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