Journeys in Jersey: Another Week in West New York

We just finished our sixth week, which means that I have been here for a whole transfer and I am half way done with my training!! We are using new planners now... It's so weird. We are also feeling like we know our area now and we finally know all of the members in the ward and we have some of our own investigators, and we know the less actives that we are helping. It feels good to really know the area. We love it! Today there are going to be new missionaries getting here from the MTC, so my group won't be the newest missionaries! yay!!!

We loved the package my mom sent. We're excited to give these to the primary kids. funny story - our goal in life is to always be better than the elders...right now the primary kids really like the Elders, so we're really excited to give them these Halloween erasers and pencils. hahahaha.

Mommy, Gracias for the socks!!

The building in front of our house is coming down!!

This week was fine, but it wasn't really the greatest. I got really sick for a couple of days. I got a really bad cold and I had a super sore throat and I lost my voice. It was not very fun. And the weather was terrible that day, so we couldn't really go outside of the apartment because we knew that I would get worse if we were out in the freezing cold and rain, so we stayed inside for one day. It was soooo hard not to be able to go out and teach. I hated it. BUT, there is kind of a cool story about that day... But it goes way back to a couple of weeks ago sooooo.

REWIND- Two weeks ago

I was on an exchange with Sister Biolena and we were out wandering West New York trying to find people to teach because our appointments juked. I was looking at all of the people that we have to get a hold of in the ward. Since our first week in WNY, everybody in the ward had been telling us to get a hold of this one member who is very, very sick, Sis. Martin and I had tried to call her several times, and we had gone to her door a couple of times but no one answered. We knew she existed because a lot of people in the ward know her and asked us if we have heard from her and she has a pretty lengthy record in the area book, so we know the sisters had gone to visit her before. The whole situation was kind of weird. But anyways, I looked at her name and got this weird feeling that we should maybe try to go over. So we headed over to her street and up to her apartment. We knocked on the door and SOMEONE ANSWERED! BUT, it wasn't her, it was her son. We asked if she was home and he told us that... She died. I was in complete shock. It was so sad. Then about half an hour later we exchanged back and Sister Martin and I were kind of freaked out and we started letting the ward know. It was soooo good that I had gone over there though, or else no one would know still.

OK now FAST FORWARD! - This week.

We have been trying to work with the bishop a lot closer lately, so last Sunday we asked the Bishop what he wanted to work on in the ward this week. He told us that he wanted us to try to find the dead woman's daughter, Monica. They are not members, but they had been taught a couple of lessons by the other sister missionaries. He told us that he thought it was really important that we try to find them and really reach out to them and try to teach them. We had gone to her apartment and met her once and invited her and her daughters to noche de hogar during our first week in WNY, but we never heard from her after. We had tried calling her a couple of times but we never got answers. Sooooo, we tried to get a hold of her all week. We went to her apartment every single day, we knocked on the door and we could hear her kids running around inside, but she would never open the door. We left her notes and we decided that we would keep trying to go back until she let us in or something.

One day, we left our apartment and we were feeling a little irritated because we had left late and we had no idea why, and we also left our suit jackets, which we needed to wear for correlation. On any normal day, we probably would have thought that was an important enough reason to go back home and get them, but for some reason, on this day, we decided to just keep walking. I think we were going to walk down to the fruit stand to see our new investigators and just check up on them and follow up on their commitments. We decided to walk down Hudson, which was weird because the fruit stand is on Broadway.... But anyways, we were walking down Hudson, and we thought, hey, Monica lives on Hudson, lets try to go knock her door again. So we head towards her apartment, then WE SAW HER!! She was just leaving she had her 3 stinkin' cute girls with her, all bundled up to go somewhere. We stopped her really quick, and introduced ourselves. She was very sweet. We told her that we heard about her mom and that we knew that our message about Jesus Christ could help her in her life... She got very teary eyed and she accepted. We taught her a very brief over view about the plan of salvation right there and she was soooo open. We gave her a pamphlet to read and she said that we could read it and that we could come back on Friday at 1 to talk about it more.

MIRACLE!!!

Ok - Friday, the day to teach Monica. I wake up that morning DEAD. I was seriously soooo sick. Sister Martin just let me go back to sleep. Then, I woke up a little bit late, and got a blessing from the Elders. I took a shower and got ready, then I felt like we should still go teach Monica.... So we headed out the door to go teach her. It was such a good lesson. She was way prepared. She understood everything and had good questions. We read a baptism scripture with her, she said it really made her feel like she should be baptised. We invited her and she said yes! She agreed to let us keep coming over and preparing her for her baptism.

After the lesson... I died. I couldn't even talk after that, so we went home and I crashed for the rest of the day :(

Other than that, the week was fine! We picked up another new investigator, a reference from a member. She has a really good solid family. I really hope this family decides to listen to us. We also made more progress with Adiel and Olinda. Olinda is really opening up to us now. We stopped by randomly one day and they just happened to be home and we had a good chat with them. We showed them the lds.org page and how they could watch conference talks. We left them with a conference talk to watch. I hope they watch it. I'm sure Adiel did, he was already starting when we left. I can't wait to follow up with them and see how they liked it.

Saturday night we had a ward party.

The fire alarm went off before the party started, so we all had to go across the street while the firefighters checked the building out.

La Noche de la Hispanidad. SO MUCH FUN. Way better than any ward party I've ever been to in Utah or Arizona, that's for sure. The members set up rooms and tables with fun things from all of their countries.

Representing the United States!!

Elder Benson representing the U.S., cute little Evelyn, representing Peru, and Elder Blanco representing Mexico.

Sister Martin and I in Peru!

They LOVED telling us all about their countries. Sooo cool.

Hermana Torres with her Ecuador station. She is so great! hahaha

We made a table for the US

Uruguay

El Salvador

The Benitez family made some great food to represent El Salvador!

We also had food from all of the countries. AMAZING!! We had Tamales, papusas, empinadas, mongoo, and a bunch of other things... SO GOOD.

Hermana Sanches and her cute little boy all dressed up for their Mesico table. They brought great tamales and jarritos and chips and salsa!

Hermana Pavon, dressed up for Mexico. She looked so cute! She fed us this week and she is such a great cook! She cooked us taquitos! Seriously sooooo yummy.

And I loooove the Colombian soda... Seriously my favorite treat. mmmmm. I love the food here. hahaha. Then, they had dances from all of the different countries. I swear, Latinos just naturally know how to dance. They all danced. It was so fun to watch. They are all wayyy good. It was a FIESTA!!!

The older woman is one of the Elders' investigators. She had the time of her life. She just got up and started dancing, so Hermana Sanches got up and danced with her. It was so cute. She is getting baptized soon :)

The dance for the dominicanos!

Hermano concepcion with his flag! BEST MOMENT OF MY LIFE!!

My favorite part though, was watching Hermano Concepcion (I think I've probably mentioned him a couple of times, he's so awesome) had a Dominican Republic flag and he got up and said "por todos los dominicanos" then he danced around the room holding the flag then he put it on the ground and kissed it. Everyone was cracking up. He is such a funny guy.

The dance for Venesuela. I think they are the only two in the ward who are from there. They were so good though! She is the Relief Society President, and she is awesome!