Journeys in Jersey: May!!!

Sister T made me this sign for my halfway mark

Katie sent me a Rita's gift card for my halfway! we were super stoked! Tahks, Katie.

I can't believe it's MAY! The summer is coming here in New Jersey. It's starting to get pretty humid and I am not sure how I feel about it. Yuck. I am not looking forward to this humidity. We got SO MUCH RAIN this week! It was so much fun though! Rain just makes missionary work more fun, especially when it's not cold rain. Cold rain isn't as fun.

We got so SOAKED!

It was a pretty slow week around here. Celenia left for the DR to get married, she is coming back on May 11, so hopefully there will be a baptism quickly following that. I am so excited for her. She is amazing! We got to meet with Ramon and Estrella and we had a really serious talk with them about keeping their commitments and the importance of reading the things we ask them to read and things like that. We got the vibe from them that they really want to read and to keep learning. We weren't sure for a little while because they weren't really doing their homework. We called them a couple of days later and they said that they read the plan of salvation pamphlet and the scriptures in the back together as a family with their 3 boys and they loved it! I'm so excited! It is really neat that they did that. We ask them every time we see them if they will follow the example of Jesus Christ and be baptized and they always say yes... They just haven't come to church. It is so hard to get people to church sometimes. Once they start coming to church, I think things will start moving very quickly for them. They are such a neat family and I just love them so much because I found them and it was such a miracle. They are such a miracle.

We made a banana cream pie for weekly planning!

Sorry it's a bit blurry and we look crazy

We had it planned this week to go on an exchange with our Sister Training Leaders on Friday of this week, but on Tuesday night at about 10:15, we got a text from them saying that they couldn't do it on Friday because they had a meeting, and they asked us if we could do it the next day. We said sure and we threw our stuff together to do this exchange. It was kind of crazy and last minute, but that's just missionary life. Everything is kind of crazy and last minute. You just have to do what you have to do. Good times for sure.

Wednesday was the day it rained ALL DAY! Literally it was raining when I woke up and it was raining when I went to bed, no pauses in between. I have never seen so much rain in my life. BUT, anyways, on Wednesday we get up, study and we had 2 appointments before our exchange at 3. We met the Sisters at the Perth Amboy capilla... (I forgot how to say that in English... sorry family). (Mom looked it up- chapel) We exchanged super quickly in the pouring rain, trying not to get our stuff wet. Sister Webb came to Perth Amboy with Sister Throckmorton and I went down to East Brunswick with Sister Collins. I HAD SUCH A GOOD TIME!! It was the Best Exchange of my whole mission... I feel like I say that every time, but this one was really good. I had already been down to this area before on my exchange with Sister Varble, so I was a little bit familiar with the area. Sister Collins is a newly called Sister Training Leader and I didn't know her before she got put down here with Sister Webb in East Brunswick at the beginning of the transfer. I had been really impressed by her though as I spoke with her at zone meetings and I know her daughter Sister Paight, who was in my district for my first two transfers of my mission, so I was SO excited to go out with her for the day and learn some of her tricks and skills and what not.

We drove down to East Brunswick, which is about a 30 minute drive and we talked and got to know each other a little bit... we were starving though. They had a crazy morning because they were actually on an exchange the day before and were just barely exchanging back. They were together for about 30 minutes on the drive to Perth Amboy. That life must be crazy. The STLs do 2 or more exchanges per week. I don't know how they do it. Anyways, she had a crazy morning/afternoon and hadn't even eaten yet, so we had a little lunch brake and we went to this place called Mancini's pizza. The missionaries in Brunswick areas go there a lot and we go there for zone lunch sometimes, so the workers there know the missionaries. The sisters have an investigator who goes there every day and he has been promising that he would get them a shirt but he hasn't, so while we were ordering, Sister Collins asked the cashier, "so how can we get one of those cool Mancini shirts" and he said, well, what size do you want? We told him our size and then he just gave them to us. We were shocked... He gave them to us for free! We were so stoked! It as pretty funny. It was a great start to the rest of the exchange. We enjoyed our pizza then we headed out to an apartment complex where there were some appointments scheduled.

The day wasn't really scheduled out very well because Sister Webb was there the day before and sister Collins was in Princeton so we just had to kind of do what felt right. All the appointments around there juked, so we decided to get in our 10 contacts for the day.... IN THE POURING RAIN!! We knocked tons of doors and everyone told us we were crazy. We taught one guy in his doorway, we couldn't go inside because there wasn't a woman. We were DRIPPING! Then we found an area that had the hallways covered, so we decided to try those. We started from the top and worked our way down. We weren't having much luck, then we knocked this door and this guy named Archie answered. He invited us in right away, but we couldn't enter because there wasn't a woman present, so he just came right outside in the rain with us. He was really interested. He told us how he had been through some hard things in his life and he wants to strengthen his relationship with God. He was born Muslim and he was planning on starting to practice again, but he said he wants to explore other things. He said that he recently started praying every day and this morning he was praying that he would have somebody to talk to, and he knew as soon as the doorbell rang that his prayers were being answered. We taught him about the restoration and read him a scripture. He was in awe and he looked at us and said, "I am so thankful that you two sisters came over today and taught me in the rain, can you come back tomorrow" so we scheduled an appointment with him the next day. I haven't followed up with them yet on how it went, but I'm going to see the sisters and I'm excited to see how it went.

Sister Collins and me.

After that we went to the church for mutual to see if anyone brought some non member friends... and we really had to use the bathroom. Church buildings are life SAVERS! There wasn't really anyone there, but we talked to some members for a while and we went into the family history center and the lady helped me learn how to do family history, which I really needed because we are trying to get that started here in Perth Amboy. No one has done it before... then we had to leave because we had a lesson planned with an investigator named Bob at 8:30. Bob lives in the same apartment complex as the sisters, so when we pulled into their spot at the complex, we saw that the door of our apartment was WIDE OPEN!! It was so scary. We were super scared and we didn't know what to do... and we were late for the appointment, so we called the elders and they said they would come check the apartment as soon as they got home, which would be around 9 or a little after because the traffic was bad due to the rain... We said ok and so we decided that we would just leave it open because we were too freaked out and go to our appointment. We started to say a prayer in the car before we left. In the middle of the prayer we hear this huge BAM! right on the hood of the car. We both screamed so loud and jumped. It scared us to death. It scared the guy who slammed our car to death too. we rolled down the window and he said that he was the neighbor and he just wanted to let us know that the door had been open all day. Which freaked us out even more. We ran to Bobs and had a pretty good lesson with him. I taught his wife in Spanish, she's from Colombia. Then we headed home around 9:30. The elders still weren't there because they were stuck in traffic because the freeway flooded.

Bob made us the WIERDEST brownies

We started our nightly planning in the car. The elders finally got there around 10 and checked our apartment. They said nothing looked wrong and it looked like the door just blew open from the wind. We headed inside and finished our nightly planning. We barely finished by 10:30. The lights have to be out by 10:30 but we hadn't even eaten dinner or gotten ready for bed. so we turned off all the lights and got a flashlight and ate some left over pizza in the light of the flashlight and were just cracking up about how crazy our day was and how soaking wet we were. We got in bed around 11 but didn't even end up going to sleep until around 1 because we were talking so much. Sister Collins fell asleep mid sentence because she was so tired. It was funny. She is super cool and we had a lot of fun together and got along really well and had a lot of random things in common. Is what I needed! Its always fun to make a new friend.

Cute Planner!

The next day we did our comp study and you always get an extra hour on exchanges so the Sisters can give you a training and kind of criticize you and help you set goals to improve. Sister Collins helped me SO MUCH! I had felt like I was kind of stuck in my missionary work and I got to talk to her about it a little bit and she knew exactly what to say and taught me something really cool about goals and desires and stuff and we were able to set some really good goals for me which have helped so much! It was so cool that this exchange was exactly what I needed to get out of the little rut I was in and that Sister Collins was able to help me. I'm not sure if anyone else could have helped me like she did. God puts us where we need to be and when so we can learn.

We got to go through the Ironbound to get to the Newark chapel. It's crazy down there in Newark! There's a reason only Elders serve there!

On Saturday night we got to go down to Newark for the Saturday night session of Stake conference. It was such a good conference! It was all about missionary work. President and Sister Jeppson spoke and one of our Sister Training Leaders in the short hills area spoke. She did a particularly good job representing the NJMM. President Jeppson had all the missionaries stand, which was about 40ish of us and he bore a testimony in our behalf of the gospel of Jesus Christ while we were standing. The spirit was so strong and it was really neat. I was so proud to be a missionary. Then President Jeppson looked at us and told us that he was proud of us. There is no better feeling than when President Jeppson tells you he's proud of you... Except for when maybe God says it :)

We had a member who went with us and she was so motivated that she went and ordered a copy of preach my gospel right then and then she came out with us on a team up last night. We contacted this one guy and she gave him a Book of Mormon, asked him to read it, set a return appointment AND asked him for referrals. It was awesome, and the guy was super interested and wants us to come back. MEMBERS ARE THE BEST!! Members are so important. and in the words of Sister Boudesoque, who spoke at our stake conference "Members, you are so important to missionary work and to the missionaries. We LOVE you and we are here because of you" I couldn't say it any better. Its 100% true. I hope you all are doing your member missionary work and have a family mission plan. If you need help, ASK THE MISSIONARIES... They will be happy to help you. That's what they're there for. I think before my mission I always had the mindset that the missionaries need the member's help - that they rely on members for food and for referrals and what not, but I have learned that it's the opposite. Its really the members that need the help of the missionaries. The missionaries aren't serving missions so that they can receive help from members, they're serving missions so that they can help the members and strengthen the WARD. Well, at least that's why I'm serving a mission. Just a thought :)