Week 2 Down!!

The weather in New Jersey right now is so INCREDIBLE!! We had the most beautiful week! Easter time generally has really beautiful weather though. It has been blue skies and sunny and in the 70s. I am loving it! I am soaking up this sun that I missed so much! It's still not the same as my Arizona sun, but I'll take it!

 

I am IN LOVE with these trees. They're everywhere and they're blooming.

I looooove sister Throckmorton. We are getting a long really well and we have the potential to become a really powerful companionship. Yesterday we took a look at the numbers we have gotten throughout our missions and we identified our personal strengths as missionaries and how we could work together and use our strengths together this transfer. I'ts going to be awesome! We both have very different strengths that combined are going to help this area blow up. Our zone leader, who has worked with us both before, told us that he was so excited when we got put together because he thinks that we have the potential to be one of the most powerful companionships in our mission. I'm super excited.

 

On Tuesday we had a particularly good district meeting! It was the first district meeting of the transfer so as usual for these district meetings, we introduce ourselves a little bit because the districts change up a little bit due to transfers. I still have Elder Christensen as my district leader, which I love. He has been my district leader for the past two transfers here in Perth Amboy. This transfer is actually his last transfer, which is sad to me. He is training a new missionary that just came in from Canada. He is so shy it's adorable. I like being around new missionaries because it makes me look back on when I was new and realize how far I've come and how much my teaching skills and Spanish and everything has grown.  We had a really good meeting about teaching the whole restoration in one minute to a contact, then asking for a referral. It was fun, it's hard to teach the restoration in a minute, but it is so effective! We practiced it for a long time and it was really fun. Elder Christensen promised us that if we asked everyone we contacted for a referral, our teaching pool would double. Sister Throckmorton and I took that to heart. I really put the things that I learned in District meeting to the tests and we saw a ton of blessings! We got 7 referrals this week, it was awesome! The highest amount of referrals I've gotten on my mission is 4 in one week, so we did really well. It was cool to see that promised blessing fulfilled.

As I've been mentioning, we have a mission wide goal to do 10 contacts a day or 70 a week. This week sister T and I contacted 82!! It was so much fun! We just went out and contacted all day every day! We talked to some of the most hilarious people. I think about half of our total lessons this week were contact lessons where we actually taught the people the restoration in a  contact, gave them a pamphlet to read or the Book of Mormon, set up another appointment to come and teach them again and said a prayer with them... All in like 10 minutes on the street, or in their yard, or somewhere random like that. It was so fun! We met a ton of crazy people, too, though. Crazy contacts are the best though. It is our best source of entertainment as a missionary. We have the goal to talk to EVERYONE we see, which can be fun. We're always looking for the chance to talk to someone, which is hard in our area because it's mostly neighborhoods and we don't see a lot of people walking outside... BUT, there was this one day that we picked out a neighborhood that looked pretty Spanish to proselyte in and we were walking down the street and we saw this guy drive by. Then we kept walking and he drove by again and was stopped at the stop light next to where we were. He kept looking at us, so I walked up to his car and started talking to him through the window... he wouldn't roll down his window though, so I passed him a pass along card through the sunroof then he drove away.. It was so funny. We were cracking up.

Yesterday all of our appointments juked us so we went out to Cartaret to contact people. We stopped in this little neighborhood that is next to an apartment complex and we saw a few people from India sitting outside. We went and talked to them for a little bit. It was this really old man and he was so nice! He was telling us about his beliefs and how they believe in Christ. He asked for a Book of Mormon... We gave him one, we're not really sure if he'll be able to read it though, because he could barely speak English, but he wanted one. He was so adorable though. He was telling us about how his people just want to have peace with one another.. we taught him about God and Jesus Christ and the restoration and stuff. He didn't really understand English very well, but he kept saying that he was so happy that we came and that we gave him this picture of Jesus Christ. but we were about to leave and so we put out our hands, but he told us that in his culture, elderly men don't shake women's hands, they pat their heads, so he patted our heads. It was cute!

After that we went further into the neighborhood and we contacted this man who was outside doing some yard work with a little girl. He wasn't really interested but we asked him if he knew anyone who would be interested - then the little girl just blurts out "MY GRANDMA WOULD BE!!" so she went and got her and she was the coolest lady! We briefly taught her the restoration and she accepted a Book of Mormon. We read a little bit of the introduction with her and she invited us back over. It was cool that we got a referral from this cute little girl. Her grandpa would have never referred us to his wife, but the granddaughter did because she knew that her grandma had beliefs in God and Jesus and loves going to church. I love kids!

After talking to that lady and her cute granddaughter, we went back on our merry way down the street and we ended up at another apartment complex. I saw an elderly woman with a cane walking up a curb, so I offered to help her. Once she made it up the curb I told her I was a missionary and stuff then she said kind of threateningl,y "Well, you happen to be talking to a Jehovah's Witness" and she got a little bit sour... I didn't know how to deal with the situation so I just said, "That is so great, you must have such strong beliefs in Jesus Christ" and she said yes of course then she started preaching to us, then her friend got out of the car. Her friend was crazy! She was older too and she was really outgoing and loud and happy. She said, "well aren't you two girls so charming! Do you mind helping us carry in some groceries!!" So we agreed. Then this lady looked at our tags and how they were Spanish and gasped then said "Yo hablo espanol! Yo fui a espana por 3 meses!!" (I speak Spanish, I went to Spain for 3 months) It was so random and funny! Her Spanish was hilarious sounding. She definitely wasn't very good, but it was impressive for only having 3 months in Spain. Then some Indian guy passed by and she started talking to him in another language and they laughed and he walked away. Then she just goes "I just love languages!" and she listed off all these random languages that she knows. She was quite the character. So we help these two ladies carry their groceries inside and one just wanted to preach to us, and the other just wanted to be friends with us.. It was the funniest situation. Then they just randomly said," hey we got some Jewish matzos from a friend, do you want them? We want to give them to you." So they gave us some matzos.... So long story short, We got some Jewish food from two crazy Jehovah Witness ladies. It was fun. We said a prayer with them and they were touched - then they insisted on driving us to our car because Cartaret isn't safe at night. I loved it though because we turned what could have been a negative situation into a positive situation by serving these two ladies and strengthening their own faith in Christ. I hope they have a different perspective of who Mormons are instead of the perspective they started out with, with how the JDubs look at the Mormons as a type of enemy.

 

Just chilling with our Matzos that we got from the JDubs.

 

Random funny story, on Thursday we had our walking day, so we drove to Woodbridge and walked around there all day. As we were driving back home to Fords from Woodbridge, sister T took a wrong turn and we ended up lost in this random neighborhood. We were driving down a  dark street and suddenly we saw something jump in front of our car so we stop and we look over and it was a bunny!! We got so excited so we stopped the car and got out and tried to take pictures with it! We found the Easter  Bunny. It was hilarious. I'm glad Sister T took the wrong turn because we got to find this little bunny, it made our night.

 

The bunny that we found.

I was trying to get it.

OOOOOh we also got to go visit that family that sister Weinstock and I found by contacting the neighbors of a media referral. They are so cool! We went back and we started teaching them again and they had read in the Book of Mormon and they had all of these questions and we basically taught them all about the Book of Mormon and the history of that time and they had really good questions. They are way into it! This guy loves the Book of Mormon and he invited us to come over as often as we can so we made some more appointments with him for this week. He said he wants to learn everything that we can teach him because he thinks the message is really good. He said he wants his sons to listen too, but he's not sure if they will want to. He also told us to visit his dad, which we will be doing this week. SO COOL!! I'm really excited to keep teaching him. I'll let you know how it went next week. His name is Ramon and his wife's name is Estrella. Pray for them!

We were messing around with the GPS a couple of days ago to see

how long it would take to drive home...it was really far. Kinda cool though. I <3 NJ.

 

That's about it for this week! We have a great week coming up and we have plans to get a lot of new investigators and we have a lot of lessons scheduled with potential investigators! I'm so excited, the work is going smoothly here in Perth Amboy, and the Presidents promise that our teaching pool would double if we contact 70 people a week is definitely being fulfilled!

I love you and miss you all, I hope you have a great week!