Week 18

February 10, 2016
Wednesday, Day 120
Day 107 in NY

PDAY!
It's PDAY again! Man these days come out of nowhere! It makes me laugh because I know that everyone at home is excited for this day to come, but as missionaries we are excited for it to be over haha. Well, at least I feel that way... It's just the busiest day of the week.

GATOR BALL?
So today after we did laundry and grocery shopping we came home, put everything away, and stayed home till 6... Which was nice because we didn't have to worry about rushing over to the church, email, and get dragged into gator ball. Trust me, I love gator ball! But I need my journal writing time more than exercise.

NATION FAMILY:
Met with the Nation Family at 6:30, after PDAY time. It was the first time that Elder Davis had met in the nation family. Like I mentioned last week, the only thing they could talk about was how much they
loved Elder Tabor, well when they saw Elder Davis; they thought he was a black version of Elder Tabor. (I'm really starting to think they don't like me, not that I need them to talk about how much they love me in order for me to understand that they like me, but they've never said anything about me...)
After reading Moroni 10 with them, we invited them to read as a family. Prior to the appointment with the Nation family I had given Elder Davis a little bit of background on the family. I told him that Elder
Tabor and I have invited them to church several times. Each time they've turned us down. Well, after our lesson Elder Davis had the impression to invite them to church on Sunday, without too much they agreed to come to church. (At this point I'm now considering them to be a bit racist, LOL. Because two white boys have invited them to church, and out of the blue Elder Davis comes and they agree to come to church). Don't get me wrong, this is a good thing, if all it takes is Elder Davis to invite everyone we meet to come to church and be baptized then maybe we should keep him here for a while!

BIBLE REFERRAL:
We went and looked up this lady named Amada. She was super excited to see us with a Bible in hand, but oh boy, you should have seen her reaction when we gave her the bible. When she held the Bible in her hands, she was like a kid on Christmas, all giddy and excited! But wait Christmas isn't over, we gave her the Book of Mormon and told her about it, and that just about sent her overboard! She couldn't stand still! Which was so great to see! She told us about how she collects Bibles and compares them to each other; she said when she compared the Bibles that she had to the Kings James version she said that the Kings James Version just felt right. She asked where our church was
and we happily gave her the address. We are hoping to see her at church soon.



February 11, 2016
Thursday, Day 121
Day 108 in NY

NEW MISSIONARY MEETING:
Woke up this morning at 5, we had the New Missionary meeting at the mission home. It was an amazing meeting! It was just President Smith, Sister Smith, AP Jimenez, AP Wulff, 2 Sister missionaries, Elder Davis and I. When we got there they made us waffles for breakfast! And since President Smith and his family and Elder Davis are from Texas they made Texas shaped waffles so that was super cool haha. During the meeting I received the confirmation that I needed to work
with ward members more. Earlier in the week, when I took Elder Davis to Bishops, I felt the need to discuss what we could do to help the members become more active in the ward and in missionary work. Sitting in the new missionary meeting Sister Smith said something along the lines of; work hard with what you have, but don't make more work then you have. She continued on talking about how the membership here need more work. Well whether she actually said anything like that or not, that's the
revelation that I had received.
February 12, 2016
Friday, Day 122
Day 109 in NY

A CONTINUE OF CONFIRMATION:
This morning our district met at the church to discuss and go through our area book to assign members and less active members to each companionship so that we could work together on the ward. So that's super awesome, that yesterday I heard that I needed to work with the members more and today we acted on that. We went through what seemed like a lot of people, but the amount we
went through didn't make a dent in the total amount. Slowly but surely we are trying to clean it all out.

SPLIT:
After the meeting we went to cross Bronx and got pizza! Came back to the church and ate lunch then we split. Elder Casper stayed with me and Elder Davis went with Elder Nalaza. It was a great day! We had an appointment with Brother Ford, and Elder Casper said that he's heard a lot of good things about Brother Ford so he wanted to take a picture with him. Now I've been in Hunts Point long enough to know Brother Ford and his tradition with Elders who take pictures with him, so I kept my mouth shut to surprise Elder Casper. After our lesson with Brother Ford, Elder Casper asked for a picture with him. So Brother Ford stood up and buttoned up his shirt to stall, as I got the iPad from Elder Casper and Brother Ford started the count down "ready? 1...2...3 MUAH!" He gave Elder Casper a nice kiss on the
cheek! Greet every Elder with a kiss he says haha. So that was exciting! For him! Haha

Sadly but fortunately, our appointments for the rest of the night fell through and we were then available to help Elder Buckley and Elder West. They asked if we could run home and get Elder Buckley's things
because they were on a split as well, we were on our way home when they called, so we went home and they were trying to catch a bus in co-op city, which is about an hour trip away from our apartment. So we got his things and took off to the train headed towards Pelham bay parkway. When we got there, they got there. So we gave them their stuff and got back on the train and headed back home.



Sadly I took the time and played Gator ball today so I haven't finished my journal this week, but it's Elder Nalazas Birthday today, so I played for him!

Love you all! And I'll finish my journal and you'll get it all next week!

Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold

"My pants felt like they were stuck completely under water. So I took them off so we could have nightly planning."

"I guess this sign fell off in the rain, wind storm and I carried it home.  People stared but it's New York, so it wasn't weird."

"We have this joke, we ask "how far is that plane?" and you respond the amount of months left in the mish, so it's 20 months away.  How crazy! That's 20 fast Sunday's left!"

Elder Casper bring kissed by Brother Ford!
"Greet every Elder with a kiss"