Week 35

June 8, 2016
Wednesday, Day 239
Day 226 in NY

PDAY!
It's Elder Samuel Burton’s birthday today! This man was birthed twenty years ago today! Whoop whoop! Started the day off as usual. We woke up and had studies, then went off to do laundry. While at laundry I once again rushed myself to finish my daily journal email because I am so bad at committing to do it every night. Tonight is like the first time I've ever written about the same day. I usually cram it all in on Pday and write about the whole week. After finishing our laundry... I came home and threw my bag of clothes on my bed and we all took off to go to the museum! Long story short, my companion, immediately after leaving the apartment was pooped on by a pigeon. Well that was the story... there is no long story. We then went back up and he changed, then we went to the museum.

DINNER:
After being at the Cooper Hewitt museum for some time we traveled back to the west side and headed to Oaxaca which is a Mexican restaurant. It's a pretty good one too! We met there for dinner with a member, Hank. This cat was swanky. He was just chillin in his seat when we showed up, slid over the menu, and stood up. Walking toward the register to order he said pick what you want. So, quickly we did and ordered with in 45 seconds of being there. I don't know if he was in a hurry or what, but we chatted a bit about our missions and about his. He served in Portland, Oregon. We were finished with our dinner in probably just about 30 minutes and he was out. Haha as soon as we finished, we shared a quick message and he took off. He didn't say he was in a hurry or that he had anywhere to be but he took off like there were free Mary-Go-Round rides down the street. Cool cat, just a little bit of an odd, quick dinner.

June 9, 2016
Thursday, Day 240
Day 227 in NY

CRAZY PEOPLE:
Today as we were sitting by this homeless women just talking to her, after giving her a pop-tart because that's all that we had. This man walked by and pointed at her, and in the most cruel and sarcastic attitude said, "Lady, Jesus loves you (moving his pointing finger now toward us he said) and they are a cult!" Does stuff like this bug me? Absolutely! I don't know what people have against us. We weren't even talking to him nor did we ever do anything to him, yet he felt the need to do something. People are hard hearted, thick headed, and childish. They are too stuck in their own ways to even consider change or even hear us out for that matter. We aren't here to change people. We are here to invite them and if change is what they want we are here to help them. I'm not ranting in this moment, but this is the truth. People have opinions and that's great but they have no reason to say and do the things they do to or toward us, some people are just straight up crazy.

SANE PEOPLE:
Brian is an awesome member; he's a convert of about 6 months now. He's super awesome, he's from Africa but he lives here in NY and works as a CEO of his own company. It's people like him that people are inspired by to be better and live great lives, to have stories to tell. We taught him more about family history and he loves the idea of it, he's been wanting to start on it he's just been busy with work. He told us he is actually going back to Africa soon and while he's there he will talk to his family about his grandparents so he can do their history. Super stellar guy, love meeting with him!

June 10, 2016
Friday, Day 241
Day 228 in NY

IT'S OCEANOLOGY:
I definitely need to do some studying on world geography... The Sisters in our district met this guy named Anicet. He's from the Ivory Coast. I had no clue where that was... I guess it's Africa or somewhere around there. So they met this guy, turns out he only speaks French, and they think he's YSA age. They wanted to pass him off to us, so they had us meet them at the church and we waited for Anicet to show up... Time went by, he never came. We had an APF to go to so Elder Tatafu and I left and Anicet later showed up and met with the sisters. They taught him a bit about the Sacrament by using Google translate. He then committed to come to our 9 o'clock service.

APF:
Then we went with Elders Casper and Casela to the Bethesda fountain where we had our APF. We had the world map with us, so like usual we used the "where in the world are you from" approach. Which is always fun, because we meet people from literally everywhere, again I really need to study world geography. Someone said they were from Netherlands... I didn't know that was even a place! My guess would have been they were pulling my leg and that they were from where Peter Pan lives!

After our APF we went and visited a member we hadn't seen at church in a little while, Scott, it was great because he's the only member in his family and we met him at his apartment. His mom and house nanny sat in and we taught them all.

June 11, 2016
Saturday, Day 242
Day 229 in NY

BOOK OF MORMON APF:
Today we did another APF. This time we carried this big Book of Mormon board to Columbus circle and boy did that get attention... We settled down by Central Park and started talking to people. With in about 5 minutes I had a few people approach Elder Tatafu and I for copies of the Book of Mormon. With the Book of Mormon play out it had a lot of people curious. There are surprisingly a lot of people who didn't know there was a book. So it was great to be approached by people who were interested.  Then after a bit we were approached by this guy who was so funny and by funny I mean not funny. All he wanted to do was tell us how we are wrong and how our beliefs are contradicting to what the Bible and Book of Mormon say. Which he won’t be able to prove. He was also saying how we are wrong as people because it's not right for us to tell other religions that they are wrong. Which is funny, because we don't do that, we don't go around to people and find out what they believe in or what their religion is and tell them that they are wrong. We respect all religions we just share what we know and help others see our beliefs in different ways. All he was doing was contradicting his own words by doing exactly what he was saying was wrong.

LOOK UPS:
With literally all of our investigators out of the city, we went and did some look ups around Columbus Ave. and that's how we concluded our day.

June 12, 2016
Sunday, Day 243
Day 230 in NY

SWEET SUNDAY:
This Sunday was awesome! We came to church set up chairs for the overflow. We then welcomed people in as they showed up and then around 9 we started Sacrament meeting. About half way through the meeting Anicet showed up he came in and sat in the back. Once sacrament was over we
had all these French speaking people surround him! Haha it was perfect fellowship. There were like 5 people who spoke French and they all came up to him and befriended him. They took him to class, they translated for him, and they did it all, we didn't have to do anything.

DINNER 1 & 2:
A couple hours after church we went over to our Ward mission leader’s home for dinner. We had pizza! Haha it was pretty great! (I probably have had a slice every day of my time here in Manhattan). We ate and talked about the work and the Ward and how we can do better and what they as a Ward can do more to help. After dinner with David, we had about 30 minutes before we had Johnny's BBQ for Sait. (Sait is another member who's moving in July, so they invited us to join him at Johnny's). It was fun, Johnny made burgers and we just hung out and talked to Sait and other members in the Ward.

June 13, 2016
Monday, Day 244
Day 231 in NY

Happy birthday grandpa!!

ZONE MEETING:
So this morning I was preparing for district meeting! When it turns out we were having zone meeting... Which is great, now I don't have to plan for it next week haha. Our zone leaders text us after studies telling us we were having zone meeting, which would have been nice to know like, a couple days ago. But oh well, so we went to the 15th street chapel and met there. It was a pretty good meeting we just went around the room of missionaries and each person talked about what they liked and applied from our meeting with Elder Bennett earlier in the week. It was like a great refresher from the meeting and was able to learn new things as people shared what they took from the meeting.

THE CALL:
When we got home I gave Ricky a call since he was baptized yesterday I wanted to talk to him about it. He said he was excited and nervous but it was an awesome experience. He laughed and said I told them to do it right since this is the last time he'd be doing it haha. It was great! We talked for a bit about his baptism and how it went who baptized him and all that good stuff! He said Michael baptized him and there were 2 other guys in the font to help pick him up, since he had to take off one of his legs. Well, without knowing till getting off the phone, our call was 48 minutes long! It was just like old times! Haha

June 14, 2016
Tuesday, Day 245
Day 232 in NY

Dillon's birthday!!
Happy birthday!

TODAY!
We cleaned up the apartment and did some look-ups. Then we had to go to the 15th street chapel to pick up mail, we got there at 5:20 when it was supposed to be there and stayed till 7 waiting on it... After getting the mail and quickly making our way back to our chapel we dropped it off and took off down to SoHo. We had a dinner appointment with this awesome member! Will!! Will is super awesome, great man with a desire to learn. He took us to this Italian restaurant, then we walked over to this place called Popbar we got fudge pops there, then we walked down to the Hudson River and checked out the awesome view! Then he walked with us over to the subway and we headed home! Great night!! Love members here!!

This was a wonderful week! Hope it's enough for y'all! Lol sorry I'm getting short and a little lazy on my writing... We get so busy and by the end of the day I'm too tired to write.. Enjoy! Love you all!

Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold

Hudson River

One days worth of sticker hunting