Subject: A hospital, a funeral, and some cookies

¡Hola mi familia y amigos!

      Well if you can't tell my the title of this email it was quite an interesting week! I'm gonna start by explaining the hospital part :) 

      So last pday like I mentioned we were kind of waiting to see what was happening to Sister Hall. That night we ended up dropping stuff of to her and Sister Alexander at the hospital in Bronx...since it was after the time of needing to be home we went with our zone leaders...we ended up having the wrong address, there were buckets of rain, and it was just a crazy night. Shortly after getting home we got woken up with the call that her appendix had indeed burst. Thursday I did a 12 hour shift of waiting with her in the ER to get a room on the surgery floor. Let me tell you New York ERs are crazy! It's like a game of Tetris with all the beds...it's so crowded!! And there are the most random people (see my people of New York section below for more detail) Sis baker stayed the 12 hour night shift right after me while and and Sis Alexander went home to sleep. Luckily Sis Hall finally got a real room thursday night so no more ER! It was definitely a few crazy days. I'm not a doctor but I'll kind of try to explain what happened. Her body walled the infection into an abscess and the appendix is now a stone? But by Friday night her infection levels were gone so she got to leave the hospital Saturday afternoon and headed up to Scarsdale until Sunday night to rest! She'll have to get surgery in like a month but for now she's back in our apartment and normal missionary life has resumed! 

       As for the funeral, one of our ward member's son passed away last week. I don't know if you remember me telling you about Miguel Reyes, but it was his son (who was only like a year older than I am.) So Friday night (after being in the hospital most of the day) we went for the last little bit of the funeral. It definitely was a hard experience to see their sadness, but also the culture of mourning was really amazing. The ward has been such an amazing support for them! 

      Stake conference was this weekend too! Saturday night we got to go downtown to the adult session with Sis Spencer, the new senior sister that moved into our apartment building. It was a really amazing session and so diverse! We had speakers that were new converts, spoke sign language, new to the area, lived here forever, so much diversity. The theme was aligning out will to god's will, and it was really incredible. Sunday during stake conference all the 80 or so missionaries that are serving in Manhattan we asked to come sing. So halfway through we all stood up (we were sitting in the back) and sang the first verse of Called to Serve as we walked to the front, then the congregation joined us in singing the second verse. There was such an amazing spirit, and a really cool experience! 

      So the cookie part of this email is kind of random haha, but yesterday we had interviews and Sis Morgan made cookies, then a member in our ward gave us cookies yesterday too, and then for zone activity we made sugar cookies (while we watched ephraim's rescue)! If any of y'all know me...I do love cookies. Haha 

      This week I've just come to the realization that I just really love the people of New York!! Seriously I don't know if you can really go anywhere in the world and get as much culture as here in NYC. Yesterday we did an APF and we handed out free lemonade kind of by the Columbia hospital and we met so many amazing people! Also I've forgotten to tell y'all but there is this guy named Russell that is the elevator operator at the subway stop by our house. He's one of our best friends! Haha seriously though he's always watching movies, or listening to music and we always chat with him it's the best. Also there is this crazy lady named Alice in our apartment building that apparently has lived there since forever. She is kind of a hoarder and never goes inside her apartment? So she just sits outside her door, since she lives on the first floor, and yells at everyone and talks to us. She's also next door neighbors with Sis Spencer now and that has been a treat. Haha. Also yesterday at the bus stop this Jewish sat and talked with us forever just because she loved my red hair :) OH and the people of the ER!! So I'm just going to tell you about this one guy. He was waiting with us for like the whole 24 hours, he had like 3 of his toes get cut off in the street but because he left and then missed his return surgery appointment they stuck him in the ER to wait for an available surgery...and he was crazy. He was blaring music, and would leave on his power chair every so often to go to his house around the corner, he offered sis hall drugs and weed and even smoked in the bathroom in the ER. but he was hilarious and was quite entertaining! Well that's just a few of my favorite people recently! People of New York are the best:) 

   Well due to the fact we spent almost all the week in the hospital, I don't have pictures but it was a really good week! :) we had a lot of amazing lessons the past two days and it's good to get back to a normal routine! I love y'all so much and hope you have an amazing week!! Thanks for all your support :)

xoxo

Hermana Smart 

10,000 Bottles of juice & Grape Soda

Hola mi familia y Amigos!

          It was another amazing week here in Inwood! First to explain the email title this week, haha. So we get offered juice at pretty much every house we go to either that or it's grape soda! A fun little culture fact but sometimes it's comical to think about how much of that stuff we drink as missionaries- Grape soda and juice siempre! Well I had an awesome week, so I'll just jump right into it:)

          Wednesday after last pday our appointments all fell through but we had a member, Tati set up to go as a member present. So instead we went over to her house to get to know her a little better and she ended up giving us amazing NYC pizza (the lady she lives with went and got us the by the slice good stuff) she was just so amazing! We shared with her about Preach My Gospel and how it's for all members and she was so excited and had so many questions on how she could do more missionary work and how she can help us more. Pretty much it was a little miracle because member missionary work is so important and she's so willing and ready to help! She was relief society president back when we had 70+ sisters a week a few years ago and investigators were paired with members and it was perfect. So excited to see how she'll be working with us!

           Thursday night we were able to go to a recently reactivated members house, 

Zenia. She had also been one of the few names that came up when we prayed who to ask for referrals from. So we had a fun little FHE thought about strengthening her family (she has 2 kids) and the kids were so excited we brought them a little jar with paper to write things they can do each day to strengthen their family. Then she made delicious steak sandwiches. And then we proceed to ask her for a referral. She the. To,d us this amazing story about this girl she had grown up with. This girls dad was a drunk and eventually got kicked out, but later on found the missionaries I think I'm Puerto Rico or something? He was converted and changed his life around. He now tries to get his girls to go to church, and one of his daughters was baptized and now one of his granddaughters is getting ready to serve a mission!! All from just the dad! But that being said the daughter that is Zenia's friend has kind of been an investigator in the last but  that we should follow up! She speak English, so it goes to the English sisters but when we gave it to English sisters they said they had been looking through past investigators and were thinking they should see her!! So crazy how the Lord works, revelation is real!!

           Friday was kind of an unusual day... We started the day off with helping one of our members Maria Lall in her garden. Well it's kind of a garden haha. She used to be a volunteer at the park behind her building but after crazy disagreements and stuff she removed herself and now gardens on he other side of the fence to the park in land her landlord owns. Haha there's even a movie about this whole situation with the park department she created called The Power of One. It pretty great. She from Spain and very passionate and  little crazy. It was fun to work in her garden most of the garden is from pieces of plants she find and then turned them into huge plants. We mostly helped her put her homemade mulch on. After we had chips and salsa while she told us some of her crazy stories. She also told us her conversion story which is crazy! She would tell the missionaries they had to stay until all her questions were answered even if that meant 3 am....eventually they worked something out no worries, but one of the elders teaching her had a brother die in the process of making the vernal temple in a construction accident and before he died he said 3 people would live by him dying, and she has 2 kids so she was baptized! Now she's got a really strong testimony and she's hilarious and so nice to the missionaries, also we committed her after our little message to bear her testimony in church and then she did this Sunday!! I took lots of pictures of her house and garden, so I'll send a few!

          After gardening we got to go to dinner at Maria Espinozas which was delicious as usual and the other Hermanas came with and brought an investigator/friend of Maria's which was awesome. THEN we got to go to our ward misson leader's, Jose's, wedding!! Haha it was so great they are the cutest and they had fun music (wish we could dance sometimes) we had to leave early so they let us smuggles some food before we left! But it was an awesome way to end an unusual Friday. 

        Saturday FIRST OUT OF AREA SPLIT...DUN, DUN dun. Haha worst part is having to pack a bag to go like 10 blocks away haha. But it was a good day in the English program with Sister Keeling and I even still managed to have a Dominican food appointment haha (English ward less active) 

        Also Saturday night we got to go down to the temple building for REUNION DE MUJERES! Or the general women's meeting if you don't yet speak Español ;)  they provided dinner and it was one of the most spiritual experiences I've had in one sitting in a long time! It made me SO EXCITED for general conference this weekend, and I hope y'all are so excited!! I received answers to a lot of questions and gained insight I needed just from the women's meeting....challenge y'all to think of questions, ponder before general conference this weekend! Some thoughts that I want to share is that everything is just by consistent effort, drop by drop, little by little we don't become something overnight it takes the baby steps. There was also a lot of amazing talks about the temple and cove gas but I really gained a lot from President Uchtdorf so here's a few of my favs: 

    

               You are ALWAYS a child of God, it's not something you earn and he loves you ALWAYS. Despite every flaw, you're value to Heavenly Father NEVER changes. The one who created all loves you always, despite what the world may think. 

                KEEP THE COMMANDMENTS, God knows the best way for us, he sees the big picture and is trying to guide us back to him, he will never force us but he desires us to return. He is constantly raining blessings upon us all we have to do is close our umbrellas of disobedience, pride, etc ☔️ it's NOT a to-do list to live the gospel. It should be something we desire, we obey because we love God and Jesus Christ. Little by little it becomes who we are!

                 

         Sunday there was a medieval festival at the cloisters which caused so many people to be walking through our neighborhood in all sorts of strange costumes haha. Also we went to the Giffords for dinner which is always the best. And we ended up having an amazing correlation type discussion about the ward since he's now the bishopric member over missionary service and it just got me so excited for all the work we have to do in ward here! also midway into this discussion one of their little girls climbs up on my sits down, farts, and the says "I tooted" and then gets down and proceeds to play. It was HILARIOUS. 

        Monday we set a baptism date for Valerie and we're bringing her to general conference and to the special youth lunch after on Sunday! Also midway through Monday we got a call from a member that wanted to come with us to our two appointments that night! It was so awesome, we visited a member/less active and they fed us, and then we got to visit the Castro family and Hermana Familia (the member) got along really well and we had an awesome discussion about conference and read in the BOM and it was just amazing! We've had so many tender mercies with our members lately!

        Tuesday I went on split with sister hall into the English program (yes another split, that's what happens when your companion is a solo STL) we had such a good day! We started off my jogging down to this really cool skate park by the water with awesome graffiti (I'll eventually get some pictures). We constantly talked to people all day, a crazy old man ripped part of his fruit strip thing off for us on the subway (picture included), we had a really cool APF with chalk in the park about conference, we met with amazing less actives and investigators and it was just amazing! 

Sorry these are always such long emails but we just meet so many people and are constantly having great experiences! I wish I could share it all! I'm going to send some pictures of this week for all y'all's enjoyment :) I hope you have an amazing conference experience this weekend! Love y'all and hope you have another great week 

xoxo

Hermana Smart 

Movies, Baptisms, Apostles & Another week in the life of a sister missionary

¡Hola mi Familia y amigos!

     So crazy that another week has already gone by! I'm still here in Inwood and loving every minute! This week we had a lot of exciting things happen which is always fun :) Also Sister Hall is really sick (they had a doctors appointment today, right now they're transferring here to the hospital thinking its appendix I'll keep you updated, our night might turn out a little exciting)...so between going on splits to get Sister Alexander out of the house, a trip to the ER Thursday, a few hard to sleep nights, and other fun things associated with a roommate being sick it's also been a little bit of a different week, but still amazing! 

    Like I mentioned last week we got to go down to the Lincoln Center chapel (same building as the temple) to see Meet the Mormons! It was so amazing!!! Seriously I was crying by the end of the movie it was that good! We also had a discussion after about the movie, and it's incredible to realize what an amazing time for growth of the church that we live in, and what an awesome time it is to be a missionary! The church's marketing and outreach is continually growing, I think this movie will be really successful in explaining that we are normal people, that aren't perfect, but we have strong faith and knowledge as to why we are here, and that the gospel of Jesus Christ can help our lives! I hope everyone gets a chance to see it soon. Also we got to go to this place called Steak and Shake after...and wow. I have missed good burgers (since we never really eat out) it was amazing! And their shakes were delicious too. Overall Friday was just a really good day! 

    Saturday was Ylaura's baptism!! She is one of my favorite people ever, she is just a sweetheart! We got to do her last lesson before baptism (since sis hall is sick) and it was just so amazing to see her excitement the day before and then how happy she was on Saturday. She invited her mom and her sister and they were all crying and happy and you could tell that they were feeling the spirit so strongly. I think it's definitely one of my favorite moments on the mission so far! There was a primary baptism at the same time and it was actually really cool to have the primary singing, and giving a few of the talks, mixed with the speaker Ylaura wanted and her favorite hymn. It's just a cool reminder that we are all children of God! It was truly and amazing experience and really cool for how many non members, like her family, that were able to be there! Also we found out that her husband, who lives in the DR still, is a member and they recently got married this past spring so that's awesome because they can work towards going to the temple soon! Sunday she was confirmed and she brought her mom again, and again it was just such an amazing experience! Seriously words can't describe how much love I have for her! 

   

      Sunday night there was a devotional with L Tom Perry and Elder Halestrom down at the Lincoln center chapel! We had to bring a less active, recent convert, or investigator in order to go down there. So we tried pretty much everyone we could think of and really tried to see who would benefit most from it. We had pretty much run out of options when we thought of Jose, a recent convert, he's supposed to be working with the elders but sisters were the ones to originally teach him, any way we called him and he wanted to come! It ended up being an amazing experience! He'd never been that far downtown and was amazed at Columbus circle and the city all lit up at night, and then after we got to shake L Tom Perry's hand and L Tom Perry jokingly shook the Yankees hat he had on telling him he was a Red Sox fan (haha Jose doesn't know any English) but Jose was just so excited to have met a prophet of God, it was just really cool. (Also fun fact L Tom Perry is really tall and used to live up by the mission home so he loves visiting New York and comes occasionally! Though he was here this week for the anniversary of the worlds fair?)

       Those are the amazing experiences of the week:) we also had a lot of awesome lessons, ward conference, we starting to look up some of the inactive young women in the ward which has been really cool, and we just had a senior sister missionary move into our apartments (her companion doesn't come in until November) and she's so amazing. We spent some time at her apartment last night just chatting and it's definitely going to be fun to have them in the building with us! Also something cool we did this week was during our APF yesterday we went around asking people to write words of encouragement, something kind you would say to someone having a hard time, things that Christ might say on cards. We posted them (well my companion did) to Facebook with the #KindnessKard hashtag and it was just a really awesome way to talk with so many different people in a positive way! You'll definitely have to check it out sometime. (One of the pictures this week I'm sending came from that). 

     Well those are the highlights of my week! I love all y'all so much and love hearing about your lives every week:) just keep swimming and I hope y'all have an amazing week!

xoxo

Hermana Smart 

General Conference = Christmas

¡Hola!

       I hope y'all had a fantastic week! And especially I hope everyone enjoyed General Conference!! Isn't general conference just the best weekend ever? It's kind of like Christmas while you're on a mission, and I really love Christmas so it's truly that amazing! 

      Conference as a missionary makes you really appreciate the amazing opportunity we have to hear the prophets voice, and also get a chance to be spiritually filled! How cool was it too that we were able to hear people's talks in their native languages?!? The church is growing so much it seriously is amazing!! I had all of my questions answered and there were so many amazing talks that touched me, I can't even share. But if y'all didn't get the chance start watching them little by little...because it was amazing. Also we had quite a few investigators show up to conference (7 total) and it was just a really cool experience to watch it through their eyes, to try to think about what they might be thinking of it! Well I'll get off my conference soap box, but seriously it was just so good.

     Humorous moment of conference. So we had he English broadcast set up in the chapel and the Spanish in the relief society room. All is well but them out of nowhere for the very last session Sunday afternoon the Spanish decided they wanted to switch rooms and watch it in the chapel. Which was all good until the conference started and the relief society room starts in Spanish and there was no way to switch it, AND the chapel was in Spanish it was insane. Long story short we ended up watching half the conference on an iPad until we could switch back to the chapel (since the chapel was able to switch languages) hahaha good times, good times. 

     I'm going to do a much shorter wrap-up of the week....we had a lot of amazing lessons this week, set a baptism date for Gloria and Fernanda (they came to conference too!), we gained 3 new investigators! (Family too!!), had a few meetings(an awesome, zone meeting about the spirit), watched conference and had a stellar week! Yesterday too we were able to start teaching the most adorable family that wants to start the process of deactivation! They are amazing so now with them and Zenia's family doing FHE every week we get to be around young families a lot which is my favorite! Also yesterday America Cruz, a lady in our ward, took the whole zone out to dinner at the Malecon this Dominican restaurant that was pretty great! Super fun and I guess it happens every cycle! :) gotta love a zig. Members! I don't have anything too exciting about lessons or progression of investigators, BUT the lady that I extended my first baptism date to is getting baptized this Saturday!! Even though she's in the other sisters area I'm so excited!! :) 

     Transfers are today and I'm staying here in Inwood with Sister Baker!:) AND my MTC companion, Sister Alexander is he new companion of Sister Hall so we're roomies! Super exciting!

    Well sorry this was a short email this week! Kind of getting into more of a pattern in the schedule and there are too many amazing things every day to tell everything, seriously a week happens in like a day there is so many things in a day as a missionary!! But I love Inwood and these people so much:) it seriously is the best!! 

    One last thing before I send some pictures....I hope y'all have heard about movie Meet the Mormons that is coming out?! Super exciting! We actually get to watch it as a mission at the temple chapel on Friday!!! Yeah!! I'm seriously so excited. We aren't allowed to go to real theaters  to see it, since it's not meant as a proselyting movie and hey don't want people bombarded by missionaries in the theater, it's more to just raise awareness and kind of spread the word about who we are! I'm super excited to see it!! Also L Tom Perry is coming to speak to our stake his weekend, it's going to be a great weekend! 

     Well I hope y'all have the best week ever! Thanks for all of your love and support I love hearing from you and hope life is going well!! :) 

xoxo

Hermana Smart