Driving in Manhattan twice already

Hello to all people who are interested in reading about my week! This
has been a pretty crazy week as you can tell by my subject but I'll
talk about that soon. We've had a good week and we were blessed to
hear from president smith at the zone conferences because we were
lucky to help.

Thursday we were in Manhattan at the Lincoln center chapel and Friday
we were in Yorktown over in Ossining. The zone conferences were so
kick butt. I didn't realize how expensive parking in Manhattan was.
Like 3 hours in one garage was $42 and 2 hours in another is $54..
Like holy crap that is crazy and we had to pay for the parking. We get
reimbursed so that's good because I don't think I can live off exactly
0 dollars and 60 cents.. That's totally crazy. But Friday we had to
drive over to Newburgh to drop off all of a sister missionaries stuff
she left in Chinatown that has been in our way all the time. Elder
Dutson got my sickness and he felt like crap the whole day and I have
been getting slightly sicker.

Saturday I got to do the mail route! It was my first time driving in
the city and I got to drive to Olmstead, then Kingsbridge, then
Inwood, then Harlem, the the 87th street chapel, then the 14th street
chapel, then to Chinatown. Then we get on the Henry Hudson and take
that all the way up to the cross county to the Bronx River parkway and
then to the mission office again. It is super long and we get to see
some of the missionaries in the mission. It was fun driving in the
city, it's not even scary and it's way easy, I'll be able to drive
when and if we come back after my mission. We got to bed early because
we were both aching and feeling crappy.

Sunday I had my first Ward council in this area, and had a good
sacrament meeting and church in general. Elder Dutson slept for 3
hours after church and got to heal a bit. I got to do my studies,
write in my journal, and shine my shoes (for the first time in a
while). We had a super amazing dinner with a spiritual lesson
afterwards. It was like WAY good!

Monday we had district meeting and we talked about the importance of
planning and setting goals. It was amazing! So one of the senior
couples took us to Smash Burger to thank us for helping with all the
zone conferences. We did some service for this lady named Jean Gruss.
We climbed on a ladder and cleaned her gutters..(luckily I've had some
practice with brother Waterlyn) but I climbed this ladder that was
barely touching the gutter and then climbed all the way up onto the
flat roof. I was scared for my life because this ladder was a cheaper
quality ladder. Anyway I feared for my life but good news... I'm still
alive! Don't worry.. Won't be doing that again anytime soon. We had to
fill orders that night.

Tuesday we did the mail run again and it took us forevskis to do it
all. Traffic for days and mucho the cars. I love driving in the city,
it's a quick way to get around too.. As long as you avoid the busier
streets, 2nd avenue is the way we always take and we get going quick.
You really get good at cutting people off.. I've also learned that I
have quite the road rage in the city. My patience has been tested and
it's been failing me. People irritate me because no one knows how to
even drive. I swear. We also get good at Bronx Parking which is when
you pull up next to a row of parked cars in the middle of traffic and
turn your hazards on and wait. People do that throughout the whole
city. You have to merge all the time because people Bronx park in the
most inconvenient spot.

I love this church and I love being a missionary. I've seen so many
blessings and I've done so much this past year and I've grown so much
and I have a lot of growing left to do. We will see where I am in a
year. I want to be more deeply rooted in the gospel and be able to
focus on what's really important in this gospel. I love you all and
hope you have a fantastic week!

Love,
Elder Casper

Busy Week

Hello to all you wonderful people, as you can see by the email title,
it has been one busy week.

Last Thursday we had an MLC with Brother Donaldson from the missionary
department come and speak to a lot of the leaders and future leaders
in the mission. Since we are office elders we get to go to every
meeting which is a blessing and a curse. We get to hear all the
meetings in the mission but our days are always packed and we don't
get much time in our area. Brother Donaldson was the mission president
in the District 2 series that the church produced. We learned how we
can be better missionaries, how we can use the footage from the first
district as "game film" and how we can watch it and ask what did they
do? It was a super spiritual meeting and we really learned how to be
more effective missionaries and how we can use our planning and
companionship study time more effectively. That time is sacred and we
need to use it wisely because we are given that time to plan and study
for our investigators. I learned a ton and now president smith has
established a new standard of excellence, it's is that we get 3 new
investigators a week, invite to be baptized on first lesson, invite to
be baptized on specific date on the second lesson and 1 baptism every
other month. We were promised that we will reach the standard of
excellence every week that we will see success. Oh yeah that night we
did some tracting and we found a gay Quaker family that are interested
in hearing about what we believe in. That's awesome!

Friday we got to go to the new missionary training meeting and feel
the spirit. It was honestly a good meeting and it's always fun being
able to feel the spirit. Something president said was "If you feel the
spirit, follow it. If you don't feel the spirit, dismiss it to the
source it came. Truth comes from God." Something Elder Leishman (the
new AP) said was so dope and it really touched me. "When a thought
comes into our mind to be disobedient, chase it out because we love
the lord more."

Saturday was straight up amazing, I was on a split with Elder Gallego
(pronounced guy-ego) and we saw mucho the miracles. One of which was
awesome.. We spent a lot of the day doing look ups of potential
investigators.. We tracted and met this dude named Kevin who is just
cool.. He had a lot of questions about our church and we answered them
and testified. It was so glorious and it was so much fun. We then did
another look up and this is where the awesome miracle happened. We
were looking for a spot in mount Vernon (which is like the Bronx) and
we found an open spot but elder Gallego passed it and quickly went
into another spot right next to this telephone pole. There is this
paper on the telephone pole that says "garage sale" needless to say we
go to this garage sale. After some look ups and we go talk to this
lady and elder Gallego speaks to her in Spanish and we look around and
she has this box of ties. We talk to her and she is totally interested
in learning more. These ties though we 2 for a dollar but she gave us
the entire box of ties, like 20 ties! That was totally a spiritual
prompting and we listened and we found her. Solid! We also met with
one of their active members named Heraldo (pronounced hair-I'll-do)
but we taught him the restoration simply and I've never felt the
spirit that strong. We testified of Joseph smith and we invited him to
pray about the Book of Mormon and he said he would. I even accepted
that invitation and prayed about it and I know it's true, the spirit
bore witness to me.

Sunday we had stake conference and all us missionaries in the stake
got to sing called to serve and the spirit was there for sure. It was
a great meeting and it's cool to see how the spirit works and how we
can hear things from our leaders. Our bishop talked to us about how
revelation comes to him. It's not just him sitting there and the
visions of heaven opening up to him but it requires council. When we
receive revelation we are a council of 1, but we need to be in
councils to receive revelation. That was awesome. We planned a sweet
lesson for our dinner appointment and the spirit was so there as we
planned the lesson. We also learned that we will be going to all 4
zone conferences.

Monday our day was destroyed. We got up at 5 am and at 6 we headed to
Newburgh to help out with the zone conference. We got 16 pizzas that
we had to pick up with one of the senior couples. We took a couple
pictures and yeah. We just helped out and yeah. We filled orders and
we went and saw one of our investigators who is progressing well. We
testified to him of the importance of reading the Book of Mormon. We
could feel the spirit testify to him that he needs to read. He prayed
right then and there and kneeled and it was awesome. We felt the
spirit.

Tuesday we had our zone conference in kingsbridge so we shuttled
missionaries. We only got to sit for a couple of hours in our zone
conference. We drove with one of the senior couples around the Bronx
to find radio shack, yeah they don't exist anymore.. Eventually got to
Best Buy. Didn't have the part that we needed. President told us a
story of a missionary who was getting ready to go home and one thing
the missionary told president is that they didn't want to go less
active. President responds "well why are you planning on it?" And I
think it's important that we don't think about those things. If we
keep thinking how we don't want to be less active, then we probably
will go less active. It's important to do the little things, like
reading, praying and going to church. We got to see the new Christmas
video, go to christmas.mormon.org and you can sign up to get notified
when the new video comes out. Go check it out. We did some less active
look ups and ended the night.

I'm so grateful for this opportunity I have to be here to serve the
lord. I've learned and grown for this past week. I've seen the hand of
the lord in my work, I've been prompted by the spirit to talk to
people or go to specific places. I'm grateful for this gospel and I
can't wait for the week to come. I love you all, have a great week!

First Week as Office Elder

Hello to the world! How is everything? My week has been super jam
packed busy and all that shnazz.

Friday there was an MLC, so we got all the mail at 7:40 and brought it
to the church and brought it all in. We helped set up for the meeting
and then we had to go to the Scarsdale train station to pick up all
the city missionaries who took Metro north to get to the meeting. The
meeting was great, we take pictures of the missionaries who make
comments and just pictures throughout the meeting. We just do whatever
anyone needs. We had a great time and the meeting was a spiritual
experience. After the meeting president asks us if we can go to
Ossining to get his bag and scriptures because he left them at
transfer meeting. We just said sure and went to Ossining but we did
this look up of this guy named Arnold and he is so prepared. He has a
ton of relatives who are Mormon and he is interested in reading the
book and learning so yeah we are gonna extend a Bap date next time we
meet with him.

Saturday we delivered mail in the city. Yay so I'll explain what
happens. We go to the mission office and get all the mail for the
specific delivery. We bring that all down to our car and organize it
so the first delivery is in the front and our last delivery is in the
very back. We start out by going to Olmstead, then to Kingsbridge,
then to Inwood, then to Harlem, then to the 15th street chapel and
then to Chinatown. But on Saturday we went to the temple and we just
Bronx parked out front and their were tons of cars behind us but
that's what people in New York do. It was fun to watch Elder Dutson
have road rage, this guy tried to cut us off in bad traffic and Elder
Dutson wouldn't allow him in. It was funny, this guy ended up getting
in right behind us. We went to the Uhaul place next where a lot of the
extra stuff the mission owns is stored. We did inventory of that and
then went home because we had to.

Sunday I felt like garbage but we had church so we went to that. I got
to give a closing prayer, we taught Sunday school because that's what
we do every first Sunday of the month in the New Rochelle 2nd Ward. It
was a good day at church and it was way nice to be able to go to
church and take the sacrament. Elder Gardner in our Ward told me that
I need to be sleeping and staying hydrated. So after church I headed
to go sleep and after I was about to fall asleep, the elders in our
Ward text us and ask us if we can go to the Roddys for dinner with
them, needless to say we went to dinner. It was bomb, we had steak,
potatoes, salad and bread. Oh my was it delicious or what? Anyways
after that I went home and slept for an hour and a half. It was such a
nice rest. And just so relaxing. Then we went to this Jdubbs house to
get a bible from her. My companion asked her if he could get a bible
because he has always wanted one. Then we went back home and I slept
for the rest of the night. It felt so great to sleep for that long and
on Monday I still felt pretty crappy. But it was nice to relax and
have that time to sleep so I can get better.

Monday we had a staff meeting which is just for the missionaries in
the office. President Smith, the APs, us, and the senior couples. It's
a nice meeting and we can hear what's going on in the whole mission.
We also can report on what we have been doing. Then we had zone
meeting which was about setting goals and how we can do that better
and how we can teach by the spirit more effectively. As an office
Elder, we get to fill the orders that the whole mission sends after
district meeting on Monday. We did that and it took a couple of hours. We
went to see Bob, which is one of our progressing investigators. We
taught him the plan of salvation and he has a few concerns with the
spirit world and judgement and that stuff. We testified and he was
thinking a lot after we left and he wants to come to church. He is a
solid dude, we just hope that he will read the Book of Mormon. He
understands the scriptures very well, he is a knowledgeable man. After
we went to look up Denise who uses family search and she is interested
in meeting but we are trying to see how interested before we send the
sisters over. We meet with this 12 year old named Ayden who has ADHD.
It makes it rather difficult to teach him, he was playing YouTube
videos as we tried to teach him. We were trying to read a story out of
the Book of Mormon stories children book. Needless to say
#thestruggleisreal. He is very all over the place and wouldn't let us
teach him. He may not be listening right now but down the road he will
actually be interested. We are being good influences on him and trying
to get him more interested.

Tuesday was delivery again in the city. That was fun. We got home, I
then got certified to drive the big ford Van. It's like what the
Milligans have, but now I have been driving that behemoth and it's
been a joyous experience. We went tracting though and we knocked on
this door and this guy answered and it turns out his best friend is
Mormon but he isn't interested in learning more about our church. You
never know what will happen because of that encounter with that guy.
He may be interested over time but whatever. One thing I've learned is
it doesn't matter how many people reject us because they really are
rejecting Jesus Christ. It doesn't phase me anymore. I've realized
that I'm doing my job, they just aren't accepting Christ in their
lives. Anyways we had a dinner with a member afterwards and yeah
that's it. That's my week for you! It's been crazy and it's gonna get
more crazy this next week. We have another MLC tomorrow with Elder
Donaldson of the missionary department tomorrow, we have a train the
trainees meeting on Friday, we will be on a split Saturday, zone
conference next week. Anyways it will be crazy next week!

I know that Jesus Christ is my savior. I know through Jesus Christ I
can live with my Heavenly Father again. I know that Christ atoned for
my sins and as I allow him in my life that I can be changed and I can
be clean. I know Joseph smith is a prophet of God and I know that
Christs church has been established on the earth once again. The keys
have been restored to the earth. We have the keys to do temple work,
we can all go into the temple and be sealed forever with our loved
ones. I know these things to be true. Anyways! Picture time! Love you!
Have a great week!

You have no clue how fun it was to be with all the departing
missionaries. That was our former AP in the middle.