Hey family, wow, we had such a busy week down here in Passaic. It
was one of the best weeks of my mission though, that's for sure. We had
so much fun and saw so many blessings. We were really into our zone goal
of getting at least 70 contacts a week and 700 as a zone... It really
shouldn't have been - as hard as it was, it was only 10 contacts per
companionship, but there was a lot of companionships that just weren't
doing it, which is dumb.. but Sister Haycock and I were in contact with
the zone leaders constantly, who would let us know how many contacts we
had as a zone every day and how far behind we were from the goal, then
Sister Haycock and I would pick up the slack and do their contacts for
them. It was a lot of fun for us. We got 285 contacts, so that was super
awesome.
On Sunday
night we still needed almost 200 contacts as a zone to make our goal of
700 for the week, so Sister Haycock and I set a goal for ourselves to
beat our high score of 107 contacts two weeks ago and to get 108 to help
save our zone. We walked to and from church, then all of our
appointments juked us so we were on the streets for the rest of the day.
The weather here in New Jersey is so weird, it cannot make up its mind.
It was super hot and sticky in the morning on our way to church and it
was a bit over cast, then when we left church it was hot all the way
home. We took an hour for lunch and went back outside and it was
perfectly clear outside, then within 45 minutes of being outside it
started pouring rain, and of course we didn't have our umbrellas with us
because we were walking and the skies were clear when we left. We got
SOAKED. It was so fun. New Jersey rain is incredible. It pours and there
are just huge rivers in the streets. Sister Haycock and I were in
Garfield in this interesting little neighborhood/community where there are a lot of Hispanics, Italians and Polish people. When it started
raining, we ran to take shelter under a shade thing by the door to some
Italian thrift store. While we were standing there looking at our
planners trying to decide what we were going to do this cute little old
lady walks out of the store and was standing under the shade with us.
She barely spoke any English, she spoke Italian, which we actually
understand pretty well. She was absolutely adorable. She had these big
glasses and just talked and talked to us in Italian and we would show
her pictures of Christ and she got the hugest smile on her face, so we
taught her a little bit, were not sure how much she understood, we were
speaking half Spanish, half English, which ever she understood better,
since Spanish is closer to Italian than English. We prayed with her and
she got the biggest smile on her face and gave us big hugs. She wanted
us to come into the store with her so that we wouldn't be out in the
rain, but we told her that we needed to go. She told us to wait, she ran
into the store and came out with her umbrella for us. It was so nice of
her! She made us take her umbrella with her, we told her we would bring
it back, so that is on our list of things to do. We made a really cute
friend because of the rain. :)
So after the random 30 minute downpour, it was an
absolutely gorgeous night. We went home, changed our clothes then got
back to work. We ended up getting 108 contacts and 9 lessons that day
and we found 2 inactive members that weren't on our branch records
because they were baptized at a young age in their own country. That was
really cool, we were definitely guided by the spirit to find those
people, they were complete miracles. One of the less active members
actually has two names, so she was in our area book under the potential
section, but we had actually contacted her on the street a couple of
weeks ago and got her address without knowing it was the same person, so
when we went to her house we found out that she was actually already a
member and her mom is a member as well, but her little brother is not,
there could be some potential there. We found 2 new investigators who
had sincere interest in the book of Mormon and we found a really cool
guy named Will. He is a high school English teacher and he promised us he
would read the book of Mormon cover to cover and that he has a strong
testimony of the power of prayer. He was way cool, we passed his info
along to the English sisters. Hopefully they will get in touch with him
soon.
We have just seen so many blessings from contacting and
making spiritual connections with people in contacts. Our zone leaders
promised us that if we did our contacts every day we would be blessed
with more investigators, more baptismal dates and more happiness. We
have definitely seen all of those things. Our teaching pool more than
doubled, we are being led to amazing prepared people and inactive
members. We are seeing miracles every day. This month we will be
focusing on inviting more people to be baptized. We know that we will
see that increase in baptismal dates as we teach the people that we have
found this month and continue to find more people. It's amazing how many
people there are who want to know, we just have to find them and have
the faith to talk to them... whether we are missionaries or just
friends.
So, basically, Sunday
was one of the best days of my whole mission. We worked so hard and we
were on our feet the entire day except for the 3 short hours we were in
church.... which I actually taught gospel principles, so I was still on
my feet, ha ha. Sister Haycock and I got home and we did our nightly
planning in 10 minutes then just passed out on the floor. We were dead
tired and we agreed that it was probably the most tired we had been.
While I was laying there on the floor, this random memory came to my
head. When I was younger, my parents got my brother Nick and I
Disneyland passes for Christmas for new year's weekend. We had so much
fun that weekend. On New Years eve, my mom and Rod left Disney land
early because they were so tired and they didn't want to stay up until midnight. Nick and I stayed out in Disney land until midnight
that night and we had so much fun. That night when Nick and I came into
the hotel room I took of my shoes and my feet hurt SO BAD and I was
just dead tired, so I climbed into bed as quick as I could. My feet have
never hurt that bad until Sunday
night after that huge day that we had. Literally, I couldn't feel my
toes. :) it was awesome. We took showers and went to bed early.
So, that was basically the highlight of the week. Oh
yeah, Marcial passed his baptismal interview, that was cool. We have his
recommend stuck to our fridge so we don't lose it between now and next Sunday.
:) He is so excited and everyone is excited for him. Everything is
basically ready, there are a lot of people participating. It will be a
great day, can't wait to tell you all about it next week.
We also got to go up to Hewitt to go see Sister
Haycock's family for the last time before she leaves. It was so much fun.
They took us to this cute little town and we had lunch and went to go
get ice cream at this really cool little ice cream place. Where they
live is right at the top of Jersey and this ice cream shop was at the
top of this big hill where you can see an incredible view of New York
country side. It is so incredibly beautiful and green. I'll send a
picture next week.
Oh big news! I finally mastered rolling my "r"s. I am
officially Hispanic now :) Marcial helped me out and showed me how to
hold my tongue. He is the BEST! He and Sister Haycock kept on laughing
at my face when I was trying to do it because I was so concentrated,
then when I finally did it we cheered. It was like when a baby
says their first word or something. hahaha
We had some really weird contacts this week. We
contacted some guy named Reynaldo and I'm not entirely sure he was
accountable... He kept trying to preach to us and he gave us these
pamphlets and he read Matt 12 to us. The whole chapter... it took
forever. we kept on trying to stop him but he just kept going. Then the
best part, while he was reading, a few kids passed us in bicycles and he
looked up and said, "God and Jesus love you kids, and so do I!" Then he
just kept on reading. Sister Haycock looked at each other and we had
to concentrate so hard on not just dying laughing. Then we met this
crazy guy in Passaic that told us that he was "the messenger" then he
asked us if there was anything that we wanted to ask him. we were
confused so we asked him what people usually asked him. He said people
don't ask him questions, he usually has to ask them questions, so then we
were just really confused. Then he started talking about a swear
word... the B.S. swear word. He just kept on saying it, so we were like,
don't say that, then he was like, God says that word. Then he was like,
"If God came down and said B.S. would you believe he was God?" and we
were like.... uh... bye. ha ha he was so weird.. He said so many weird
things. He actually thought he was one of Gods messengers. Bless his
heart.
I have been practicing my Dominican accent. It is
getting pretty good. Today we had zone meeting and during our role
plays, I was pretending to be our investigator, Tanya,who is Dominican
and the elders were teaching me about baptism and so while they were
teaching me, I just blurted out randomly "Tu estas bautisado?" in a
really good Dominican accent and they just cracked up. They lost it.
They said that it was really good. ha ha. Now we just keep saying that to
each other.
Sister Haycock and I found this really good gelato
place down the street from our house. It is seriously amazing.
We decided it is probably better than Rita's. They have really good
lemon, coconut and hazelnut flavors, plus a bunch more, but those are my
favorites. We are eating so much ice cream because it is so stinkin' hot
and sticky outside. We have just come to peace with the fact as soon as
we walk outside, we will be wet for the rest of the day because it has
been so humid lately. It is disgusting! We just keep laughing because at
the end of the day, we come home and take our purses off and we have
this huge sweat stain across our bodies from where the strap for our
purses go. It is quite humorous.... we just can't take our purses off
ever throughout the day or else people will see it. ha ha
I love you all and miss you like crazy! have a good week!! Pray that Marcial's baptism goes well! I'll talk to you next week!
-Sister Clark
No comments:
Post a Comment