incredible here, it's spring here, no more snow but I'm anticipating a
hot hot summer. Which should help my goal of losing weight, haha! As
you can see by the title Donna Cancelled her Baptism and Juan just
wasn't ready. We have a lot more to teach them. I'll talk more about
it later on.
Elder Clark is awesome, we have been having a good time here and it's
definitely a new experience training. I've been humbling myself and
trying to improve. I was the same way to my trainer. It does come back
and bite you in the butt. I am trying my hardest to be the best
trainer I can be, I know that "Whom the Lord calls, he qualifies." Our
appointment cancelled on Wednesday with our recent convert so we just
had time to do look ups of peeps.
Thursday we had our coordination meeting, which is always a really
joy. Michael is a funny guy who cracks jokes and makes us all laugh.
On the way back we were sitting on the bus and I was sitting across
from this lady and our eyes made contact so she said hello. She then
asked if we were married but we told her that we were missionaries and
shared our message with her a bit and gave her a restoration pamphlet.
When we were getting off she said "Thank you for sharing this message
with me, it means a lot." It was super cool. We then ate and did
weekly planning. It was super hard for me but we did it. I'm taking
over an area after 6 weeks, an area in which we didn't do much because
of sickness. I was relying on the lord and having a hard time
explaining the people we are meeting with but it was all good. We did
look ups and tracted the rest of the night, we met this really cool
guy who has talked with missionaries before, all he remembers is how
nice they were and it goes a long way. We got dinner from a less
active and met with our recent convert. He fed us cheese and biscuits.
He is Jamaican. No need to explain how good his taste in food is.
Friday we did a lot of potential and less active look ups. A cool
miracle happened as we were walking to the church. I was thinking how
we probably weren't going to reach our goal of 2 other lessons and I
said hello to this guy and he stops us and talks with us. It turns out
he felt like he should talk to us. He said God must of told us to say
hello. It was cool. Oh we had scouts that night and one of the kids
said a joke. "What do you call batman when he goes to church?"
"Christian Bale" haha we all cracked up to that one.
Saturday we were doing 12 week and Donna texts us letting us know that
she isn't ready to be baptized and how she has some things she needs
to do before she can be baptized. That broke my heart and I was bummed
for the whole day. We met with Rico Blando, he is a very smart guy and
he was asking all sorts of questions that I didn't know. I didn't know
what to say other than to testify of prayer and how his questions can
be answered through reading the scriptures. We got to teach him the
restoration and that's where his questions came up. It needs to make
sense to him in his brain. We also saw a less active who gave us money
to go get a Donut at Dunkin Donuts. It was good. We did a lot of
tracting and look ups. We then stopped by Donna and she told us that
she still wants to meet with us and read and go to church, she just
needs more time. That was super hard. Juan is still going to get
baptized, we just need to pick a date for him.
We got hit on by a gay
guy at a door. We were looking up a potential and he comes to the door
and in a feminine voice he says "Oooh you're Elder Casper and you're
Elder Clark, I'm sorry I'd let you in but I was just smoking weed, I'm
sorry" We ask for Peter and he says "Peter is drunk, passed out on his
bed, he's either gonna go to the gym hung over or.. Do you guys need
to go pee?" Elder Clark said I looked uncomfortable the whole time. My
thought was "If I needed to go pee, I wouldn't use your restroom."
That was a funny story.
Sunday we got to church and Juan was setting up chairs and helping
with that. He could only stay for sacrament but it was a powerful
testimony meeting. In Elders quorum, the Elders quorum president
wanted to practice some of the ordinances, they named and blessed a
book. They were gonna confirm a member, a member of the church of
Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Luckily our Stake President was
there so he could straighten things out and tell him not to do that.
It was just great. We walked a lot all the way up in Coop City,
looking up person after person and it's been tough. Elder Clark has
said that it's been tough because it doesn't feel like we are doing
anything, but this is a big part of missionary work. Doing look ups
and tracting. It was fun.
Monday was just fabulous. We had Zone meeting, the sister training
leaders talked about the doctrine of Christ and the leadership section
of the missionary handbook. It was powerful. I gave a 2 minute talk on
faith in Jesus Christ and how if we have faith, then we can see
miracles. The zone leaders talked about setting goals and how
important it is to evaluate yourselves. Goals are how we progress in
life. We need to set goals that can help us improve. We talked about
the new initiative video and how we are gonna share it! I am so
excited to share the video with everyone. We got Cross Bronx Pizza
afterwards and dang that pizza is huge and delicious. Elder Davis came
with me to my area and Donnas member friends the Mojicas called us and
talked about Donna and they were wondering where Donna was and what
her progress was. They care for her but Donna will get baptized when
she gets baptized. When she is ready. We did so much walking looking
up all the referrals we got and were in Coop City again. We talked
with this guy named Daniel who lost contact with his friend who served
a mission in China and came back and he told us that the email didn't
work anymore. The guy lives in Logan Utah. Daniel used to live in
Africa and even though he is not a member, he played the piano for the
church over there and has all the literature. He is not a member, yet.
:D. It was a very long day and we walked for days but it was good.
Tuesday Elder Davis and I had an interesting experience. We decided to
tract after looking up this guy. We went to the 7th floor and the last
door we knocked this guy answers and he was wearing no shirt and he
was ripped, Anyways he tells us that he is
the opposite of us, he's a demon specialist. That's his religion. He
talked to us for an hour and fifteen minutes. If I didn't have this
strong of a testimony, what he was saying probably would have shaken
my testimony. He says that he has a book, that if we read it, it would
make us want to take our tags off. He was a really nice guy. Just
talked our ears off. We then had Coordination meeting again with
Michael, he will be out of town for 2 weeks so we had it early. Elder
Clark and I were reunited. We decided to go tracting after a look up
and we found this guy named Reiley, super nice guy. He used to be
Christian, but now he is Muslim. He is a super kind fellow. His mom
sat behind us as we talked about it. She was the one who told him to
let us in. We will probably visit him so his mom can learn. It was
super fun.
So everyone, Sunday March 13th the church is releasing a new
initiative video called Hallelujah. The website will be
FollowHim.mormon.org. Please go check it out. The video is so amazing
and I can't wait to share it with everyone! It's only 2 minutes long,
and it has New York in it so yeah. Anyways I love you all and I hope
you have a fantastic week!
Love,
Elder Casper
1. A 33 Floor building in Coop City
2. The Pelham Parkway 5 train subway stop.
3. Look who it is
4. Manhattan and Brooklyn (Manhattan is better)
