Life as a Spanish Speaker sister in South Manhattan

¡Hola! 

First off I hope you guys all had a great week and stayed warm wherever you may be :) I know it's been pretty freezing here in NYC! 

Well today officially marks a week in my new area! So crazy. Sometimes time on a mission can be so strange. Some days it feels like this is where you've lived your whole life, yet others feels like you just got here. Anyway this week was good, definitely different than Inwood but still awesome! 

Well life in South Manhattan is still city-life but a lot different from "Domincan Heights". I think I told you a little about our apartment last week but it's this adorable little 2-man Chinatown apartment,it's really nice but it's also pretty small { our bathroom is shower, sink, tolket with jaut a 2-foot square of standing space} But somehow we actually have a bigger kitchen than Inwood which is nice. Mostly it's super fun and we have a set of English sisters at live right above us. We get to do laundry at a real laundromat (my first time ever) haha gotta love getting lots of quarters! Living in Chinatown is super fun, even when it smells horrible outside like fish haha. We cover from 59th street and down so we actually get to see a lot of really cool things everyday. We'll be in the middle of lookups and I'll look over and see the Chrysler building, or the Manhattan bridge, or the freedom tower.  It kind of hits me every time, woah I'm in New York City! Haha sometimes it's easy to forget. 

The work here is a lot of look ups of less active Spanish members, and potential investigators, and helping the other Ward since they don't have sisters (like if they need to visit a single sister). We call this area our "fetus" it's definitely still growing and developing, but it has so much potential! Our little Spanish group in the union square Ward is starting to pick up, we had like 8 people in gospel principles which was amazing. We practiced translating sacrament meeting to each other this week and failed a little...haha yikes. Super hard when people jump from one story to the next and use big words haha. 

We have an adorable Ward, even though it is kind of different being in an English Ward, (we even have a dinner calendar!) it's always a contrast from our usual day. We spend most of day in projects doing lookups and then we'll have this amazing dinner appointment in a nice apartment of one of the members haha. A lot of times it's just the wife, because the husbands work in finance and such. Kind of like a girls night. We also got taken out to eat by a newly married couple that just moved into the Ward, it was super awesome. Definitely a change from always eating Dominican food! (Though we still get that too sometimes from less actives and such) Oh our Ward mission leader is amazing too! They're new to the ward and his wife is a NYU professor, so he stays at home win his 3 little girls and is always so willing to help out! It's kind of awesome.

Anyway sorry for the overload of random information, I'm horrible and telling stories so hopefully that kind of gives you an idea of what my new area is like! It's pretty awesome and my companion Hermana Hoyos is super amazing. We work hard and always have a blast! Different from life in a trio but still fun. I love this work so much, and I love learning more about the gospel every day! Being a missionary is seriously so incredible, it can be tough especially when all your doing is lookups in the freezing cold but then you have little moments and you realize why you're doing what you're doing. The gospel changes lives. The atonement is so powerful and so real. We are all literal children of God, we have a Heavenly Father who loves us so much! When the world around us is full of chaos we have a solid foundation to fall upon. Words can't even express my gratitude,love, appreciation,mans my testimony. Hope y'all know that I have a testimony. Can't wait to see what's to come with the work here!! Hope everyone has a fantastic week! Love you all lots! 

xoxo

Hermana Smart