Week 83

This week was solid! Progress is being made!
Let’s see, where do I start...

Well, last Pday we played volleyball for a long time! Time got away from us but we had a lot of fun.

Friday was a miracle day! We had a really cool experience! So around 10:15am we get a random text from President Smith “Elder Newbold & Elder Patterson, I know there is an investigator in your area book who’s life has changed and is ready for baptism.”
When I read that I immediately felt it was true and had all this motivation to find this person! My companion and I talked about it and he wasn’t all too sure about it, so half jokingly he replied to President “Do you by chance know his name?” ... “Just kidding President, we will go out and find this person.”

We came into our room and we knelt and I offered a prayer for help to find this person. Then we both separately looked over our area book, over the names, to see if anyone stood out to us. I didn’t get very far; in fact I stopped at the 4th name on the list and looked to see where he lived. Then Elder Patterson and I talked about who we think we should see. The name that I stopped on was T, I felt like we should start there. He agreed and we left. We went straight over to his home. When we got to his apartment we made our way to his floor, we knocked his door, and then a man came to the door. This man stood hiding a little behind his door, the room behind him was dark... his countenance was dark he didn’t seem very inviting. I asked, “Are you T?” His response was quick, “yes that’s me, right now is not really a good time… I’m not feeling well.” Elder Patterson said, “are you sick? Is there anything we can do for you?” T responded, “no, I’m battling depression and I don’t think there’s anything you can do for me right now.” I asked, “T, can we say a prayer with you?” With a changed and better attitude T agreed. With all the construction and noise going on out in the hall on his floor, I asked if we could come into his home where it was quiet. He said yes and said hold on one second as he then shut the door and said he was going to tidy up really quick. Hearing some things being moved he then opened his door again and invited us in. We came in and asked if we could kneel he said of course as he pulled a curtain away that entered into his kitchen and living room. We moved into the next room and knelt down together. This room was lit and more inviting. Before I offered the prayer, I asked T if there was anything specific I could pray for. His response was simple, “just my depression”. After the prayer, T thanked us tremendously, he said that we had made his day much better and have brought him better feelings. After the prayer Elder Patterson felt to share a video with him. His plan was to leave him with how to watch it and he could watch it on his own, since it was an 11-minute video. But he began to play the video, we looked at each other and decided to stay and watch it with him. At the end his eyes filled with tears and he expressed his feelings. As he opened up, we listened, and we watched this man’s countenance change completely. Without asking he shared with us his life. He mentioned how he wasn’t always like this; he said some years ago I had everything. I had a car, a house, a wife, I had my own business and everything was great! I wasn’t depressed... then one year everything fell... I lost my business, my car, my house, I became depressed and my wife left me, “if it weren’t for my son I wouldn’t be here today,” he said. We just continued to listen, he also talked about how missionaries in the past would come over and teach him and his son. He really enjoyed it and was getting ready to be baptized but the only thing that kept him from moving forward was smoking. Very quickly after he said that, his words were “but I’m ready now! I want to be baptized and my son too. We’d love to have you over each Friday and take the lessons again and I want to get cleaned up and start coming back to church.”

When we first arrived at T’s door we saw a man with a dark countenance, without a smile and too self-conscious to stand in front of his door. But as we asked the right questions and did our best to listen to him, before we left, that man that originally opened the door was no longer there. He completely changed before we left and was excited to have us back.

This was our miracle! Immediately after leaving his home, we text President “We think we found him!”

The first person we met today was someone whose life had changed and desired to be baptized. We have faith that he is the one, or one of the few potential people in our area book.

Saturday we didn’t have our missionary correlation meeting but we met at the church to discuss our plans on presenting the new Christmas Initiative to our ward tomorrow during 3rd hour. It’s the same idea as last years, 25 ways to serve in 25 days. I’m excited for this year, since last year I was home. Although I participated at home, it will be special for me to be here in NYC during this time.

Also some time in the afternoon, one of the counselors sent a text to us and it said did you get my text last night? We responded “no”. And then he asked if Elder Patterson would give a talk tomorrow... so that was lame for him to be asked that late notice.

But Sunday was good! Elder Patterson’s talk was great! He just went up there and talked off the top of his head and shared some personal experiences of how he has received blessings from obeying the commandment to pray often. It was a great Sacrament service.

Recently I’ve been up and down with how I feel about being district leader. I haven’t been released since I was first called my 3rd cycle in. So it’s been about a year now and I’ve just been kind of tired of not feeling like I’m doing enough or even feeling like I know what I’m doing. And as transfers happen I hear about other district leaders I know all getting released. But this last week I’ve talked to my Zone leaders while on a split and have asked for some help, from that I’ve moved forward with a more confident outlook. My goal is to be involved more in each of the missionary’s weeks, to follow up and see how things are going and to make a clearer agenda for district meetings to help the district know what to expect from district meetings. So this week I worked on that and had an agenda prepared and I sent it to each of the missionaries so they could study along with me to come prepared to district meeting and have ideas and more questions to discuss. I felt much more confident in district meeting knowing that everyone has studied and knows what to expect. We talked about How to begin teaching, which is a topic that helps us as missionaries help those we teach feel comfortable and have a better understanding of what to expect from us as representatives of Christ.

After district meeting we went home to eat and then took off to the Metro North Station, Elder Patterson had a meeting with President. We got to Scarsdale sometime after 3pm and while Elder Patterson was with President I went with the APs, Elder Davis and Elder Davis. We went and visited a guy named M. He’s someone they are teaching. We stopped by, he let us in and we had a quick lesson with him, it was a pretty good one. Afterward we returned to the Scarsdale chapel and Elder Patterson and I were back together. The APs drove us to the station and back home we rode.

Tuesday morning, it’s Halloween! We woke up at 6 and started getting ready. We had Zone conference in Scarsdale from 8:30am-4pm. When we got to the church, we ate breakfast. Then I had a quick leadership meeting with the other leaders to discuss things we’d like to focus on with our districts/zones. Our conference started at 9 and went till about 4pm. We talked a lot about inspired questions and contacting referrals. During our lunch break we contacted a referral of ours and set an appointment with him for 5:30pm. After conference we were shuttled to the train. When we got back to Kingsbridge we went home and grabbed a Bible for our referral, then we went straight over to J (our referrals home). We talked with this guy for a bit; he had a lot to say... when we finally found a place to jump in we asked the question, “What led you to request a Bible?” He then explained his life to us; he said 15 years ago he, his daughter, and his son were all baptized in our church. But things happened and he was put out on the street by his wife and things fell apart. But now things have changed and he wants to come back to church.

Elder Patterson and I immediately after hearing this begin to look for his record in our ward… But had no luck finding anything. We took down the info we needed to track down their records. So if we find them it will be awesome to get them back to church, if we don’t find them it will be a fun adventure to help them learn the lessons and prepare for baptism again.

When we left their home it was about 6:15pm. We headed to the church because a member bought us pizza to take home. We picked up the pizza and headed home. Due to Halloween we have been asked to be in our apartments at 7pm.

It’s been a great and exciting week with some awesome miracles and lots of change going on!

Patience. Love. Faith

Much love,
Elder Newbold