Week 72

August 9, 2017

Wednesday, Day 503

Day 143 back in NY

Pday! 

Today was pretty good. We drove over to Poughkeepsie to meet up with the ZLs (Elders Busby & Brown) and their roommates (Elders Horner & Leavitt) to go bowling at 1pm. We had finished our laundry around 10am so we drove to Poughkeepsie and went to Wal-Mart for groceries. Then we drove to the Elder’s apartment and changed, then drove over to Spins Bowl for a couple games. After our bowl session we went to Dairy Queen. 

August 10, 2017

Thursday, Day 504

Day 144 back in NY

Today was pretty sweet; we went on a split with the APs. We drove down to Ossining to meet them at the chapel there. I went down to New Rochelle with Elder Davis!! Elder Chambers went to our area with Elder Wallace. 

We went to their apartment and had lunch, then we got in the car and began doing look ups. We had a few appointments set today, the first couple fell through so we knocked some doors in between and then had an appointment with a guy named C. We focused on the Plan of Salvation and it was a great lesson. I know that we both could feel the desire this man had to understand all that we were teaching; he had a lot of questions, which was awesome! Elder Davis and I reminisced on all the good times we had in the Bronx together. We talked about members we remember and investigators we taught. He told me about the progress and other things that happened after I was transferred, it was really fun being with Elder Davis again.

August 11, 2017

Friday, Day 505

Day 145 back in NY

We woke up this morning at 5:50 and went to the top floor of their building and went to the gym to work out. (It was so nice having a gym to work out in; it definitely gives me more motivation to work out. Staying in the apartment to do push ups and pull ups because you have no weights sucks! Can't wait to be able to go to the gym again.)

We were un-splitting at the Ossining chapel at 10:30 so we had daily planning and studies. Then we drove to Ossining. 

We then drove to Brother H's for lunch, on the way over there Elder Wallace and I talked about our splits. They both went really well! We had a great time with the assistants. Not sure what this means, but this is the 3rd split I've been on with the assistants in the last 3 months. Before that, I've never been on a split with them. 

After lunch at Brother H's, we went home to have daily planning, companionship study, and then we changed to help R with staining her door. What a work out… the stain we had used ended up being a color she didn't like... so we sanded the door, again. 

August 12, 2017

Saturday, Day 506

Day 146 back in NY

We visited Brother K for a bit, we read Joseph Smith’s testimony in the Book of Mormon to him and talked about Joseph Smith’s experiences of him being prepared to bring forth the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ. 

While we were at the church planning for more of the day and making phone calls, Grandma Weed called. She told us about the person living in the only house right across from the church. She said that she has a smaller tree that's been growing to close to a large pine tree and it may be taking nourishment from the pine, killing it slowly. So we went across the street and introduced ourselves. We told her who we are and what we do as missionary. We help others come closer to Christ and serve others when we can. So we offered to help however we could. She showed us the tree and explained the situation. Then talked about some painting she may need done. We set a time to help her out next week.

After our visit with the neighbor of our church we went home for dinner and then had correlation at the church. 

August 13, 2017

Sunday, Day 507

Day 147 back in NY

Sunday was great! I gave a talk on Temples! Which went well, I shared an experience I had during my inter-mission that I had in the temple which really built my testimony of eternal families. 

Blake Olsen is also in town, so he was at church and we got to talk a bit! We talked about his mission call and other mission stuff. He's such a great young man! 

We went over to visit Brother M and he wasn't feeling well, so we made our visit short and offered to give him a blessing. 

After dinner we did a couple look ups, our last one was this guy named A. The Sisters sent us his information, when we stopped by I immediately recognized the house. In the past we had looked up the son of the parents who live here. 

We knocked the door and the husband/father came to the door and said it wasn't a good time and slowly backed into his house. Before he made it back behind his door we explained that Sisters had stopped by recently, he then wasn't all that happy and became defensive, he said “yea you guys were here just 3 days ago” we told him that wasn't true because we haven't been here in the last 4 weeks. Neither have the sisters. He then backed into his home saying he was comfortable with the church he attends already. 

#MissionLife

August 14, 2017

Monday, Day 508

Day 148 back in NY

This morning during district meeting we received a late notice that we would be having a conference call for about 15 minutes. We did some opening exercises to get started, talked about some announcements and some new progress made in each of our areas. Then we got onto the call. It ended up being about 30 minutes long. It was very helpful and inspired! President Smith talked about goals and invited us to consider to be more united as a mission to be able to achieve our goal as a mission to achieve the standard of excellence which is to find 3 new investigators a week, invite new investigators on the first visit to be baptized, and set a date with new investigators on the second visit if they accepted the invitation. And by doing this with faith and diligence we as a mission will increase our ability to help investigators enter into a covenant with God through baptism. President’s goal for each of the missionaries is that every one of us will have the opportunity to at least participate in helping/witnessing at least one of our investigators enter the waters of baptism before returning home at the conclusion of our missions. So he talked about ways that we could work toward achieving that.  During the call we were told to discuss the call as a district and apply what we were invited to do. And that took up about the rest of the time we had. So unfortunately Elder Wallace didn't give the training he prepared to give today. 

After lunch we then went over to Grandma W's and helped her out with her yard, pulling out some old tree roots. We helped her out and talked to Blake Olsen some more since he was staying in Grandma W’s upstairs room while he's here. 

When we finished we went home and cleaned up a bit and went to the church for language study. Elder Wallace takes about 20-30 minutes for himself then uses the remaining time to teach me sign language. It's been super cool!

We then had dinner and went out with Brother J for about 2 hours to visit people. Our first stop was the care home Brother M lives at. He had a buddy who needed some last minute help moving furniture in for an elderly woman. So we helped out for a half an hour and then went a couple doors over to visit Brother M. We chatted with him for a bit, he's feeling a lot better, he says compared to yesterday, which is awesome! After Brother M we ran into V, who is Brother J’s friend, the one we came to the care home to help. He gave Brother J some money to take us out for ice cream! Lol we had about an hour left in the night so we went to look up one more person and then on our way home we all stopped to get ice cream. It was a pretty good way to end the night! (Ice cream with BAE and Brother J). 

August 15, 2017

Tuesday, Day 509

Day 149 back in NY

This morning we went over to Sister P's to help her out with a big project. She had some trees/bushes in the front of her yard near the road that were just overcrowding the area so she asked if we could pull them out! If you could see me then, I was pretty excited! I took out 2 nice size trees in the hour and a half we were there. Elder Wallace cut them down to a stump and I dug them out! (As Brother H would say, you can call me Elder Diggie). 

Great way to start my day! It takes me back to working at home! Then we went home and got cleaned up. We were getting ready for interviews with President, when we got a text from the Newbourgh Elders saying, president is 40 minutes behind with interviews, so we changed up our schedule a bit. We went to the church for language study till he showed up and then I had my interview. 

It was great! He sat back in his chair after I offered an opening prayer and he said okay Elder it's your interview! We talked about the branch and how it's been. I brought up some things about the service we render and if it was too much. We do A LOT of service, which I would never complain about! #IloveHelpingPeople! But I've been wondering how to keep a good balance of service and sharing the gospel. It's tricky sometimes to be able to turn an opportunity of service into a teaching opportunity. Then we talked about increasing our sacrament attendance and how we could get the word out. 

I look forward to the next little while that I'll be here and how we can better enjoy and work in this area! 

Patience. Love. Faith

Much love, 

Elder Newbold