Week 38

June 29, 2016
Wednesday, Day 260
Day 247 in NY

Pday! A special day is among us! Today, after finishing our laundry we went to the temple! It was such a great and special time for Elder Tatafu and I. The last time I went through the temple was, I believe right before I got to the MTC. Or during the MTC I don't remember... But what matters is that I finally went! Our temple time was 2pm so before that we just kind of hung out till our session.

After our session, we made our way to the elevator where this woman was standing waiting for it to come to the floor we were on. Once we got there it opened up. While in the elevator she said to us, "I was just telling the man here before you that this elevator was taking much longer than usual" (and the church elevators are fast) while exiting the elevator with her on the same floor she said "I was just asking Heavenly Father who he was going to send to me today, because after every session I do in the temple a set of missionaries appear and I take them out to lunch. Now I know why the elevator took much longer today, he was making me wait for you Elders. So, where are you going? Can I take you to lunch?" We told her we hadn't eaten yet but would love to go out. She took us to this restaurant just outside the church. It's part of the building but outside on the corner. We sat and ordered and chatted for some time while our food came. While we ate she asked us about where we were from, Elder Tatafu responded first, saying Alaska. She took a look at his nametag and said that's not an Alaskan name where are you from? (Elder Tatafu is a funny guy, he asks me often the same question "what should I tell people when they ask where I'm from?" I always tell him the same thing, just tell them you’re from American Samoa. Or you can tell them "I'm a Tongan, born in American Samoa that moved to Cali, and currently lives in Alaska.") So after he told her all about where he was from and where he's lived. She got excited because she was going to Tonga soon and wanted to see if she would meet any Tatafu's. Then she asked where I was from, I told her California and with wide eyes she asked where in California? I said Sacramento. She now with excitement in her voice asked where in Sacramento!? I said Wilton and she said her daughter lives in Elk Grove and has been thinking about moving to Wilton. She then asked for my address, which I thought was so funny, so I gave it to her.

Shortly after finishing lunch we went back into the church, we just went upstairs to the gym and hung out with everyone playing ball. Elder Wulff came up to me and asked if I had checked my email, I hadn't. So I checked and there was an email from him and in the mail was that picture "Find the Boss in you, ElderNewbold.com". It was a picture he took on his camera at the Alma Academy I wrote about last month, when I drew the family tree with chalk. That was pretty great, after coming out of the temple it was a great way to keep my smile on! Lol.

When 6pm hit we stayed at the church and waited for Brian to show up. When he arrived we found a room and talked and had a discussion about the scriptures, he wanted to make a focus on Joseph Smith and Alma. Which I thought was interesting so we talked for a while about these 2 significant servants of the Lord and he was pleased with the scriptures we shared.

After our lesson with Brian we had a dinner appointment at 8 with Jeff, another member in our Ward who will only be here another 2 weeks. We met him over at chipotle. It was an awesome dinner and we talked about his mission and how things are going for him. We then shared a message with him about missionary work like we've done with a lot of the members so far. He told us about these guys he works with and how he's actually been sharing his beliefs with them and invited them to church. He said they had plans for the 4th so they wouldn't be sober enough to join us but they said probably next week. Lol we will see.

June 30, 2016
Thursday, Day 261
Day 248 in NY

This morning we had a conference call after companionship study. President talked about a little change in our weekly emails to him. Instead of sharing a miracle with him he wants us to write about
change. Whether it's the change we see in our investigators or the change we see in ourselves, he just wants to hear about what we've noticed.

After the call we went to the church to do some weekly planning before we started lunch. Since I was sick last week or 2 weeks ago now. (Time flys too quickly I can't remember.) Whenever it was I was home in bed all day on the day we weekly plan. So that never got done so today we planned for the rest of this week and we will plan next week soon! We made a lot of phone calls during planning, trying to clean out our area book. After some time of planning we took dinner and then continued on calling people and working on area book.

July 1, 2016
Friday, Day 262
Day 249 in NY

Good day!
Elder Burton started packing his bags. He heads home this cycle, so in about 2 weeks. After studies I was helping him out a little bit since Elder Richards wasn't feeling well. Then went over to the temple to meet Elders Casper, Casela, Driggs, & Stevens for an APF. We grabbed the world map board and went to the Bethesda fountain. After about 2 and a half hours we went back to the temple to put the board away and have a lesson at 4 with Scott, one of our members. After our lesson we headed home for dinner when we got a message from Oliver Samples, a member in our Ward, to have dinner at his place at 6. So we went home, it started dumping down rain and I needed to change my shoes. My shoes are hilariously ruined. I have yet to go to Macy's to exchange my shoes for the right size, (I'm doing that next week!) Then we headed over to Oliver's.

When we got to Oliver's his roommates had some friends over, they all went to the back room and we ate dinner. After dinner he took us to the roof like usual and we shared a message with him and a friend of his that was visiting. After dinner we made it back to our apartment to change and pack for a
split with the Zone leaders. We left with time to be at grand central just in time. Making our way to Grand Central, and with just one stop on the train to go, the train flies passed Grand Central with no
warning and we found our selves leaving the mission. When we got off the next stop we had to exit the station to get on the opposite side to go back to the east side of Manhattan. We walked up the stairs of the station and found our selves in the streets of Queens. Elder Tatafu being still new to the subway system, and getting a good look of Queens for myself, I told Elder Tatafu "get a good look around Elder, we aren't in our mission anymore..." Being caught off guard by that, he said "what?! Where are we?!" I laughed to myself and said, "welcome to Queens!" We then walked across the street and down to the downtown station to head back over to Manhattan. Late, we arrived to grand central and began our split.

July 2, 2016
Saturday, Day 263
Day 250 in NY

Woke up in another mans bed this morning... Thankfully I was only me. Lol We were on a split today. I was over on the East side of Manhattan, in Elder Burt and Elder Cheney's area and I was with Elder
Cheney. When we finished our studies we had lunch and then went to Washington Square Park and did the "Good Deeds Dare" APF. We were supposed to be there for 2 hours then go home and change to go to the church to play ball with an investigator and some members, but that ended up falling through so we stayed at the park for 4 hours total. We passed out a lot of little cards that had pre written dares. For example: "Call your parents and tell them you love them" "Write a thank you letter or text and send it to a friend" "compliment someone on how they are dressed". Things like that were written on these pieces of paper and those who wanted to do one picked a random one and had to do
it. It was a great experience being able to help others do good deeds and its so sad to ask everyone that walks by if they would like to do a good deed and hear 90% of them say No. After the APF we went to a dinner appointment with one of their members who was also their mission Ward leader. We met at Shake Shack. While there we ate and Elder Cheney and him discussed things about their investigators and other things for the last time before this member moved to Utah for the next month to be with his family before he permanently moves to Japan for work. After dinner we made our way home, grabbed my belongings and met back at Grand Central station to unsplit for the night.

July 3, 2016
Sunday, Day 264
Day 251 in NY

Church was great as always! Brandon Harrison, one of the members, asked if one of us could help pass the sacrament since not enough priesthood members were present. So I had the opportunity to pass the sacrament. Which was awesome! It's been a little while. After lunch and studies we called some investigators and people in our area book to set up some appointments. Then we headed over to the church for wifi to sync our iPads and while we were there we ran into some return missionaries and their nonmember friend. We talked to them for a bit and they told us that they were living in Pennsylvania doing sales and had an extra day off and wanted to explore NY. So they came to the temple and were lucky enough to come in before they locked up. So we gave them a quick tour, showed them all the art, and just to know them a little more as we talked. It was pretty cool. After they left we headed downstairs with them as we shut the doors behind us they locked. As we waited for someone to come out a couple from Utah wanted to see the temple and hope to go inside and look around the chapel. They explained all this and that they were leaving tomorrow morning, I saw a member who we knew had the keys. We asked if he wouldn't mind letting us in, hesitant he unlocked the doors to let us in. It was so cool since we've never really given people tours before. We were able to give 2 groups of members a quick tour of the building. They were so nice and sweet telling us how awesome we are for making their whole trip here worth it just because we were able to get them in the building. Our tours completed our night and we went home, ate and had nightly planning.

July 4, 2016
Monday, Day 265
Day 252 in NY

Happy fourth!
This morning during studies we ignored 2 phone calls from the office followed by a call from one of the APs Elder Sorenson, which we answered. On the phone Elder Sorenson said "Hey Elders I'm here with Elder Larsen from the mission office. He would like to speak with you." In my head I'm thinking oh crap… Not knowing what he wanted but realizing it was important. Elder Larsen now was on the phone and said "Hey Elders, I received a phone call from a Sister visiting here in NY, she has a girl who needs a blessing. Can you Elders get on that for us?" We agreed to. We called the Sister that called the office and talked to her she told us the situation; that she has a girl with her who's here for a dance performance (of some kind) and fainted yesterday and woke up this morning so sick and unable to move her neck very easily. They being members and having great faith in the priesthood thought to call the Missionaries since the men they were with didn't have oil on them. When we arrived they had a chair waiting for us and she came and sat down. We asked her a few questions and continued on with the blessing. I was trying to explain my feelings about this situation to another Elder along with my companion and with out it sounding weird this is what I told them. I expressed that when I came into the room where she was sitting on the hotel bed. She didn't look well; she sat there with a face expressing her discomfort and pain. She just needed help. When I saw her, I felt what she was feeling and immediately loved her. I thought it was the most unique experience being able to feel with others, specifically her at that moment.

After giving this special blessing to this girl we made our way back to our apartment feeling good and in no hurry to do anything. We got home and met with our roommates and headed over to the 15th St. chapel where we had zone meeting. It was a good meeting we had some missionaries give a little training on what they had learned from their conference with president. Then the missionaries that are leaving this cycle bore their testimonies and we finished the meeting. After the meeting we gathered around the kitchen and shared some snacks that we all brought. Today felt good and continued to be good to us. We went to get lunch soon after our meeting and came back to the church to eat. When we finished lunch we joined some other missionaries at Columbus Circle for a 4th of July APF. We had a big American flag painted ply wood board and invited people to come take pictures with it. As people came up, if the opportunity came, we brought something that we could talk to them about the church. It attracted a lot of people's attention and it was fun. While we were there some time after we started a man behind us started playing some music on his big speaker. At first the music wasn't bad but soon, after a few songs, they slowly got worse and worse with language, he then came up and asked to take a picture with the board. We let him and then he returned back to his speaker, I went over to him and gave my email to him and asked if he could send me the picture. Then Elder Casper came up behind me and asked the man if he could request a song. The guy playing music stopped the song and played a sky full of stars, lol. Which was nice then the music wasn't bad after that. Our night concluded by going to get a couple dollar slices for dinner with Elders Casper and Casela. It was a wonderful day!

July 5, 2016
Tuesday, Day 266
Day 253 in NY

Today I about threw up because of how horrible our kitchen smelt. I only go through the kitchen to go to the bathroom. The garbage piles up because no one takes care of it and we are just too busy and don't make time for it. But I decided we would clean, so as we started cleaning it up after studies we found just swarms of fruit flies and gunk everywhere from something that spilt behind all the trash. Elder Richards isn't feeling well so he's passed out in bed and Elder Burton is just in the other room doing whatever he was doing while Elder Tatafu and I attacked the kitchen (wishing I had dad’s medical masks and gloves). After about an hour and a half we just about cleaned up everything, took the trash out that stunk and then all together we got the other Elders up to help us take out all the rest.
When we finished scrubbing down the kitchen we took off to the church at 15th St. to get mail. Then we went to do another APF at Washington Square Park and after a couple hours we returned to the church, dropped off the board, and took our mail back to our chapel. Then we went home to have dinner. Short day by writing but it was a good one.


Sorry this is so late; we had a fun and very safe day! I exchanged my shoes and have ECCO's on my feet, thank you so much Dad! We also went to the Freedom Tower and went to the top! I'll tell you all about it next week!

So sorry, I know you were worrying mom! I'm okay, I'm healthy, I just got fed, and I love you all! Have a wonderful week!

I'll respond to other emails I guess next week!


Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold