sunday, we got up and went to the YSA ward's sacrament meeting (for Potter's sake), and then did our studies. We then went up to ward council, and then had our church. Apparently it was the ward's one year anniversary of being a ward, so we had some cake afterwards. We then attempted to have an online event, but nobody came. After that, we went to dinner at the Hanlon's (they're always so fun to go over and visit), and then we went home.

Monday, we did our studies and then went to district meeting, had lunch, took zone pictures, and so forth. We then did some online proselyting, and then went over for a lesson with Andre. We taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, once again pretty much review for him, and then took pictures with him for Elder Potter. We then went over to Grand Central and got our shoes shined (they did/can do a better job than I ever could), and then we went over to a lesson with Yolanda and her kids. It went really well, and the kids (who are mostly less active) seemed really engaged and seemed to really enjoy it. We then went home (also, I've never eaten more rice in my life, easily never that much in one setting).

Tuesday, we did personal study, and then went over to the temple for Elder Potter's exit interview. After that, we went over to visit a less active named Renee who we'd set up an appointment with, but she juked us. So instead, we went over to Shake Shack and got lunch (I got some nummy custard). We then did some planning, and then we went on a small split with the zone leaders, and I went with Elder Kroff. We went over to an appointment we had with the Winders, as well as Fletcher and his fiancee (who is not a member), so we had dinner and then had a lesson. It went really well, she seems super interested in what we had to say and we're going to see if we can meet weekly! She's from Ukraine and is super nice, so hopefully we can start teaching her more. We also found out that Fletcher is the one who sold that ride in Disneyworld called Mission: Space to Disney, that one Roland talked about the last time he was here, so that was really cool. We went home after that and got Elder Potter all packed.

Today, we got up, got ready, and then came up to the chapel for transfers, and now Elder Potter's elsewhere and I'm waiting for my new companion to come down from upstate! Hope everything is going well for all of you, and I'll talk to you later!

Elder Ralph Smith