Week 12

December 25, 2015
Friday, Day 73
Day 60 in NY

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

After the face time call….

AIDA:
We were looking up referrals and found this lady named Aida. We taught her the Restoration and she was hooked! It was a great lesson, so I invited her to be baptized right then and she said yes! Then she explained with a little confusion but willingness, saying "I've already been baptized, but if I need to be baptized again. I've heard that it's okay, so I will." We explained to her that we would explain more about baptism in another visit. She was satisfied with that and we moved on.

SOMEONE IS ALWAYS WATCHING:
On our way out of the apartment, after our lesson with Aida, we opened the door and right then and there it began raining. After we started walking, the sky began dumping rain! So we took off running. When we found our selves approaching a streetlight we began to slow down. When all of a sudden, to the left of us, a car pulled off and yelled to us; looking over to see who it was, not hearing what the person had yelled. I see a young girl with her hand out the window of the car; she was reaching out an umbrella to Elder Tabor. With her father in the driver seat, he yelled out "sorry we only have one! We saw you guys running, so here!" Elder Tabor and I exclaimed back our gratitude for their charity. The man flipped his car around and began driving the opposite way. We then continued on our way, under the same small umbrella, talking about how nice it was that he and his daughter turned around because they saw us running through the rain with no jackets. Just about 20 seconds later, we came across a man walking slow in the rain, as if he had nowhere to go. With no judgment, but considering that he may have been homeless, Elder Tabor holding the umbrella quickly passes it over to this man, "would you like an umbrella?" With a smile on the man’s face he reached forward and grabbed the umbrella and began to thank us. We then proceeded to walk with haste to our next referral.

DINNER:
For dinner we went to our ward mission leaders apartment, we had dinner with his family and Elder Hughes and Nalaza. It was a good Christmas night in NY!



December 26, 2015
Saturday, Day 74
Day 61 in NY

Today we went to go see if this lady named Akoua was home, we have tried to see her a few times and we just keep meeting her son.. (His name is Emmanuel) So we went to her apartment and her son comes out again, he said she had just left and went to work. We asked if he had time, he said he did. We asked him if he was interested and would like to see a video, he agreed and so we showed him the video A Savior Is Born. He said he really liked it. So we asked if we could come back and teach him again and hopefully his mom, he said we could.

LAKEIA:
Then we looked up this referral we had and she has a son who's 16. So we talked with her for a while, she is super cool and interested in what we do. We told her about the mission life and our daily schedule. She said she loved the idea of being a missionary. She told us she wishes that she had the opportunity to be one. We taught her a little bit of a lesson and invited her to church, she seemed really excited and said she'd come.


December 27, 2015
Sunday, Day 75
Day 62 in NY

Sunday!
Got up, got ready, studied, and Went to church!

RICKY:
After church we went and visited with Ricky, we showed him one of my favorite videos. "The coat" it's s true story of Heber J. Grant. The story teaches us about service and being selfless. Ricky said, "I love that. I try to give all that I can. But sometimes the only thing we can give to those who are suffering or less fortunate, is the gospel."

DINNER:
After an awesome lesson with Ricky we headed out to Sister Gabin’s home for dinner. She had made some good pork and rice and beans. Her son Nicholas also made a cake again so we ate that too, then she took all the left overs and sent them home with us… She's too nice! We definitely left satisfied. The lesson we shared with them before we left, was similar to what we talked about with Ricky, we watched "The lesson I learned" by Gordon B. Hinckley, another one of my favorite videos. We related it back to being selfless and serving others.


December 28, 2015
Monday, Day 76
Day 63 in NY

Monday morning routine! Then we took off to district meeting. After we left the church from district meeting, we had received a call from someone, asking us if we could help out at a members home.

SERVICE:
Turns out Sister Diaz's apartment caught fire a few days ago and destroyed her son’s room. He lost just about everything. So we dropped all of our appointments and went straight over to her home. The house was just torn apart with them moving so much stuff! We went into the back room, (a bedroom next to the one that caught fire) and we began taking out dressers and things, then they wanted to get rid of a bunch of stuff. We were helping them lift things and move things out. So she asked us to take care of the bunk bed. She wanted us to throw it out. We had asked her sons if they had any tools, they
said they'd look, so after them being gone for a few minutes too long, (for me that's about 4 minutes) Elder Tabor and I began to fold the metal bed in half and just shove it out the bedroom door. By the time they came back to tell us they didn't have any tools to use, we had already folded the bed frame into a sandwich and carried out. Then we moved to the front room where the entertainment center was. They had so many cords hooked up to who knows what. And it was hard to figure out what belonged where, but because they wanted to keep most of the stuff, the tv, speakers, etc. I couldn't just rip’em all out of the wall, it was like a pair of headphones getting tangled x1000, so for quite some time after handing speakers and the tv to other people… around I went through all the cords trying to find the ends so we could get them all out of the way. By the time we had done all that, we were there for about 2 hours… But it was totally awesome, because I have been looking for more service opportunities.



December 29, 2015
Tuesday, Day 77
Day 64 in NY

EARLY MORNING SERVICE:
We got up and just got ready to leave to Carlito’s. It was nice to get up and put regular work clothes on, jeans, an old shirt, and my work boots. Earlier in the week we had scheduled to go to Carlito’s because he had a project he wanted our help with. He wanted to repaint his apartment walls and take apart the hideous crown molding above one of his doorways in his apartment. When we were over at his apartment earlier in the week, he had asked me if I knew how to put up sheet rock. I told him I had experience, working some construction back home. So we got to his apartment, and began moving furniture into other rooms to make space, then Elder Tabor and I started painting. After we got one wall finished. We helped Carlito rip out the crown molding, and then went back to painting. After a little while he sent us to the hardware store downstairs and up the block 2 buildings to get some stuff. We came back and we started putting up the sheetrock. We only had about 4 hours to give him. So when we were done with time, all he really needed to do was put up the new framing that he wanted.

MORE SERVICE:
After Carlito’s we received another phone call, this time being from Sister Diaz's son. He asked us if we could come back today and help them out. So we went over there and continued to help out. I swear even with our help it was still a weeklong project! I love love love service!


December 30, 2015
Wednesday, Day 78
Day 65 in NY

Pday!!!

Nothing much today, just laundry shopping, gator ball, and then we went to dinner at a member’s house. Brother and Sister Bonilla. Another awesome meal! We talked about their conversion stories and taught them about sharing the gospel. So we prepared them to be able to give someone a Book of Mormon.



Another short week! I'm working on my goal setting and trying to catch up, pray that I'll be able to catch up next week!

Love you all!

Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold

Work they did at Carlito's.  They helped install this tile.

The doorway they did at Carlito's house