Elder Tyler Newbold NY NY North Mission: Week 26

April 6, 2016
Wednesday, Day 176
Day 163 in NY

PDAY!
ZONE ACTIVITY:
Our zone met up at the church and played gator ball, then we had dinner. Elder Dominguez BBQ'd hotdogs and everyone else pitched in food. We brought chips and people brought fruit and stuff. It was a party! Lol, we just played gator ball and enjoyed the day.

After our activity Elder Davis and I came home, changed, and went out to visit Brother Ford and uplift him. Brother Ford came out with us to teach a lesson on Tuesday, yesterday. It was awesome, he answered questions that Maryanne, our investigator had. At the end of our lesson Brother Ford shared how he came to find the church and bore his testimony, it was a great experience for us all.

POWER OF PRAYER:
Like I said last week, prayers are answered. What's cool about this experience is it’s the opposite of last weeks. We thought we would go stop by Kimara and see how's she's been. Before we knocked on her door we said a prayer. After we knocked, a guy came to the door and told us she wouldn't be home for an hour. So after asking if he would be interested we moved on… I thought, let's go see if Eric is home. (Eric was the guy we taught last week). His door was cracked open so when I knocked it pushed open a little bit. He came to the door and he let us in. We came in sat down and asked if he had been reading the Book of Mormon, he said he had, but not much. As we started talking more about it he began to describe the experience Joseph Smith had while being visited by Angle Moroni in his room. A bit surprised and excited we acknowledged his great effort to read. (Since usually when we invite people to read, they rarely get passed the introduction). So it was another great lesson learned on prayer. We asked to be guided in what to do if Kimara wasn't home and we definitely received our answer.

April 7, 2016
Thursday, Day 177
Day 164 in NY

After studies we had ward coordination then came home and had weekly planning… Today wasn't too special; we had a good turn out for lessons even after 2 canceled on us. We visited Heather K. and then went and looked up the Nation Family, we talked to Richard. After speaking with Richard and showing him a quick Mormon Message we went to Ricky's!

EVERY DAY IS SPECIAL:
Okay I lied, today was pretty special! When we went to see Ricky he had a bag on the table. He reached into the bag and pulled out a brand new white button up shirt! He said, “I'm now ready to go to church.” Oh man, we were so excited to hear that he was ready for church! He has been in and out of the hospital for a problem he's had with his foot. But it's been healing very well and he's ready to go to church!!

April 8, 2016
Friday, Day 178
Day 165 in NY

DAILY SCRIPTURE:
Jacob 3:2 "O all ye that are pure in heart, lift up your heads and receive the pleasing word of God, and feast upon his love; for ye may, if your minds are firm, forever."

Every morning Elder Davis and I try to remember to send a scripture to all our investigators. So, this is the one we decided on for today.

TODAYS HIGHLIGHT:
We met up with the Sisters, Sister Zelaya and Sister Gardner. They aren't allowed in our area, Hunts Point, without an escort. So Elder Davis and I met with them because one of their recent converts claims to live there and they have been trying to get in contact with her but couldn't. So we brought the Sisters with us. When we arrived at the address, it wasn't even an apartment... It was a storage place! Lol so that was nice… But thank goodness for back up plans. The Sisters, since this was their plan, planned a back up plan.

Back story:
So last night the Sisters called us to follow up and see if we were still good to escort them. We told them yes and they asked us for a favor. They asked if we had colorful construction paper, we did, so
they asked if we could cut out hearts. Restating the favor as a question to make sure I heard them right. "You said cut out hearts?" Sister Gardner responded, "Yea, you’re a cheerleader you can do it." (She said it jokingly) and I died lol… she had me laughing. So, I cut out a bunch of hearts and had them ready for the day.

Story continued:
So, the Sister’s back up plan was to "Heart attack" Aida. (Our investigator that was just about ready for baptism) we haven’t been able to contact her in over a month. Heart attacking is when you cut out hearts and write little notes on them. So, we wrote, "we miss you", "we love you", we wrote scriptures, and uplifting notes on them then we taped them to the door. After we had all the hearts on her door. We "doorbell ditched her"; we knocked on the door and ran down 5 flights of stairs out of the apartment building. It was pretty fun, we hope Aida gets in contact with us, if not we hope she at least knows we care about her and really do love her.

April 9, 2016
Saturday, Day 179
Day 166 in NY

DINNER APPOINTMENT:
I don't think I talked about this, but we met this lady named Gloria a few days ago. We knocked on door and she answered behind the shut door "who" we responded "the missionaries, is this Gloria?"
She said, "did my mother send you?!" We replied "no?" And she opened up. We talked and introduced ourselves. She told us that she loves the missionaries; her mother and all her cousins are LDS but that she's not. She loves to cook though so she told us to come back on Sunday to have dinner. So we set up the appointment and we were on our way. Later in the week, we ran into her again, she told us to come on Saturday instead because she ended up having to work on Sunday.

We show up at 6:30PM, she opened up and was covering a big tin of lasagna in tin foil. Handing us a Tupperware of salad, a bag of garlic bread, and a tin of lasagna, she said, take this home and heat it up and your good to go. Very nice and sweet lady! But she's hilarious in the sense that she invited us over for dinner, we show up, and she's kicking us out as fast as she can with food in our hands. With the idea that we would come over, sit down and talk, eat dinner, share a message and be out. I wanted to talk to her and get some information from her. Trying to speak, she wouldn't let me as she continued to tell us the directions for cooking it. At the door as we were heading out I just threw out the question "why? Are you so nice?... What got you into cooking for the missionaries?" Ha ha it was he only thing I could get out of my mouth. She went on to tell us, her mom is a member of the church and her cousins are all members and she attended their baptisms. Well, when she went to her first baptism, I guess they had a party or something to celebrate after or whatever, she got to talking with the missionaries and she found out that, we as missionaries leave for 2 years or a year and a half for sisters, to serve and bring souls unto Christ. She loved that young people like us would do something like that. She also felt sympathetic to us being away from home for "so long" that she wanted to make us a homemade meal and make us feel at home. She told us, she knows how we work and that we could come back in 2 weeks when her house is finished being painted and share some messages with her. She is so awesome!!! So we came home right after, set the oven, and stuck in our lasagna! 30 minutes later we were in heaven just loving our dinner!

April 10, 2016
Sunday, Day 180
Day 167 in NY

CHURCH:
Woke up this morning, got ready, had personal study, then we called Ricky to see if he was up ironing his shirt. He didn't answer... So we waited and waited, maybe 15 minutes then decided to walk to his apartment. We got to his apartment, buzzed in, and he answered "Quit bothering me! I'm ironing my clothes!" Ha ha he let us in. We took the elevator to his floor, walked to his door, and walked in. We sat on the couch talking while he finished getting ready. When he was done, he got up looking around for his stuff and I was standing by the door with his cane and his keys in my hands. Pacing back and forth, he said I need my keys and my cane... He looked up at me and I laughed as I handed him his things.

Together we walked to the train and rode the train to the Parkchester stop, then walked to the church from there.

Ricky loves fast and testimony meeting, so when we walked into the chapel, we sat in the very front row, and remained there till the end. During sacrament meeting, I looked over at Ricky he was sitting up and forward in his seat nodding in agreement to those who bore their testimonies. It was so awesome to have Ricky at church again!

April 11, 2016
Monday, Day 181
Day 168 in NY

DISTRICT MEETING:
During district meeting we reviewed our goals for the week and compared them to our goals for the month as a district. Then we put in our actuals and compared our results to our goals. Elder Davis and I had set the goal to teach 77 total lessons for the month. Which is a mixture of how many member present lessons we teach, other lessons, and recent converts and less active members. To achieve this goal we would need to teach at least 2 lessons a day… which isn't hard, the tricky part is achieving the goals to get a certain amount of members to our lessons or getting a certain amount of lessons taught with investigators.

But, we compared our goals and our actuals and it showed that we at the minimum, to achieve our goal would need to teach 14 lessons in the week... And we taught 21! So it was a great week!

GET TO WORK:
After our meeting we went about our day with lunch and looking up investigators and going to lessons. It wasn't till tonight after dinner around 7 pm that we went to an area to look up a potential investigator who then became an investigator! His name is Sal. Elder Casper and I, a while back were on a split and we were just tracting a floor in this project building. We knocked on this guy’s door and we were just going around sharing the video “A Savior is Born”. He was a little hesitant at first to watch; he just didn't express much interest. But we showed it to him any way and he liked it, we bore testimony about the Savior and talked about him and his religious background. He seemed to be more interested by the end of the conversation so we took down his information and went on our way. We didn't set an appointment with him or get his number but we marked down his address and decided we would look him up again sometime. After a couple months we came back again Elder Casper and I were on a split. We knocked on his door and he wasn't home, it was earlier in the day this time, and his mom said he was still at work, but that we could come back any day after 6pm. So, Elder Davis and I looked him up and he was home! He recognized me but Elder Davis was a new face to him, so we introduced our selves again and started talking, we asked if he had read the Book of Mormon since we last came by. He said that he hasn't but that he wants to get around to it. We then shared a video with him #Hallelujah, and he seemed to really like it. We asked how he felt and he said there was a peaceful feeling to the video as he watched. THAT WAS THE SPIRIT! So we asked about his interest in religion, he said he hasn't practiced in years but he was Catholic. He then told us something along the lines of, I respect people's beliefs in Jesus Christ but I don't quite understand why people praise him. We invited him to read from the Book of Mormon and we scheduled another day to come back and discuss more about his question. He seems to be more interested!

April 12, 2016
Tuesday, Day 182
Day 169 in NY

AWESOME DAY:
We had 6 planned lessons.... And all of them happened!!! No one fell through or canceled on us! Miracle day!

MIRACLE:
Yesterday, We went to stop by and look up an investigator, turns out she wasn't home. So then we were walking out of a building and this young guy, about 20 years old stopped us and said, "Do you guys go around teaching people about Jesus?" We said yea we do. He said, "When are you coming over to teach me?" We said whenever you’re available. His response was quick "tomorrow? Can you come tomorrow? With the tight schedule we had we agreed to see him at 7 pm.

All day our appointments were all on point! It was awesome! So we get to Julio's apartment, (he's the guy we met last night.) He lets us in and we sat down at the table and just talked, asked about his religious background, asked him what made him stop us last night, and he gave some awesome responses. He told us that he has been looking for a church to go to because he used to go with his grandma, but he wants an English church to go to, because his grandma takes him to Spanish churches. He's super awesome and he wants us to come back on Friday!

Super great week! Love you all! Thank you for your prayers! I'm going to Manhattan today, talk to you all next week!

Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold