miracles happen and it's been awesome! Also I'm finally below 200
pounds, I woke up this morning and weighed myself and it was 197.6 so
yeah that's incredible. I was super happy! It's all the sweating I've
been doing. Yeah I'll go through this awesome week.
Thursday was fantastic, president did another conference call, it was
about the miracles that have been happening in the mission. We talked
to a lot of people so that's been good, nothing too crazy just some
chill people. I've noticed that people call us elders and when they do
that I always take advantage of that and talk with them, usually they
are active members or sometimes they are less active or just know the
church. It's been a good way to talk with people about the church. We
also dropped Jose Buco, he wanted us to ask our bishop if he could
Scan him with his machine, that was the end of it, he wants to build
his business, not learn about the gospel.
Friday we had to go to the Lincoln Square building to meet Elders
Newbold, Tatafu, Essler and Stevens, because we were doing another APF
at the Bethesda fountains. So we got to the temple, carried the huge
world map, people always say "You are carrying the world!" So it's
fun. We got to the Bethesda foundations and we talked to a lot of
people like usual. A lot of people didn't want to put where they are
from, we talked to these ladies from Brazil, they taught me some
Portuguese. Yeah. Also elder Stevens and Newbold gave this lady who is
from Mexico a Spanish Book of Mormon, and the lady saw the Book of
Mormon and started crying saying it was in English, even though it was
clearly Spanish. Elder Stevens has a cousin who is serving where this
lady lives. She is totally gonna get baptized. This member came up to
us and we got a picture with her, she has a son on a mission. Air drop
for the win, the perks of having an iPad. We went and met with Carlos
who we talked to for a while. We found out that he believes in
reincarnation, and what he believes is very similar to what we
believe. We told him we would talk about that next time we come. He is
a really cool dude, oh yeah we got some cake! It was pretty cool
though. We also talked about the significance of the beehive for our
church.
Saturday was depressing, first of all we went to the temple village
and did some service, we made a crap ton of sandwiches, and we helped
wherever possible. 3 people asked about our missions and church. One
lady wants to come to a church because she hasn't found one yet, well
we told her about ours and she said she would come, she didn't on
Sunday though. We went home and ate, we call Jose Martinez who is the
guy we met a few weeks back, he told us that he can't meet anymore and
they won't be coming to church sadly. That made me very upset, so I
washed some dishes because it calmed me down. I love doing the dishes,
it relieved some stress. We had to be at the church to give elder
Stevenson his letter that we had. Elders Stevenson and Essler are
awesome. We then went to coordination and told brother Leal all that
happened, he was pretty upset too. It's all good though. They will
come back they said. We went home and ate, then went to the projects,
and looked up one of our potentials, wasn't home, then another and his
roommate was home. We asked who would be interested so he gave us his
friend across the street who is pastor for his own church. We got
there and he speaks mostly Spanish but some English. They came up
right as we were about to leave, him and his little church group of
all ladies. We talked for a long time with him and one lady was
standing up and shouting about el Diablo, and all that stuff. They
wanted us to pray with them so we stood in a circle holding hands, I
prayed and they were all whispering in Spanish throughout the prayer.
It was pretty weird but it was a cool experience. We are going back
with the Spanish Elders next Saturday, they will preach the word to
him! That was pretty cool.
Sunday we went to church and none of our investigators were coming but
we did have Myron, and Reggie. They randomly came, Myron came last
week and this week. We also met a family from Gunnison Utah which is
where Elder Burrell is from, it's a small town in Utah. This guy and
his wife came in and they saw my name tag and this lady asked where my
grandparents are from. I used the family tree app and it turns out I
met my cousins! William Casper who is my great great great great
Grandpa had his wife Avarilla Durbin, they had a kid named William
Wallace Casper who had a wife Sarah Ann Bean, it was cool to do some
research with her there. There is an ensign article on her, search
Sarah Ann Bean on LDS.org and you can read it from a while back. It's
cool! Do some family history! Our family has been in the church for
quite some time. Legit! We taught Myron and he has some serious
problems in his life. We gave him the addiction recovery program time
and he is pretty sincere about learning. He says "if you don't know
the LDS church then you live under a rock". He talks about BYU
football and now everyone knows our church. It's cool. Yeah also
Reggie wants to learn too! He is coming next week. Man it is awesome!
We street contacted and talked to this dude who has a cousin who is a
member! How dope is that? He wants to get together and have lunch! The
only problem is that he lives in Brooklyn but we will meet him
somewhere here.
Monday we had district meeting and our zone leaders came. It was good.
We talked about what we learned from elder Bennett and how we can
continue to apply that. I cannot wait for the day that I don't have to
lead district meetings. Haha. We had waffles afterwards as a district,
one of the sisters saw me doing the dishes and she told me that my
future wife will be happy with me, because I like doing the dishes.
There will never be a dish in the sink when I'm home, haha I don't
know why I hated doing it? We talked to a lot of people, including a
less active member from Jamaica Queens, his name is Cleon Von Dothard,
he wants missionaries over there again so ha we will send them! Yeah
we talked to some cool people, didn't see much success come from it.
It was good though! A member gave us some food to go because we can't
have dinner with the sisters, so we got a little to go bag, it was
chicken enchilada soup! I asked her for the recipe, it's way good.
Yeah. We were able to talk to people and that's pretty incredible,
it's fun to see crazy people as well, this crazy dude came up to us
and asked us what Jesus would do if someone tried punching him, of
course turn the other cheek, but he asked what we would do if someone
came and tried punching us, of course we would defend ourselves.
Anyways as he walked away he was punching invisible air. It's super
funny.
Tuesday was a miraculous day! So the zone leaders found someone for us
to give a church tour to, his name is Dennis. We came to the church
and the zone leaders were already started but we took over and we
showed him the whole church. He understands everything and he pretty
much agreed with the restoration and believes it's true. He has a
Mormon friend in New Jersey, they will get together and he will tell
her what he thinks of our church. He says he will come to church! He
is super legit, he lives really close to the church too. He told us
that the pope gave a speech and he said that it's alright for us to be
atheist, like what? It's crazy and it really doesn't make too much
sense. He is way legit, he told us that he is on a quest to find what
he needs in his life, we promised him that this is the quest. He is
cool and likes our church. We went home ate, and had to book it to the
church because we found out mail was coming in like half an hour. We
got back to the church and elder Burton and Richards come to the door
and say "hey I got someone for you to meet, this is Sauce and Kevin."
Sauce is a member who was pretty recently baptized and Kevin is her
boyfriend who broke up a while ago but are back together. Kevin was
taught pretty much everything and he was living the gospel and his
life was so much better but then they broke up and his life went on a
down hill spiral. Anyways he want to get baptized. He loves the church
and he has a lot of things to work on but elder Burton was setting
goals with him and he will move out of Sauces house, get a job, stop
smoking weed. He will get baptized within the next couple months. He
needs to be living the commandments for a while before he can get
baptized. He is pretty serious about it too. They will be at church on
Sunday! We are meeting with them on Wednesday. Miracles all around!
Afterwards we did a little APF, and talked to a lot of people. Even
some who went to school in Utah but weren't too interested, they said
"you may see us". It was pretty dope. The last thing we did was go see
Lee Samedy, he talked to us at the door and then said "we can do a
lesson if you would like." So we went in and decided to read 2 Nephi
31 all about the doctrine of Christ. He understands he needs to be
baptized but he works on Sunday the same time that our church is but
luckily we are in Manhattan where there are like 15 wards that meet,
he will go to the YSA ward which meets an hour after he gets off of
work and it's 9 streets away from his work so it will be easy, and he
will be dressed up. It will be awesome!! It's legit to be able to see
all these miracles. I know this is the lords work and he knows when
people are ready to receive the gospel and come closer to him. I love
doing this work and I'm not looking forward to going home because then
I won't be a missionary any longer. I can't believe June is almost
over, like it's unfair. Where does time go? Right out the window. I
know that no effort is wasted, everything we do helps people, no
matter if we are talking to people or if people just see 2 goofy
elders walking down the street with a big smile on their face. You
never know. I love it's,
Love,
Elder Casper
1. The member we got a picture with.
2. I cracked up hysterically when I saw this.
3. A video I took in the subway station.
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