Living in the Heights

Hola!

Primera, lo siento for any mistakes in this email, we get to go to the temple today!! Which is amazing but it means another pday writing most on subways, which equals a lot of typos and crazy organization so u hope this makes sense to all y'all! 

        My we had quite a few appointments with people this week that were really awesome, and some really good meetings and other things! 

        Wednesday night (last pday) we ended up having some unexpected time due to appointments that fell through (normal part of the day) BUT we got to go visit Lisbeth, one of the young women and read with her! It was so amazing, I seriously love the people here so much! Also it's always nice to speak some English (since most teenagers prefer English) 

      We were doing some lookups Thursday and found Ruth!!! She has a daughter that's a member, and she is a past investigator, she had so many questions. She was a little passionate, but she's reading the bible and just the night before we came had been telling her daughter she needed to pick a church for the granddaughter since she'd be 5 soon. She just kept saying she knew we were messengers of God, so many things had the timing work out so perfectly! Hopefully we'll have a lesson with her soon! 

      Also on Thursday we had a dinner appointment with Fanny, a member. And midway through eating her crazy hyper dog out of nowhere jumped up onto my lap. It was hilarious! 

       Friday we got to take the metro north up to Scarsdale chapel for our new missionary meeting which was seriously amazing! Listening to president talk about the doctrine of Christ is probably my new favorite hobby. He has so much knowledge and I feel like I have so much more to learn about the doctrine of Christ! President Morgan has been studying just the doctrine of Christ the whole time they have been serving! I'll take some time in my email next week to share more about it! Seriously so good. Sister Morgan also made delicious sandwiches, and veggies, and chips, and ice cream...as we would describe it, white people food again!! Yeah! Haha it's crazy how you don't realize you miss certain foods until you have them again. New missionary training was so spiritually uplifting and so motivating, and I got to see my MTC friends, just a really good morning/afternoon.

       If the new missionary meeting wasn't enough we met this amazing guy on a subway elevator and talked to him for quite a while. He grew up in Chicago and one of his friends went to BYU so years later they got back in contact so we went out to his wedding last week in salt lake! He had an amazing experience at temple square, and realized Mormons were real people, and was so excited about all the basketball stars that were mormon. It was a tender mercy story for us! AND we had an awesome lesson with our investigator Gloria after that about the plan of salvation, and got to answer a lot of her questions about the BOM. It was incredible night! 

         Sunday Fabian, the elders new convert, was confirmed and then bore his testimony and it was one of the strongest testimonies and he's a new convert too! Also in the middle of his testimony this crazy guy off the streets walked in and yelled a bunch of stuff and did some catholic crosses....then yelled and walked out? It was insane but it didn't even affect Fabian he continued to bear his testimony without pauses.

       Also Sunday we went tracting with the elders in our area...and it was the most interesting tracting experience yet! We got the cops "called" on us 3 times, the guy that "buzzed" us in was all offended because he was having a dinner party, met some JWs, a crazy lady was yelling at us for being fornicators because we're polygamists? Some free spirits....it was just weird and awesome. Haha really feel like a missionary! I love it!

        Sunday night we got to go to dinner at Leo's mom's house and the food was so good! I took a picture, also we ate with metal sporks, yes that's a thing. 

     

       Also doing studies Sunday I was reading in the Ensign and Eyring's article about prayer is so good, check it out! Also the. New mormon message is so good too, everyone needs to watch it. AND did everyone know I they're coming out with a movie called Meet the Mormons?!?! I'm so excited! It looks so good

         We had such a good lesson with Valerie Monday and she said when she lived in the DR she saw the temple every day, and she's really going to try to come to church! I love her! We had a surprise dinner appointment with Dulce, one of our members, she had some crazy stories. I love the Spanish people so much! Also later that day we got juked...so we went and got mcdonalds ice cream, and we needed milk, but while getting milk we met a guy who's parents are mormon and he even went to the Manhattan temple open house! So cool!      

         Tuesday was my first split in my area, which means I'm in charge of the phone, and what we're doing...so much pressure! But it ended up going well. We did a lot of lookups. Had church tours for our APF. Had a great lesson with one of our members that can't leave the house from medical reasons (she has the most faith of anyone I have met!) and we had another good lesson with the actor family! It ended up being a good day of splits with sister brower. Saturday I have a split with the English sisters...but luckily I'm going into there area this weekend should be interesting next week when I'm the only one speaking Spanish for a day!

          Today was crazy packed, we went to FAO schwarz for candy, had to go to Times Square forever 21 for sister baker. Being in Times Square is awesome as a missionary! We talked to Spanish people from Bolivia in line, had a guy at the subway come up to me and ask me "do you know captain Moroni? So do I" haha it's so great! Grabbed a quick hot dog off the street and went into our TEMPLE SESSION! Wow he Manhattan temple is gorgeous and I've missed the temple so much, definitely best part of the day! After we got a few groceries at trader joes and headed back! As I was writing emails on the train this guy started playing his guitar and singing, haha he was actually really good just kind of comical! Such a packed day from 11-5:30

I'm definitely out of time for the week! I'll send some pictures from this week:)

xoxo

Hermana Smart