Long Week

Sad news. I got sick this week. BOOOO. It was super dumb. But we still managed to have a successful week. I just had like some kind of body flu or something. I just had really bad aches and pains everywhere and I was exhausted. So for 3 days we were basically just teaching then sleeping in between our appointments then hurrying outside at the end of the day to get our 10 contacts so we could do the zone goal.

On Monday we had a fun zone activity. I learned how to play tennis. All the Elders in our zone are very patient with us sisters and let us play sports with them, even though we are all super bad. hahaha They teach us though, which is nice.

On Monday night we went and taught Tanya and Wellington. We had such a good appointment with them. They had lots of questions for us about the Book of Mormon. Wellington has been reading every day. He told us that of course he had a few doubts just because it is something new to him, but he said that he believes that it could all be true, he just needs to learn more in order to know. He read to us the first few verses in Nephi and told us that of all that he read, those impacted him the most along with the rest of chapter one, because chapter one is basically the same exact story of Joseph Smith - just 600 years before Christ. It testifies of Christ and of the scriptures and prophets and it makes it pretty clear that it is either true or it's all a lie, but the testimony of Nephi in verses 1-3 really led him to believe that it could be true. AHHHHH. THE SPIRIT WAS SO STRONG! We promised him that if he kept reading and praying that he would come to know that it was true. We have been bringing this Dominican member with us to fellowship them and she has come to visit them with us about 4 times now so they are building a really good friendship, which is awesome! Tanya and Wellington are Dominican as well and they have kids around the same age as this member and her extended family that is also in our branch. We are going to try to get Tanya and Wellington into this group of Dominicans. We know that would help them so much as they are going through all of this transition.

Tuesday was when I really started to get sick. We went to zone meeting in the morning and we had  a really good training on teaching repentance and promising blessings when we invite people to repent. It helped me to realize that the blessings of repentance are some of the greatest blessings that we can receive as humans and that we need to promise that to people and make sure they understand that. After zone meeting we had zone lunch at Wendy's. When we pulled into Wendy's, this homeless guy came up and knocked on our window and asked us for money. We didn't have any. Then we saw him walking around and asking everyone in the parking lot and in the drive-throughs and all the other missionaries if they had money and he was being super rude about it. He was like yelling at other missionaries and telling them that they were supposed to be followers of God but they wouldn't give him anything. We got into Wendy's and we were all feeling kind of bugged by this guy because he was being so rude and ungrateful. Literally none of us have any money ever because we only get so much every month and we pay fast offerings. So we just ignored it and all got our lunch and sat down together. This guy kept on storming into the Wendy's and yelling at everyone and stuff so we were all just like. WOOWWWW. This poor guy is out of his mind. I remembered earlier that I had been reading the beatitudes in Matthew and the verse that talks about if a man asks you for your coat give him your cloak also... I don't remember exactly how it goes, but its something like that.. anyways that verse kept on coming to my head and I just kept on having this inward battle with myself. All of the missionaries and I know that we don't have to give anything to homeless people and God isn't going to condemn us for that because we are already giving God everything that we have while we serve him and because the money that we have really isn't our money at all, it is all of the sacrifice that people donate to the church. So none of us were going to give him anything because well, we didn't have anything to give. But for some reason I just could not get that verse out of my head! I decided that I was better off just going and buying him a dollar cheeseburger than arguing with myself about it so I stood up, waited in the long line, bought this guy a cheeseburger and went outside and gave it to him. All he said was "god bless you" he grabbed the cheeseburger unwrapped it and ate it in like 2 bites. He didn't even look me in the eyes. Then he went and continued begging everyone in the Wendy's parking lot and dining room for money. I definitely felt kind of bugged about his reaction, but I still felt good about it. It was only a dollar and I just went without a frosty.

We had a good lesson with the members that live downstairs. Their names are Elsa and Nelly and they are from Peru. They are seriously the coolest women ever! They told us all about their story. About how Elsa has been living in the U.S. for a few years longer than Nelly and Nelly's husband and how she asked for them. They have to 10 years to get residence (sorry I don't know this vocabulary about legalization in English.... but I'm trying to translate it the way we would say it in Spanish) Anyways, Nelly and her husband have been here for 7 years and they have 3 years left. They left their 3 children in Peru. She told us that she doesn't really worry about the older two who are 19 and 20-something, but she worries every single day about her youngest son who is only 12. She said it has been the hardest trial of her whole life to leave him there, but she made promises to him that she has to keep. She said she battles with herself everyday to know if it is worth it or not. She said that they talk on the phone every day and that her 3 kids live with her sister, who doesn't really take good care of them. She leaves for the weekends and her son has to stay in the house all alone and he gets to scared to sleep alone so she will watch him sleep on Skype and that helps him feel better. She said she will just stay up all night sometimes just watching him sleep. I asked her if she had ever sent the missionaries over to teach them but she said that she is too scared to even send the missionaries over because it is so dangerous where they live and she is worried about the safety of her children. She said that her daughter had a bad experience with a fake missionary. Some lady came up to her daughter and told her that she had won the lottery and how she needed her help to get her prize. Then a "missionary" with a plaque and everything came over to help to. The "missionary" drove them to her house and told her to get all of her things that were valuable and bring them to the car, so she went in and took everything and gave it to them, then they just drove away with all of her stuff. Isn't that crazy? I know it couldn't have been a real missionary because he would have had a companion. Ugh that story made me sick! So Nelly tells her kids not to trust anyone until they can come here to the U.S. She is such an amazing woman though. Her and her Sister never miss a Sunday. They both came in contact with the missionaries when the church rented the apartment in their house for missionaries to live in. They absolutely love having us living in their house and are so good to us.

Sister Haycock's cousin got back, so we got to go teach her on Thursday. That was fun, as usual. We also made plans to go back next week for a fun day so they can go and take us out to get lunch and ice cream. That will be way fun, too. They are great people.

On Friday we went to Ellis Island. That was fun, as always. We had a cool experience while we were there. When we got there, Catherine told us that we should take an hour for lunch before we started working, so we headed out through the big building outside to the benches so we could eat our lunch. It didn't take very long for us to finish eating and we were just sitting out on the benches enjoying the beautiful day watching all of the ferries for the statue of liberty pass through. We still had like 30 minutes left of our hour lunch break, but we decided that we would rather go inside and help out, so we got up and started walking back to the family history center. While we were walking through the huge hall full of all the tourists we saw this cute girl and she smiled and waved at us so we smiled and waved back and kept on walking back to the family history center. In the family history center there is the main part where everyone goes to get on the computers and look up the ship manifests of the immigrants who came through Ellis Island, then there is a desk and a hallway for employees. In the hallway Catherine has an office where we put all of our stuff. We were walking to the office to put our stuff away and then go back out to the main floor and help the tourists. We walked into the office, set our stuff down then talked to Catherine for a second. While we were talking to Catherine, The girl that waved at us kind of wandered in. She asked about the family history center. We explained to her that she passed it and this was the office for the employees. She was like... "ohhh...." then she felt a bit awkward, but explained to us, "Well, I am LDS and I am from Utah but I am visiting New York on a business trip with my husband. He is in meetings right now so I decided to come here by myself. I am actually supposed to meet up here with an old friend who lives in this area but I can't get a hold of her because my cell phone died on the ferry ride over here. So I have just been standing in the middle of the main hall hoping that we would find each other, but I haven't found her yet. I have been praying like crazy - then I saw the sisters and I knew that they could probably help me, so I followed them." Then we smiled and Catherine laughed and said "oh, of course. Aren't the sisters great?" Then she asked us if we knew where she could charge her phone because she had the chord for a USB outlet but not for an electrical outlet so she would need to plug it into a computer or something for a second. Catherine is a sweet lady and let her plug her phone into her computer. Once we saw that everything was worked out, we left her in there with Catherine who could also help her out with her family history that she wanted to learn about. It was cool to be an answer to her prayers though. It reminded me of the talk in conference a couple years ago that said, "ask the missionaries, they can help you!" It's true. We can't fix or solve everything, but we can do our best to help in whatever way we can!

I also learned that day at Ellis Island I can understand Italian perfectly. For some reason the museum was FULL of Italians that day. I helped a few families where only one member spoke a little bit of English and would translate, but I could understand everything they were saying, I would just respond in English and the English speaker would translate it into Italian, in some cases I could even reply in Spanish and they could understand because they are so similar. It was very interesting and kind of an exciting discovery for me!

We had a crazy weekend full of work work work. We have a zone goal to contact 700 people a week as a zone and we send in our contacts every night and they are counted so that we can see how far we need to go. By Saturday everyone was slacking super bad we still needed like 300 by Sunday night, so Sis Haycock and I accepted the challenge. We were trying to get people pumped up and contacting by sending zone texts and stuff, but no one was really doing it, so we decided "OK, let them do what they can and we will make up the rest." So on Sunday we decided to take a walking day and contact everyone we saw. We walked to church and contacted 24 people on the way there then on the way home we got about 30 more. We went home had lunch, did about an hour of studies then decided that we had better get back to work instead of finishing our comp study and language study. We went back outside and walked to a couple of appointments. We went to go see this less active woman named Hermana Leal. Her whole family was over for a family gathering, but we just sat in the kitchen with her while she prepared food for her family. She had 12 granddaughters and their families over. She made us these really yummy things... I forgot what they are called, but we kind of learned how to make them so I'll have to try when I get home... Then she made us try some of the soup... I'm not gonna lie I didn't really like it very much. It was pig soup and it tasted like straight up pig. It had a bunch of pig parts in it. Even the bones. That is the strange thing about Hispanics... they never take the bones out in soup... anyways it also had pig ears. Now I can say I have eaten a pig ear. I didn't like it. It was gross. Then the rest of the night we just walked around our town and we ended up contacting 107 people, we taught 4 street lessons, found a new investigator, found 3 good Spanish potentials for ourselves, 2 in the elders area by the church who said they would get baptized, then a new investigator for the English sisters. The new investigator for the English sisters is so solid. We found her outside of a convenience store sitting on a bench smoking a cigarette. She said she would listen to us until her ride got there. We taught her a short summary of the restoration, the Book of Mormon then we focused on the gospel of Jesus Christ with her. She was so touched. She opened up to us and told us about how she felt like God would not forgive her because of the terrible things that she had done in her life and how she had chosen not to believe in God for a time in her life because someone she loved had committed suicide and it was just hard for her to think about whether she would see her again or not, because she had always been taught that God doesn't forgive those who commit suicide. We were able to testify to her of the power of the atonement and repentance then she asked us to mark a chapter in the Book of Mormon for her so that she could read more about repentance, then we could come back later that week and explain more to her. She was in tears but was so comforted by the gospel of Jesus Christ. Her ride got there and we gave her a big hug and sent her off with her own copy of the Book of Mormon. She was super cool!

Well, that's about all I can fit in this email for this week! I am loving life and the work here in Passaic. I feel so blessed and happy to be a missionary.  Pray for my investigator families! I hope you can grasp the love that I have for them. It's strong!

ALSO side note. Cesar Mauricio (Alonso's little brother) got baptized yesterday! that's pretty awesome too. :)

Love you and miss you all! Have a good week!

-Sister Clark