Elders are Weird

Hola familia!

Primero, quiero decir FELIZ DIA DEL PADRE PAPI!! Te quiero mucho. Tengo un papa maravillosa. Y tengo muchos mas hombres en mi vida que son incredibles. Gracias Ryan y Rod tambien que son dos hombres queme han ayudado mucho en mi vida. Muchas gracias a todos. Les quiero mucho.

Well, it is hard to go into English mode sometimes. Happy Fathers day to all the men in my life! I love you Dad, Rod and Ryan!

This week went by really fast... I don't even know. On Tuesday after emails we had a lot of studying and just kind of boring work to do... Like language study and phone calls and stuff... Missionary work is so diverse. There is a lot of paper work and record keeping and phone time and planning and a lot of really boring things... But I kind of love it. It is fun as long as you make it fun. We got a new investigator! We contacted this guy in Boonton a couple of weeks ago and we set an appointment with  him for Tuesday. We went over to his house and he was happy to see us. We got along so well with him. El me cae bien. He opened right up to us about a lot of things in his life and we were able to effectively relate all of it to the gospel.

Something that I have learned recently is the importance of listening to everything people say. You can always relate the gospel of Jesus Christ to anything people say. It is kind of a hard skill to learn, but I think we did really well with it while we were teaching him and it made all the difference. We brought this member named Obdeli with us. They are the same age, about 25, and they both have a child in their countries. We related them being so far away from their kids to us being so far away from our Father in Heaven. They were really touched by it and the spirit was really strong. We pointed it out to him several times. He said the closing prayer and it was beautiful. We have an appointment with him tomorrow. Yesterday I was texting him and he was eager and joking with us. It was funny. I asked him if we could come see him on Tuesday. He said absolutely, how about 6:04. I said, wow, how specific... what happens if we show up at 6:07. He laughed and said not acceptable. He is a funny guy. I am really excited to be teaching him. Later that night we had a really good lesson with Alonso. He still won't accept a baptismal date, which is kind of sad. He just keeps saying yes, hermanas, but I still don't know when. He is reading the Book of Mormon a lot now though and we talk to him everyday. I love him. He is already so faithful to the church! It is hard to understand why people so solid like him who have such a strong testimony but it just is so hard for them to get baptized. He keeps telling us that it will be very soon though. Man I love him, he's the best!

Alonso playing with Ivonne's daughter, Alixa, during Sacrament meeting. He is SO cute with her.

Wednesday we had another lesson with Ivonne. We taught her about spiritual gifts and callings in the church. We are ready to get her a calling. She is going to be a great help to the ward. We also found an investigator who kind of fell of the face of the planet for a few weeks. His name is David and he was the first person I taught here in Motown. He is so cool, he is a teenager and he's from Mexico. We had a really good lesson with him and he has some really good desires in his life. He is moving to New York though for the summer... We were kind of bummed because that means that we can't teach him... But when we asked him where, he surprisingly said he is going to New City, which happens to be the only part of New York that is in our mission! We were so excited! He agreed to meeting with the elders up there and he is really excited. After that we did a really fun Noche de hogar with the Garcia family and another family in the branch that is in the elder's area. It was so much fun. We brought stuff to make s'mores... of course they had never had those. Its kind of an American thing. We had a lot of fun teaching them how to do it. They made some awesome food too, as always. I really like food from Honduras! It's yummy, they make really good carne.

Thursday was a great day! We got weekly planning in a few hours and we were out working. It was our walking day and we had to walk into Morristown to visit a recent convert named Nina. She is one of my favorite people to teach, she is so funny. She has this sass that my sisters would LOVE. She is Puerto Rican, which means she is hilarious. We went over to her house and she was showing us this new cool machine that she got where you put fruit into it and it turns it into ice cream.. Literally. It just turns the fruit into ice cream. You don't have to put anything else in it. It was really yummy too. We like to mess around with her. We asked her for her ipad so we could read something with her, then when she went into the other room to get it, we snuck into the kitchen. She came out and was so confused. We heard her in the other room. she stopped then she was like "Sisters?" It was so hard not to laugh. She walked in and we scared her. Sister Smedley has a canker on her tongue so she has been talking with a lisp the last couple of days. Nina has been getting a crack out of it. She keeps teasing her and telling her that she sounds like she is from Spain, which is sort of true.

On Friday we had a really intense chastity lesson with Yenny and Julian. Julian basically just told Yenny straight up that he doesn't want to marry her. It was really sad for all of us. I feel so bad for this girl. She doesn't have anyone else here. We need to try to figure out what we are going to do to help her. She might end up going back to Honduras, which would be good for her, but sad for us. I hope she can figure it out though. She has so much potential for good in her life.

Also on Friday we had our all mission activity! The whole mission got together here in Morristown and we played a bunch of games and stuff. It was way fun. Every zone had to wear a certain color, and when we walked in the church they gave us a piece of duct tape which meant which group we would be in. There was a few different games that all the groups rotated through. 

 

Us with Elders Larsen and Lattuga at the Mission Conference

 

Me and Elder Cuevas... we purposely look gross because we had Popsicles in our mouths

 

Me and Sister Schaefer!

 

Trio pride at the mission conference. Everyone else wishes they were a trio.

 

 My favorite was volleyball. We played volleyball with this HUGE GIANT volleyball... It took like 5 people at a time to hit the thing, but it was super fun! I wish I would have taken a picture of it. Then we had a really yummy lunch. Then we had skits. Every zone had to come up with a skit. Ours was hilarious. We were acting out President and Sister Jeppson going to the mission office, so we kind of made fun of the seniors in the mission office because they are so funny. There was a lot of really good skits. We have a really creative/funny mission. The Newark zone had this part where they were talking about some of the clicks in that zone and they had some trunky missionaries. There was some missionaries who will be leaving next week and they were sitting in suit cases talking about home, then the narrator missionary, said, I am joining the trunky missionaries and then one of the trunky sisters said, "Hey president Jeppson, we saved you a seat!" Everyone gasped and started cracking up! It was so funny! After the skits we had the fireside. President and Sister Jeppson sang us all of the songs that they sang us for the zone conferences. It was so cute. I love it when they sing. All of the songs were so familiar and warm. It was so funny. All of the sisters sit in the front rows, and we all had our cameras out and were crying. Then President Jeppson got up and told us his incredible life/conversion story. I loved every second and I have so much respect for him. I feel so blessed to have had him for a mission president. The spirit was so strong and I am going to miss the Jeppsons so much. It was really sad to know that would be the last meeting we would have with them..

 

Last night we wanted to do something fun for father's day, so we cut out a ton of hearts and heart attacked the Jeppsons. We rang the doorbell and booked it to the car. We closed the door to the car right as Sister Jeppson was opening the door. I saw her waving at us through the back window as we sped away. It was funny. It was fun to do that for President though. He is a great Father for the NJMM. WE also made Julio Garcia  fathers day card and gave him a tie. :)

I covered my arm with hearts for the door

President Jeppson's door!

This explains our companionship really well.

Sister Huele and Me

We met this really interesting man this week who was trying to convince us that Satan was a woman... yeah. uh huh. The son of the morning was a woman. pleeeeeeasaaaaase.

On Saturday we had a busy morning doing some service for the branch president's family. They have the cutest family ever! They are pretty much English, none of their kids really know Spanish, but they are in our branch because it needs the support. They are a really good family though. I love watching the way the mom interacts with her kids. It was a fun morning to be with them and help them out and to be around some younger kids who remind me of my nieces and nephews who I miss so much!

After that we had a correlation meeting - then we remembered that we had to make 2 dozen sugar cookies for the father's day party after church. It was kind of stressful and it took us like 4 hours because as missionaries we really don't have any stuff for cookies. It took us a while to hunt down a cookie cutter shaped like a ginger bread man, which is what we were asked to make. Surprisingly the elders had one... Elders have the strangest things.. but more about that later. So we make all the cookie dough and we put the first batch in the oven. Our oven is broken and it doesn't really bake things evenly, so we were just having our fingers crossed that it would work. No it failed horribly. They were the blackest most burnt cookies I have ever seen. So we kind of had a little freak out moment, then we decided to call the Assistants, who live right next door to us. They said we could use their oven. They always have their front door unlocked, but we didn't have keys to their building... which was kind of a problem for us... so to get into their apartment, we had to climb up the fire escape and break in through their bedroom window. It was sort of hilarious. We climb up this huge latter and get through all the windows and Elder Jone's bed is right up against the window, so we had to climb onto his bed to get into the house. It was so funny when we opened the window and saw his bed because he has a blanket with cats and dogs on it.... Ahahhahaha Elders. Their apartment smelled really bad too. And they left the iron on. It was hilarious being in there for almost an hour and a half to bake and frost our cookies. It was so weird being in an elder's apartment.... Elders have the strangest things. They have a full gym... Like a bench with a ton of weights, an ab work out thing, pull up bars and we opened one of the cupboards and it was FULL of huge barrels of protein powder... There was like 6 huge bottles of it. We were laughing so hard. Also, they have a bb gun... A BB GUN!! WHAT IS IT WITH ELDERS AND GUNS!! How do you even get a bb gun and a full gym on your mission... Then next to the bb gun they have a dear head. A DEAR HEAD.... A DEAR HEAD. I don't understand. To understand the next funny thing we found, you have to understand these Elders. They are a trio too. Elder Jones is really tall and he likes hunting and stuff, Elder Hughes is kind of intense and works really hard and is into boxing, Elder Nielsen is a full on cowboy... like from Vernal Utah and likes roping and has an accent and is just hilarious... So we walk onto their balcony and there is a full saddle, a fake cow for roping and a bunch of ropes.... HOW DO YOU HAVE A FULL SADDLE ON YOUR MISSION!! I think it is against the rules to ride horses. ahahahah. Elders crack me up. We felt like such women while we were in there. We were disgusted with the mess so we cleaned up all of their dishes and their stove and oven and things, we cleaned the dust under their desks, turned off the iron and sprayed Febreeze everywhere and we left them cookies. It was kind of hilarious, but they really appreciated it. Oh yeah, the best part, on our way out, we look by the door, and there is a full machete knife sitting right next to the door... What? I don't even want to know????

This pictures of the elders makes me so happy!

The subway!

Last night, Sister Smedley stayed up until like 11:30 talking and we got really tired, so we finally decide to go to bed. At 12:04 I am finally starting to drift off to sleep and the phone starts ringing. It was the assistants... I was kind of out of it so I didn't answer, then we get a text, so I look and it is Elder Hughes telling us that we left our car light on. I read it out loud and we all screamed. We were so mad and tired. So I texted him "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!" then he replied back "ahahahaha its ok, come to the window and toss us your keys and we'll turn it off for you!" So we crawl out of bed and go find the key, we go to the window that is facing the parking lot and open it. We see the 3 elders outside... They looked like tired little puppies - it was kind of cute. We could tell they were exhausted. They had their shirts untucked and unbuttoned and their hair was crazy. Elder Nielsen had his rope out and he was roping Elder Jones. It was kinda funny. I dropped the keys out and Elder Hughes barely missed them so they shattered on the ground... They all just let out this "awwhwhhh" then they were like... "uhhh, don't worry sisters, its totally fixable... just go to bed, well fix the keys, then turn the light off." We were all just cracking up. We decided to stay by the window while they fixed the keys. I had my head out the window and I was talking to Elder Nielsen and he was like, "Guess what Sister! WE ROPED A DEAR TONIGHT!" Then they all start cracking up and told us about how they roped a dear and they have it on video for proof. I am really excited to see this video. It must be an adventure to be an assistant. Roping dear and not getting home until 12 at night because of transfer planning and what not. It is fun to be their neighbors.

Me and Sister Smedley in NYC...I just like this picture because it's so bad.

Activity with the yout and the Elders. We got pizza and Froyo with the youth. super fun night

Ivonne got confirmed yesterday! She is now a member of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints! YAY!!

Well, that's about all! I hope you all have a great week! I love you!

-Sister Clark