"Milagros Pasan"

¡Hola! Wow another week has already come and gone! AND It's almost been a week since Sister McAlister (my new companion) entered the mission. Super crazy. This week definitely was full of excitement, from saying goodbye to Sister Hoyos, to being in a Trio, and then officially becoming a trainer. So sorry if this email gets a little bit long. I promise it'll be vale la pena...because this week was also filled with a lot of miracles/ tender mercies! So Friday I left behind the temporary trio life and welcomed Sister McAlister to the mission! We spent some time getting everything on her iPad, taking luggage home etc....and then we had her first lesson ever! With Gladys and her family :) They're all completely Dominican and don't know English so that was a super fun first lesson haha. But honestly it's been kind of cool to see how much I've been blessed to understand people so much better. And Sister McAlister has really good Spanish already so that's super helpful too! I've definitely felt the gift of tongues this week! Saturday we got a good welcome via CHURCH CLEANING. haha Got to love starting Soster McAlister's first real day with cleaning a church she'd never been to before. Easy way to get a tour of the church in though! Right after church cleaning we went to one of the best meetings I've yet to be to on my mission. Seriously. We had correlation and the bishop came too (a miracle every trainer needs for their new companion to meet both the WML & the bishop). But we were able to talk about are areas, and then Bishop gave this amazing mini motivational speech...at least that's what I would have called it. It really made me so motivated to just go shout from the rooftops and never stop working! Sometimes it's so difficult to street contact or talk to New Yorkers on the subway. But our message is so vital and of they knew that they would be BEGGING to be stopped. Hopefully I'll really be able to constantly think about that this week. It's definitely terrifying but hey that's what missionary work is! It pushed you but it's all so worth it!  We also got to go to the Chinatown ward's Chinese New Year activity! Super fun. Chinese food, dancing, crafts...they went all out. It was an awesome welcoming for a new missionary. AND towards the end we met this adorable family from Spain that needed help getting home and they lived right by us! So we talked with them in Spanish and I guess they're trying to move her permanently so might even start coming to our Ward! It was a little tender mercy of the day.  Sunday also had a few miracles! After we had a really awesome dinner appointment we sticky noted a less active's door for her birthday AND she called us that night and said she wants to meet with us this week!! Which is a miracle because she doesn't really let us come over much. Then on our way home we stopped by to check on this potential via a referral from the Chinatown sisters and they were home!! Not only that but we shared a message with her boys (it's a family with 2 boys) and helped their friend with math homework and his mom said we can come over sometime teach them too!!! Which is super exciting. TWO new investigator families in one night with really awesome potential. Huge miracle. Monday was also super awesome. Despite the freezing cold we had a really happy day. We got to meet with one of our less active older ladies (we tend to visit a lot of old sole ladies that can't get out because it's too cold) but she's so adorable and really needed a visit, it was perfect timing and we saw her because another appointment canceled. Some times Heavenly Father really does know your schedule better than you know it yourself. THEN we went to visit Nellie, one of the other less active old ladies. And just as we were about to start a message and her neighbor just opens the front door and comes in haha we were like uhhhhhh. But then he starts talking about all theses things he knows about religion, and Mormons, and MOTAB....and we started thinking maybe he's just going to bash us but then he got super interested and we gave him an El Libro De Mormon and pamphlets because he loves reading. And we had a really awesome lesson on prayer. And he told us he really wanted to come to church AND he even asked us what happens if someone really likes the church do they like get baptized or something? It was super legit. Like miracles of miracles. We're going to go see him again Monday, and hopefully he comes to church Sunday too!! (that makes like 3 new investigators just this week)  So yesterday we had a tender mercy too! So after the soup kitchen and studies we were deciding between two people to go visit and we decided to go lookup this referral that the Chiantown elders had tracted into...and it was a good thing we did. We went and visited Ms Rodriguez at the perfect time. She been in grieving from her daughter that passed away a few months ago, and then her brother had passed away like the day before...we were able to mostly just be there for her (she ended up talking forever about her family so we were there kind of a long time....) She told us that she's super catholic but we gave her a Plan of Salvation pamphlet to read and we'll definitely go back and visit again! Who knows something could definitely come out of it.  Anyway sorry this got a little long this week we just had some cool out of the ordinary experiences! Training is definitely more tough than normal missionary work, you definitely have to so on top of so many things, but Sister McAlister is so excited and ready to get to work! It's awesome definitely what South Manhattan always needs is a little boost!  Well I love you all and I will talk to you next week!! I'm sure I'll have tons to update y'all on. Especially because we have the huge meeting about "the work of salvation in the digital age" tomorrow with the whole mission. It should be awesome.  Have a great week!! :) xoxo Hermana Smart