Week 32

May 18, 2016
Wednesday, Day 218
Day 205 in NY

Pday!
There's this guy out here in Manhattan named Jay who's not a member of the church but loves the church, he goes every week to a different ward, he loves the missionaries, he cuts their hair for free, and he takes missionaries out on tours around the city. So we got a group together and Elder Moss and I went to Central Park with Jay and he took us around the city, mainly the park, and explained the history behind all the buildings, statues, and other things. It was pretty cool going around and hearing stories about New York and why certain things were built and stuff like that. This took a few hours; we started around 12 and ended by 3:30. So most of our day was spent doing that. I don't have very many pictures, on my iPad. But I did take some on my GoPro so maybe one day when I can get them uploaded I can send them. But I'll be here a while so I'm sure I'll take more pictures of the area.

May 19, 2016
Thursday, Day 219
Day 206 in NY

Went about our Thursday morning schedule, made some weekly planning finished. Then went to the church to have a baptismal interview. It went so well it was great. I love being able to sit down with people who are investigating the church and have such great faith and just talk with them about their journey in finding their truth.

KOREAN FOOD:
I wouldn't say I'm the most adventurous person when it comes to food, but Elder Moss is. Which means I am now. When members sign up to take us out to eat they ask where we want to go or what do we want. Elder Moss always responds saying, anything new, we like to try new things. For dinner went to this Korean restaurant and it was pretty interesting! We just ordered a variety of things and shared amongst each other.

IN FOR THE WIN:
We got a message from the bishop saying there was a couple who had bags of clothes they needed to get rid of to make their move easier. So Elder Moss and I went over there, turns out the girl is a member and her boyfriend or fiancé is not, but is interested. Of course we took the perfect opportunity and talked to him about the church and what he knew. He didn't know much, but he expressed his interest in the unity of the church and how it focuses so much on family and happiness within a family. It was a great time, they told us that we had first pick from the clothes. After talking with them for a while, we took the bags out to the front of the apartment and they called an uber to take us home. So we threw the bags in the trunk and took off down the road heading home. The driver was great! He was so fun to talk to. When we got home we went straight into the bags, this guy definitely wasn't my size, but he fortunately was Elder Moss's size. It was perfect for him, he was just throwing out all his old clothes to pack for going home and the clothes in the bags were in pretty good shape so he has new clothes for when he gets home. HAPPY MOMENT! We totally found matching PJs! Haha this guy wears the full on button top pj shirt with matching bottoms so we threw those on real quick! The rest of the clothes we put back into the bags and we need to get them to the church or something to give them away to people who need clothes. I hit the jackpot on some crazy looking belts!

May 20, 2016
Friday, Day 220
Day 207 in NY

FRIDAY MORNING SERVICE:
Every Friday we go down to this church community place and do meals on wheels, like I explained last time. We just walk around with a dolly and some heat keep bags and cool keep bags with food in them and we have a route that we go on and deliver all the meals. It's pretty fun, we get to walk around, serve, and talk to a lot of different people. After about 2 hours of that we head back and report our success.

WEEKLY PLANNING STRUGGLE:
I believe that every missionary has his or her times with weekly planning... It's just so hard to stay sitting for 3 hours and just plan. After a little while we need to take breaks or eat or something! We usually plan weekly planning on Thursdays but sometimes it doesn't work out that way so we break it up into increments, sometimes different days.

POWER HOUR:
During our last district meeting, I brought up the idea of having what we call a "power hour". It's a way to get us all out and hyped to go find people. So, we scheduled a day and time, today, to go out and for one-hour just contact people on the street. In Manhattan, it can be a real struggle. There are a lot of people, but they don't want to stop and talk very often. But we all went out at 3 and till 4 we were out on the streets talking to everyone we could. Elder Moss and I got to a street corner where we saw this cop standing in the shade, so we walked over and talked to her. She asked if our church was over on some street and neither of us were sure, but we pointed to the temple and said that's where we go. So we gave her a card and said she could call us if she's interested, as we started to walk away she asked us if we could pray for her, we told her we would and continued on our way. Realizing that it was the perfect opportunity, I turned around, whistled for my companion and returned back to the corner. I asked if we could pray for her right then. She agreed and we proceeded. I love that we can walk up to a street corner and in the middle of hundreds of people walking by, bow our heads and pray out loud for this woman. We weren’t having too much success finding people to talk to, but we did have that little miracle and who knows what that did for her. But we were grateful for the opportunity.

May 21, 2016
Saturday, Day 221
Day 208 in NY

MORNING SERVICE/CLEANING:
We decided we would go back today and help out meals on wheels again. It only took a couple hours then we came home had lunch and attacked the apartment. We started cleaning everything. The bathroom and kitchen needed some work... We didn't complete the cleaning session today but we plan to this week. We did take a hard hour to go crazy with cleaning.

BAPTISM:
Around 6pm we went to the church to support Bryn for her baptism. Bryn is the one I had the interview with. She's so awesome and was so excited for this day! She personally invited Elder Moss and I so we were there for her. It was such a special experience.

DINNER:
We had a member who was going to take us out to dinner, but he ended up texting us saying he got called into work. He said he was sorry and asked if we would like pizza. So we responded yes and he asked for our address. We sent him our address and 25 minutes later someone rang our bell and a pizza guy was downstairs waiting for us. He ordered us pizza for dinner since he couldn't make it. The members here are way cool! I love them! Not just because they feed us, but because they really are just super chill.

May 22, 2016
Sunday, Day 222
Day 209 in NY

SURPRISE:
We got to church 30 minutes early to set up chairs and while we were setting them up in walks some guy. I didn't see him right away, but Elder Moss acknowledges him with a "hey how's it going" then does like a triple take and realizes it's one of his buddies from home, who got home from his mission 9 months ago. After about 30 seconds out of the elevator walk 3 more of his friends. They all came together, they were all friends before their missions and when they came home they decided to go up to Connecticut for summer sales, selling pest control. They knew that Elder Moss would be going home soon and they all would have been in Connecticut, so they come down and saw him. It was so cool he was flipping out; he had no idea they were coming. So they chatted for a bit before sacrament, and then joined us for church, and our classes.

THE END:
After church we went home and finally finished our weekly planning session.. Took us long enough but we finally got it done.

May 23, 2016
Monday, Day 223
Day 210 in NY

DISTRICT MEETING:
I think this was the best district meeting yet. Not because I'm the reason for them, but because I think I really figured it out this time. I started preparing for this meeting earlier in the week and couldn't quite figure out what I was going to focus on... This morning I couldn't figure it out at all... What I learned from this experience was that I wasn't teaching much from my heart and what the spirit was telling me as much as I was afraid of doing something wrong. So in the previous meetings I had everything planned out to what song we would sing to what questions I would ask... And no one really seemed to be to into it. But after realizing that I just need to plan and let the spirit just guide… it went so much smoother. Some of the missionaries pulled out notebooks and started taking notes, which made me feel really good. But it was all the spirit. I was so happy to have the spirit so involved.

APF:
We took a white board on wheels to Washington Square. On the white board we wrote the scripture Mosiah 2:17 "When ye are in the service of your fellow beings, ye are only in the service of you God."  The name of it was "Good deed dares" when we found people willing. We would let them pick a card from a pile. In the pile of cards was written an action. Each of them were different, some like "Call or text someone you haven't spoken to in years" or "call someone you look up to and tell them why" stuff like that to help people do more good. It was really fun actually and it helped talk to people more. We weren't being all preachy, which I think helped people see that we are normal.

BLESSINGS:
After the APF Caitlyn, a member in our ward, took us out to dinner at Shake Shack. It's pretty good! The burgers are small and expensive, but they taste good. As we were waiting in line with a member, who was paying for our dinner, another member, visiting from Provo Utah, came up to us and handed us $20 and said, I would like to pay for your dinner. I have 3 daughters who served missions and I want to pay for you dinner. Hesitant because, 1: I don't like taking money from people. And 2: there was someone already buying our dinner, so it was kind of awkward. But the member said (after the lady left) save it for another day, I'll take care of your dinner tonight. People are too amazing... I love that there are people in this world that are like this. Thank you to those who have been blessings to us as missionaries.

May 24, 2016
Tuesday, Day 224
Day 211 in NY

EXIT INTERVIEW:
Elder Moss had his exit interview this morning. This is the last interview he has before he leaves to go home. So I sat out in the foyer while he and president were in chapel having an interview. I had run out of Books of Mormon, so I pulled out my Bible and started reading from the beginning. It was so interesting reading it. It's not often that I really decide to read through The Bible but when I do it's always cool to see what I get from it.

RAY:
There's this other really awesome member who's not in our ward. But really loves missionaries, he's taken Elder Moss out for dinner 4 times, 2 of those with me, the 2nd time being today. He is so awesome! He took us out to dinner tonight because it will be the last time he sees Elder Moss, for a while. So we went to this Thai restaurant. Which was super great! After eating dinner, he took us to get dessert, and then we went to his place and ate there as we shared a message with him for the last time together. It was a great experience. There are so many good people in world.

That's all for this week, today was the best! I look forward to sharing with you all what we did! Love you all! God speed. Till next week.



Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold

Elder Newbold for President

Elder Newbold said these are his pics for running for president! 

Week 31

May 11, 2016
Wednesday, Day 211
Day 198 in NY

PDAY!
Today Elder Moss decided to cut his hair. There's this guy that cuts the missionaries hair for free every month. He's not a member but he loves the missionaries, so for who knows how long, he's been cutting the Elders hair. He does it down at the Chinatown chapel, so we went there and while Elder Moss got his hair cut, I was rushing to get my journal mail completed. Pday went by fast but it was fun, we went over to the Brooklyn bridge and walked down about a third of it, took some pictures, and just enjoyed the view. We hung out with Elder Richards and Elder Burton as we just walked around. Of course every time I pass hats I stop with the intention to buy. Walking off the Brooklyn Bridge I saw a stand with some hats and fell in love... Then realized I had no cash, so I had to walk away empty-handed. My plan then was to go to the nearest Walgreens grab a drink, get cash back, and buy some hats closer to home. The hats I found weren't what I first saw but they were NY hats so I got them.
#NoSelfControl

May 12, 2016
Thursday, Day 212
Day 199 in NY

ZONE CONFERENCE:
This morning we all, as a zone, had to meet at the church for a conference. It was a great meeting; we talked about the sacrament and how we can better prepare for it. While on the subject of sacrament, Sister Smith asked me to read the sacrament prayer, which was so great. Naturally, I read the prayer slowly and clear, it's the way I've always done it when I blessed the sacrament. I loved the feeling I had as I was given the opportunity to read the prayer in front of these missionaries giving them the chance to listen and feel the power in the words and the blessings and promises made in the sacrament prayer. The point of her asking me to read it was to point out the blessings and promises made. Overall it was a great meeting, I love being with the missionaries and President and his wife. This conference took longer than we expected. We were there from 8:30-5PM, so much of our day was used up from that.

May 13, 2016
Friday, Day 213
Day 200 in NY

KRAZY DAY:
One of our members was out of town and left his spare apartment keys with us so that we could help his roommate who was moving in that day get in. After finding out that his roommate was flying in much later then expected, we had to get the keys to another set of missionaries closer to him. In the process of getting the keys to Elder Casper and Elder Casela the trains stopped working... So that took much longer, we then spent about 2 hours trying to get over to them. Once we got there we had some plans we needed to change due to the time it took. With this ridiculous mishap with the trains, we ended our day with much more success then we planned.

ONCE UPON A DREAM:
Our first lesson for the day, we were going to meet with at Bryant Park. Instead it strayed to rain so we met with her in Grand Central. We had a great meeting with Mia, (Mia is one of our recent converts), she had some concerns and things she needed to tell us about a dream she had. After explaining to Elder Moss and I, what I thought was just about one of the craziest dreams I've ever heard, we did our best to help her better understand what it may have meant. Now first off let me tell ya, when you become a missionary, you become a person that anyone can trust with their problems, concerns, crazy questions, and so on, but you DO NOT become a dream reader. What I thought was funny about the situation was, it reminded me of movies. When we sat down Mia looked at us both with this trusting look and said very cautiously, "your going to think I'm crazy, but I had this dream last night… Now I've had dreams like this before but this one I just don’t know what it means." This first part of what she said is what made me laugh. She made her self-sound crazy haha but she's not. After she explained her dream to us, we asked her what her dream meant to her or what she thinks it means. (Mia's dream was), Mia was standing in a room talking to some people and not to far from her stood Thomas S. Monson, patiently he waited for her to stop talking with her friends. He stood there and didn't speak to anyone until he was able to speak with her. After he got her attention, he led her out into a field where all kinds of people and creatures were. In this field there also was a space ship like thing, kind of like a space pod. A word was written on this space pod and it said "Vera" (or something like that). President Monson stood there beside her and pointed to the word. Mia asked what does it mean? President Monson remained pointing. She asked again, what does it mean? No response was given… She then woke up and wondered what the definition was. She googled the word and in some other language (Slovak maybe) the word meant Faith. For some reason, this dream had some significance. Maybe it was to get her to realize that she needs to act in faith... She recently hadn't been coming to church or reading her scriptures. When we talked to her, these were things she had told us and she recognized that it was weakening her testimony. We talked for a little longer and helped her realize how important it is that she reads and comes to church.

NOT MUCH LATER:
We met with an investigator named Mia. This was a girl that Elder Moss contacted on the street before I transferred here. We met with Mia at the church and got to know her as we talked. It turns out she wanted to meet with us because she is doing a personal project with photography. She wanted to make it a documentary about Elder Moss and I. One of the questions she asked, which is based off the main idea of her project was, how our religious beliefs helped us find our masculinity. She had some really great questions for us, about us and for us about the church. As we bore testimony with each answer we gave her we noticed that she became more interested in what we teach. She had fewer questions for her project and more questions from her curiosity of our religion. It was really cool how the spirit touched her and helped her find that interest.

After Mia, we then met with Jeffery and read the scriptures with him. We invited him to read on his own and to take notes if he feels it will help him remember what he reads. As we taught Jeffery we could tell he was becoming more comfortable with us. He's a shy guy and when he talks he talks with the sound of a whisper. He never says much and is hard to hear at times. But this time he was a little more confident and spoke a little more then usual! It was great to see more progression from him. Today went well, we had a crazy morning but all was great in the end!

May 14, 2016
Saturday, Day 214
Day 201 in NY

ALMA ACADEMY:
The Alma academy is a fancy name for what the stake in Connecticut calls a mini mission. Just like how we have the day MTC mission with the missionaries. The stake in Connecticut does it too but a little less organized haha. Not that I'm making fun of the way they do things but it was mostly the missionaries putting together this activity because the stake thought that was a good idea. It went well but it wasn't as good as it could have been from what ideas I was hearing. I thought it was so cool to be able to be on the opposite side this time. Before I came out on my mission I went on a couple mini missions. Which was basically an organized split with the missionaries. Doing those were so much fun as I prepared my self for a mission. Today I had the opportunity to be on the missionary side of things. I was a companion with a kid named Hunter. He had graduated high School about a year ago, like I did, but didn't go on a mission immediately. I thought it was so cool to be able to go on a split with someone who wasn't a missionary, and to be able to show him the ways of a missionary. The way we had things set up was, we had planned 4 different APFs. One of which I drew with child a tree on The Mall strip in Central Park. As people gathered to watch and stop when it was complete we added leaves to the tree where they could write their names. While we had them in our spot we talked to them about what we were doing. We explained that we were sharing with people family history, telling them that we are all from different places but we are all one big family, a family of God, and that we can connect ourselves with our family all over the world. There were 3 other activities set up and every hour we rotated the kids from each APF. So really I was only on a split with this kid from 9AM as we had companionship study to about 1PM at our Family Search APF. What an awesome experience it was!

THE ALLENS:
Great surprise! I received a text on our phone from an unsaved number, but the area code appeared as 916 and I knew where that was! CALI! This text was from Anne and Courtney Allen! How fun! They said that they had received permission from President Smith to get in contact with us to meet up this week while they were here visiting. We communicated back and forth about our schedule and planned a time to meet on Monday. I have to say I was excited to see someone from home. As wonderful and sweet as Anne is for planning to take us out to eat, I thought it was enough just being able to have them visit! Well after being at the church for a little while planning and what not, I got another text from Anne and Courtney saying that they had just gone to a pizza cooking class and learned how to make pizza, they ended up with much more pizza then they could or wanted to eat on their own and decided to meet us at the church where we were to drop it off. Not too much later they showed up to church with 3 little boxes of pizza, inside 2 of the boxes were 3 or 4 different kinds of pies. In the other one was a dessert pizza oh it was delicious! They hooked it up real good! Thank you so much Allen family!!

May 15, 2016
Sunday, Day 215
Day 202 in NY

CHURCH:
So many new people! There were a lot of people who we hadn't seen before at church. I guess this time of year lots of visitors and interns come to NY and they come to the YSA ward. After sacrament Elder Moss and I went to Sunday school. There we began our lesson and with in about 5 minutes into the lesson I heard a familiar voice following the sound of a door opening. In curiosity I turned around as I heard the words "sorry, I just need to see someone really quick". Kevin Slagle!? Whoa! That was a surprise! He stopped in really quick to say hello and ask what I would be doing after class. I told him we had 3rd hour next and he said he would catch me before then. Totally surprised and caught off guard, I returned to my seat and continued on with the lesson. That's 2 days in a row seeing people from home! It was so fun to see them! After class he came in as we were folding up chairs and we chatted for a bit. It was such a great Sunday!!

May 16, 2016
Monday, Day 216
Day 203 in NY

LUNCH WITH GUESTS:
I can't remember about what happened for most of the day, but we met up with Anne and Courtney for lunch! That was fun! We had lunch and dessert and it was great being with them and talking with them. After a long conversation and a full tummy we went our separate ways, for the day. We planned to meet up once more before they left to do an exchange of suitcases.

After lunch Elder Moss and I then went to the church, picked up a sign and went to Central Park where we did a mini APF and contacted some people. The weather was a little misty and it sprinkled a bit, so there weren’t too many people to talk to. So we went back to the church and dropped off the board.

May 17, 2016
Tuesday, Day 217
Day 204 in NY

APF:
After lunch we met up with the ZLs again for another APF. This one was pretty cool; we had these little cut out pieces of paper that on each of them had a sentence. The sentences were "good deed dares". So, people come up to us and we give them a card. Whatever the card says, they have to do. So people would get things like, "call or text someone you haven't spoken to in years." Or "call someone you look up to and tell them why you look up to them." It was pretty cool; at first there wasn't much success from it. I wasn't getting anything from it at least. I'd go up to people, talk to people, try different approaches, and nothing seemed to work. No one really wanted to stop and listen. So I sat back and let people come to me... That didn't work to well, so I said something to this lady walking by and she stopped and I chatted with her. I explained what we were doing and she listened. She explained a little bit about how she's Jewish but that she loves doing good deeds. So she picked a card from my deck and she couldn't think of anyone she hadn't spoken to in years… So I let her draw another. This card said, "Call your parents and tell them you love them" after reading it she looked at me and said, "I'll do this one... I don't have a very good relationship with my dad. But I'm going to call him." I told her she could do it now if she'd like or hold off till she was home. She agreed to do it later and after chatting for a bit more, she left saying, "thank you, I believe there was a reason I stopped and talked to you". I pray that all goes well for this woman and that she and her father may have a better relationship one day. Now as we were wrapping up the APF a man walked by, stopped, looked at me, looked down at his phone, looked back at me and so I acknowledge him and asked if he'd like to do a good deed. After explaining to him how it works, he pulled a card and agreed to do it. He said that he had never had any contact with Mormons really but had heard great things. (He too was Jewish) and he said that he had heard that a lot of Jews have converted to Mormons. He liked what he had heard about us and was interested. After conversing with him and getting his information, I reported my 2 experiences with the Jews I just had to Elder Moss and he agreed that this was why we were here, he said that all the people that came up to him were already members so he had few and unfruitful experiences with those he talked to. It was a great day for an APF!

Sorry again these are getting shorter. But they have the great experiences that I'm going through. I hope you enjoy! Have a wonderful week! Love you all!

Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold

Kevin Slagle surprised him at church!

Brooklyn Bridge

Anne and Courtney Allen took them to lunch and dessert!

Week 30

May 4, 2016
Wednesday, Day 204
Day 191 in NY

PDAY!
This morning we had a missed call on our phone, the number wasn't saved but the first 3 numbers showed that it was a number from Utah. Elder Moss listened to the voicemail that was left and heard the voice of his Stake President’s wife. He flipped out and started getting super excited. He yelled to me the news and said he was calling them back. He called her back and had a great conversation about them being in NY. They had gone to pick up their daughter from Brazil and they had an 8-hour lay over in NY on their flight home so they came to the city. They got a hold of President Smith and received permission to meet up with us. Elder Moss is super close with them so he was so excited! Before we met up with them at the MET (Metropolitan Museum of Art) Elder Moss told me that the husband is Howard Bangerter, who is the son of William Grant Bangeter of the Seventy and Howard will be a mission President soon in Brazil! It was a great time, we walked around the museum and Elder Moss was able to be with his old stake president and his wife, which he absolutely loved. That took some time out of Pday, but it was fun. The rest of the day wasn't as eventful. All we did was go to the church and email, and then we went and did laundry as the last thing for Pday.

May 5, 2016
Thursday, Day 205
Day 192 in NY

"Hello guys!! This is good! Elders Conference at B-dubs, mom ate the leftovers. And we found a playbill with goblins and dragons."

That’s my journal entry for today! Lol Elder Richards wanted to help me out today. I was saying how I have no motivation to write in my journal tonight, but he said I needed to. He grabbed my iPad and said, "This is all you gotta do". He opened my case, turned on my iPad, told me to put in my password, and he opened up my notes and everything above is what he said. Hahaha!

For lunch today we went to B-dubs (Buffalo Wild Wings), I got this pork sandwich and it tasted beautiful! We went together as an apartment so we had some fun being together.

DINNER: (Conner Castagno)
Conner, a member in our ward signed up to feed us dinner tonight. While talking with him and the friends he had over for dinner as well, I came to know that he has been an EFY counselor for some time. He isn't anymore, but he was for a few years. When I first met him I knew he looked familiar, but with the thought that I'm in NY and I don't know anyone here, in my mind I put it past me. But we talked about where we went to EFY, I told him I've gone 5 times, 4 times to Provo and once at Santa Barbara. He said he had worked in Provo for most of the time he was a counselor and he was definitely there during the time that I had gone. So I know I've seen him before! I thought it was pretty awesome to make that connection.

May 6, 2016
Friday, Day 206
Day 193 in NY

SERVICE:
We started our day off with some service! We went and did meals on wheels, so we had wheeled around a dolly with these bags that were filled with meals that we would deliver apartment to apartment. It was great! It was also raining! And I didn't wear my boots; I wore my holy shoes. My brown dress shoes have big holes in the heal and a slit in the middle of both shoes so water was just pouring into my shoes from the bottom, it was so awesome.

DINNER:
Don't worry mom! I'm getting fed.... Only for dinner. The members are so nice and awesome! They feed us just about every day, which is a huge blessing. But because they all have jobs they work all day and have only nights available. It's so great! For breakfast and lunch we cook or go out. We try not to go out so often, because we don't have much money... But it's just so much more convenient and good! Lol, I'm making the goal to start budgeting. I haven't yet, but I plan to soon.

May 7, 2016
Saturday, Day 207
Day 194 in NY

SERVICE:
Woke up this morning, started our split with our roommates, but we had the same plans to do service. So we went together to Central Park and did some weeding with a community group. It was great I got to be in regular clothes, doing service, which was awesome because I was getting dirty in the planting areas. It felt good to be outside working again!

SPLIT:
The rest of the day was Elder Richard’s and I going to Roosevelt Island having lunch then coming back to Manhattan and teaching a lesson at the church later that night. The other 2 lessons we had planned canceled on us, so during the time that we had waited for them to respond we cleaned out my
Facebook.

May 8, 2016
Sunday, Day 208
Day 195 in NY

HAPPY MOTHERS DAY!
Greatest day so far! It was a great day over all. We went to church; all of our investigators showed up, all 3 of them, church was great.

After church we had this member BBQ. We invited our investigator Jeffery, he came and it was awesome! The members were so great at fellowshipping him. At first it was really awkward, we were one of the first people there. So it was Elder Moss, Jeffery, and I, then shortly after members showed up. But up until then it was just so weird standing at a members home, music was playing outside where we were, and everyone was a little segregated at first. Once everyone showed up everything felt better haha people were coming up to us and giving us their information so that they could come out and work with us. It was super awesome, most of the people at the BBQ party were interns that had just arrived in NY with in the last week. It was so great! Eric grilled burgers and then also grilled some pineapple and oh my goodness… I was in heaven! Super fun day! Lots of talking to members and fellowshipping our investigator and food! All the members kept coming up to us and asking if we had talked to our families yet and we kept telling them that we would tonight.

FACETIME:
The best part of the day was face timing home! Oh it was so fun to see everyone again! Always will love hearing mom, "ahhhh, there he is!" Love the excitement shown from family! I feel like I've been away for so much longer. The house is finished, there are new things at home, Zach's a giant and has some crazy hair haha, there's another house in the driveway and it has wheels, there's a kid on the way. So much seems different already! Always love seeing everyone's faces and hearing their voices! Such a fun moment on the mission! I thought it was so funny doing a handstand on the call with Josh. That's right I've still got it! It's been so hard to stay in shape... I'm definitely so out of shape... I'm not
flexible at all anymore. I can't do the splits anymore and trying to touch my toes is a stretch now...

May 9, 2016
Monday, Day 209
Day 196 in NY

DISTRICT MEETING:
The zone leaders joined us today in district meeting, we had some announcements for the week then I started the meeting. When I plan for these meetings, I just come up with a bunch of questions to ask to keep it a discussion and to get everyone involved. We focused on setting goals to help us achieve our zone goal for getting 55 investigators to church for the month. As a zone our total for this last Sunday was 28 investigators at church!

CHICK FIL A:
After district meeting we had a meeting with the zone leaders about some event they wanted help planning for. Then we left and our roommates went with us to chick fil a! Whoop whoop! I love it there! The exact second that I swiped my card to pay for lunch, my food was ready and in front of me. A lady in chick fil a saw Elders downstairs at the registers and asked if they were from the play. They said no and then she came up stairs and was talking to her co-worker about it and he looked at us and said she thought you were from the Book of Mormon play. She kinda laughed and was surprised to see more Elders.

May 10, 2016
Tuesday, Day 210
Day 197 in NY

CHIROPRACTOR:
I forgot to mention it last week, but Elder Moss goes to the chiropractor every week. There's a member there that takes care of him for free. While we were there he was talking to me about seeing a chiropractor, I told him I've been before, but never had work done. He replied with something like, your mother must not love you very much. Haha and he says that jokingly because nerve pressure is a problem in just about every body but not everyone knows it. He made a joke about how mom goes to the chiropractor and treats herself but keeps the good of it from me. Haha So we went to Elder Moss's appointment and he gets his body cracked all over. It's fun to watch, and Brother Arbuckle (the chiropractor) is fun to talk to.

DINNER:
A member in our ward, Christa, met us at the church for dinner. We didn't have a 3rd male so we couldn't go to her home and she made a home cooked meal so we met at the church. It was a great time; we pulled up a table and some chairs and ate in the hallway. It was good, she made fajitas! Mmmmmm super good! It was great, we talked about missionary work and invited her to pray specifically for someone so she could have a missionary opportunity.

Even though she's served a mission in Brazil, she can still look for opportunities to serve. Not that she isn't doing that, but we all can and should pray and look for opportunities to serve people so we can
have missionary experiences. I invite you all to pray specifically for a friend or someone you know, to have a missionary opportunity with them or just to have a missionary opportunity with anyone. Pray for one and act on it! It will bless you!

Love you all! Enjoy your week! Hope you wonderful mothers had a
wonderful Mother's Day!



Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold

Week 29

April 27, 2016
Wednesday, Day 197
Day 184 in NY

PDAY!!
Elder Moss and all the other missionaries going home this cycle went to a Broadway play and saw Fiddler On The Roof. While they did that Elder Shaffer, Elder Richards, Elder Burton, and I went to the Museum of Natural History. It wasn't the best museum but it was cool to go and check it out.

DINNER:
Veronica, a member in our ward offered to take us to dinner. So after our Pday stuff we went to this place called Sweetgreen. It's a salad restaurant and it was delicious! I got a Harvest Bowl and it was so delicious! It was an awesome dinner!

Not a whole lot happened today, but a lot was different. Overall it was a great day!

April 28, 2016
Thursday, Day 198
Day 185 in NY

WE GOT IT COVERED:
Today wasn't too exciting, except for lunch! We woke up, had our personal and companionship studies. For lunch we decided to go out and eat as a group. Elder Richards, Elder Burton, Elder Moss, and I went to this place called Stardust. It's a restaurant where the waiters and waitresses sing the whole time. Every waiter or waitress that works here is hoping to make it to Broadway. It's pretty cool, it wasn't quite lunch time yet so they were still serving breakfast and the food wasn't that great, but really we were there because Elder Moss is only here for the next 4ish weeks and he wanted to come here again so we thought it would be fun to go and experience it all. We enjoyed it, the singers were all great and what was so funny about it, was because us 4 missionaries were sitting together in this restaurant eating, one of the waiters started singing one of the songs from the Book of Mormon musical. It was great.

In the middle of our meal, a couple approached us at our table and said hey Elders! We talked to them and it turns out they were members from Salt Lake. They asked where we were from and after a couple minutes they were on their way out.

When we finished eating and were ready for our bill our server came by and said that it was all taken care of. In great surprise we asked how? And she responded saying; didn't you come in with 2 other people? We said, no it was just the four of us. She then followed up saying, did you know anyone here? We again said no, we came on our own. As we put the pieces together and remembered back to the member couple that came by, we were so grateful for what we assumed was their doing. They had paid for all our meals and said nothing of it... I am so grateful that they are such wonderful people in this crazy world! They left without saying their names, so thank you to they who covered our meal.

LATER ON:
We left the restaurant so grateful for my food being paid for. I left hungry because I didn't enjoy the food. So we headed over to 2 Bros and bought some pizza. After getting home we had weekly planning and all of our appointments ended up falling through so we continued planning. We had dinner and then had an orientation meeting for some service we signed up to do. We made a trip through Central Park and in doing so we reenacted some scenes from Enchanted... (No we didn't, but we did walk around singing a song from the movie). What a great park! About 15 minutes later, after walking though a part of the park we made it to a building next to the Zoo where the movie (Madagascar was made from). We went up stairs, signed in, sat down for maybe 15 minutes and listened to a guy speak about the expectations of the park activity we all have volunteered for. The event was called Street Games. It's held at a park somewhere, I believe 14th ave? The event involves live performances of people they had hired, one being The YoYo Guy. There were many other activities, Disney had sponsored the event, and some games were sponsored and put together by the New York Red Bull team. It seemed like a pretty legit event. It would be on Saturday from 10-3PM so we would be there all day.
After the presentation, the Elders and I spoke to the man giving the presentation, making him aware that we were missionaries, but that we want to help out and serve, but the problem we had was that we thought maybe it wouldn't be a good idea because our white handbook says to avoid participating in projects where there may be an issue working with children, due to legal complexities. So we brought our concerns to his attention and very respectably and responsibly he informed us that he would think on what he could assign us to do during the event.

SPLITS:
After our orientation, (which ended much earlier than we expected), we stalled some time by walking through the park and taking some pictures together, before the Zone Leaders met with us at the church for a split. I love my roommates and my companion! We have a wonderful group of missionaries. After some fun, we split up and Elder Moss and I went to the church where we waited for a less active, which we were going to meet with and share a message. (We hadn't heard back from him since we last talked to him on Sunday so we hoped he had remembered. We had called a couple days in advance, we sent him a text the day before and left some messages the day of, but never received a response or a confirmation of him meeting with us. So we waited patiently and he never showed up, we then waited for the Zone Leaders, Elder Sanford and Elder Cheney to go on a split.
Elder Cheney and I split and went to his area. Looking forward to a great day tomorrow.

April 29, 2016
Friday, Day 199
Day 186 in NY

WAKING UP IN SOMEONE ELSES BED:
As a missionary I've come to learn that I need to perfect my packing skills. On splits it's easy to pack for a day. At the end of the day, before you split, I change into the clothes I plan to wear the next day (the day of the split) and I only pack my bathroom bag and towel. On splits, you basically "take the place of the companion who originally serves there". You sleep in the bed of the Elder you switched with. You eat whatever food you can find of that person. Usually you don't know the area or the investigators or members in that area (very well), but you talk about the plans you have and each person you plan to meet with so you have an idea of whom you’re working with. It's a great experience and it's always nice to get out and see how others teach and plan their days. Hopefully going on splits will one day perfect my packing skills. Especially since every 6 weeks there's a possibility of being transferred and usually when we find out we have about 3 days to pack up all of our belongings. 3 days to pack up everything you own from your home isn't much time when your a missionary, with a missionary schedule. But the split was great!

TEACHING ON MEDS:
My allergies had been killing me the last couple weeks and when I had mentioned it to Elder Burton in my apartment, he said he had some allergy medicine. So, the night I left for my split he handed me his
medicine and warned me of its side effects. I stuck it in my bag and went to the church to split. Well, this morning I decided I would take one before leaving the house. So I did, after walking around all morning going to a soup kitchen to offer our service, we went home for lunch. I plopped my self on the couch and immediately began feeling tired and lazy. Wondering why I was feeling tired I then got up and tried waking my self up by getting up and making lunch. I felt a little less tired but once I sat down to eat I felt tired again. Well, I still couldn't answer why I was feeling this way. We went to the church and met an investigator there for a lesson. We went up stairs, sat in a room, and began to teach. Sitting there in the lesson I again immediately felt tired, but this time was much worse I was drowsy and felt out of place. I didn't feel like I was there in the room. Not knowing the investigator Elder Cheney led the discussion. During this time that he was speaking I couldn't find myself, I didn't understand what was being said and I couldn't pay attention to what was coming to my own mind. So as he led the conversation I did my best to follow the discussion, but by the time I needed to hop in and say something I didn't know what we were talking about so when I opened my mouth whatever words I tired saying came out jumbled and I felt so embarrassed, I was dumbfounded, I heard my voice but I just felt like nothing was coming out. After our lesson we had another one, it was about half way through this lesson that the medicine began to ware off. So I was finally able to speak and be more conscious of what I was doing. After the lessons Elder Cheney and I talked about how we thought we did and what we could have done better. When he said, "how did you think you did? And what do you think you could have done better?" I responded saying "I think I could have done better all together if I hadn't taken drugs." Elder Cheney, not knowing I had taken any medicine prior to our lessons had a worried and concerned look. I then laughed and explained what had happened. After informing him about the allergy medicine and how I felt during the lesson he responded saying, "Oh, well I didn't notice." Now I was confused, because I felt so out of it and couldn't get the words out that I needed. He said that it went well; he said he heard everything perfectly and it went well. So either he lied to me or the spirit was there and helped me out haha. I'm gonna go with the second one. But, the lesson learned here was… don't do drugs.

April 30, 2016
Saturday, Day 200
Day 187 in NY

DAY OF SERVICE:
Woke up at 5:30 AM quickly got ready and went over to a members apartment and helped him pack what was left of his belongings. His name is Cory; he's a super awesome guy! He had a bunch of electronics and cool things in the corner of a room and he said not to worry about packing any of it because it was going to be donated. On the top shelf of a rack sitting in the pile was an old turntable. I asked Cory about it and he said yea I'm donating it... I paused in amazement at the fact that he didn't want it. So I asked him if I could just have it. I told him that I've been looking for one and that my brother is a DJ so I could send it home for him to use. He was down with it and when we left he texted us asking for Josh's name and number so he could text him a picture and see if he wanted it. So he did and he later responded about how excited Josh was.

After helping him out we went to 14th St and Pleasant Ave. where the NY event was. It was so awesome! New York Red Bulls was sponsoring a section of the event and had a lot of different activities lined up, they even had a DJ, so it was super fun. After we signed in and got ready to help out where ever we were needed we met The YoYo Guy, super awesome guy, super amazing YoYo'er. He's a stud, his performance was great, and prior to his performance we talked to him for like 20 minutes, we helped him out with some stuff and what not. It was a great time! We helped out with this box cart-racing event as well, it was so fun. We were "floater volunteers" so we walked around the park and helped out at any of the events that needed help. There was a Disney events section (because Disney also sponsored Street Games) it was so awesome, for helping them out in their tents they gave both Elder Moss and I Disney movies haha! So I now have Little Mermaid and Frozen. Wonderful day! We were involved with service from 7 that morning till 4 PM, the day of my dreams!

May 1, 2016
Sunday, Day 201
Day 188 in NY

MIRACLE:
A member in our ward came up to us and said "Hey Elders, if you ever need anyone to go with you to teach lessons I have time. Any day, I just lost my job so I'm available whenever you need me." Haha so not that loosing her job was a miracle but the fact that she approached us with the desire to go out and help us was super awesome!

The other Miracle was that Bishop Gérald Caussé (The Presiding Bishop of the church) showed up to our singles ward and sat on the stand. When he got here he came up the elevator, right where we were standing so we got to talk with him a bit. We shook his hand and he looked at our investigator and said "listen to these guys, they know what their talking about." It was super awesome, he even spoke at the last 10 minutes of sacrament meeting. He shared some stories about him being called as a general authority and how he needed to act in faith to accept the calling.

May 2, 2016
Monday, Day 202
Day 189 in NY

MLC:
Mission Leadership Council. Now that I'm a District Leader I attend these meetings called MLC. So it was a great time. We went to the Grand Central Station, Elder Moss and I, and we split with some missionaries there. Elders Cheney and Sanford, my Zone Leaders, and I got on the train and head over to Scarsdale for the meeting. It was a great meeting; President focused a lot on the sacrament, trust with members, and baptism. My job as a DL, after these kinds of meetings, is to give some kind of "training" to my district about what President made his focus on from MLC. So after this awesome 6 hour meeting or 5 hour meeting because we had an hour lunch. We went to the church in our area and had a brief Leadership council amongst ourselves about what we would do in our zone meeting. So we took down the main points from MLC and talked about it all and assigned a topic to the grouped leaders. The ZL's had a topic, the STL's (Sister Training Leaders) had a topic, and the DL's all had a topic. So we just prepared ourselves for our meeting tomorrow. And this was what the majority of our day consisted of.

May 3, 2016
Tuesday, Day 203
Day 190 in NY

ZONE MEETING:
Like I said yesterday, we prepared for zone meeting. So Elder Casper, Elder Driggs, and I (the district leaders) prepared a bunch of questions to ask. That way we could have a discussion instead of a lecture. Before we gave our little "training" a guy names Ryan Koch (Kō) gave an awesome training on how to be effective in technology proselyting. (Using Facebook and what not). Then the STL's gave a great training on trust with members. The zone leaders talked about our numbers and goals. Then we gave our training on the Sacrament, which was great!

DINNER:
This member named Ray Smith took Elder Moss and I out for dinner and it was so awesome! He took us to this great Mexican place! He's a super cool guy too, in the middle of our meal he warned me, he said, "okay, with every new missionary I meet, that I take out, I have just a few questions I ask them." I said okay go for it. So he started asking me simple questions like, where am I from and such. But he then said, "If you don't mind sharing, what's your story? How were you converted to serving a mission?" This question has been asked twice on my mission. When I was with Elder Tabor and now with Ray. I felt that it was totally appropriate and a great time to share it with him. So I told him, and it was one of the greatest conversations I've had in a while. He asked a great question and then he just sat and listened to me as I shared my experience with him. It was awesome!

Love you all! Hope you have a wonderful week!


Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold