tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18223361741147144482024-03-18T20:48:11.098-07:00Elder Domenick CasperMission BlogElder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.comBlogger97125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-32243512689146574702016-08-31T12:19:00.000-07:002016-08-31T12:19:12.122-07:00Dennis Got Baptized!!!Hello everyone, the biggest highlight of my week is Dennis Caron got<br />
baptized and confirmed and now is a member of the church and has the<br />
constant companionship of the Holy Ghost. It's incredible and it's a<br />
new experience for me since it is my first baptism but it was really<br />
cool. He is dope, I got some pictures to send to so wait for those.<br />
<br />
Wednesday we finished out our Pday by going to see one of our<br />
investigators Hamed. We got to see one of the best views I've ever<br />
seen of the city and he fed us a super big burger. Of course he<br />
ordered in but we had a good time with him. We did get to talk about<br />
the Book of Mormon more and he had questions that we answered. It was<br />
awesome to have the spirit guiding the conversation.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had to go to the temple building to practice for our<br />
musical event that us missionaries are singing in for the Muslim and<br />
Jewish community, we are the only Christians that will be there so<br />
it's cool. We then came back to the church and got chipotle which is<br />
delicious. And we drank some monsters, they were these new ones that<br />
were way delicious. I have dropped soda completely but on occasion I<br />
allow myself to drink soda, or a monster. We weekly planned to and<br />
went to see Dennis, he invited us over to his house and we got to have<br />
some chips and salsa and these Belgium waffle cookies which were<br />
amazing. Dennis is awesome and I love his apartment and him. He is<br />
such a wonderful person who was slightly nervous about the baptism but<br />
he was really happy too. He is great.<br />
<br />
Friday we made our way up to the 87th street chapel to print off the<br />
baptismal programs to get everything ready for the baptism. It took<br />
about 2 hours but we got it all worked out and everything looked<br />
awesome. We taught our recent convert Avi about the priesthood, he<br />
gets off topic easily so we got to constantly bring it back to what we<br />
are talking about. We also saw our investigator Carlos and talked<br />
about the Book of Mormon and he really enjoyed it. Dennis called us to<br />
ask and see if we could call him at 8 in the morning to make sure he<br />
gets up so he doesn't sleep in. We set up the room for the baptism,<br />
and cleaned it and spent time getting it ready for the following day.<br />
<br />
Saturday we had our studies and I had a really hard time focusing on<br />
what I was studying because I kept thinking about Dennis and how his<br />
baptism was hours away. We got to the church about an hour early to<br />
fill up the font and Dennis comes walking in at 10:30 with his bags<br />
full things, it was awesome. He was telling me that he knew he wasn't<br />
gonna die before Saturday because God wants the baptism to happen. We<br />
got some awesome pictures of Dennis with us and brother Andersen. The<br />
spirit was really strong throughout the baptism, it was a cool feeling<br />
to see someone get baptized that I had taught. He truly humbled<br />
himself and prepared for the day when he was able to enter into the<br />
waters of baptism. Brother Andersen complimented us on how great of<br />
missionaries we are and how great the baptism was. It was super<br />
amazing and I can't express how I feel. Dennis will always have a<br />
special place in my heart. Brother Andersen said during the bishopric<br />
welcome, that God has prepared elder smiley and I when we were young<br />
so we could hear the gospel and then be able to find Dennis and teach<br />
him. It's cool how God prepares people and he does so much in all of<br />
our lives, we don't even know everything God does for us. It was<br />
awesome. Dennis gave his testimony too and that was a really special<br />
moment for us. He has a strong testimony. We did good deed dares<br />
afterwards, we also taught Carlos and Yun. It was a good day. The<br />
baptism was the biggest highlight of my mission.<br />
<br />
Sunday we got to church and Dennis showed up half and hour early, and<br />
he was excited and super nervous but he wanted to receive the Holy<br />
Ghost. The confirmation went perfect, brother Dupreiu confirmed him<br />
and said a lot of things in the blessing that he didn't even know<br />
about. Like Dennis' parents are in heaven and are happy for him to<br />
make this choice so Dennis can do their work in the temple and help<br />
them have the gospel. It was a long blessing but Dennis was pretty<br />
emotional after as he hugged us all. What a wonderful blessing. Church<br />
was good too and Dennis liked it all. We no longer will be meeting<br />
with Dennis multiple times each week but just once a week. It's very<br />
sad but it has to happen, he can now experience the joy of being a<br />
member. We did a ton of look ups and happen to walk by Madison Square<br />
Garden where the MTV Music awards was happening and we were surrounded<br />
by people, it was very uncomfortable. The sisters called us as we were<br />
heading to our apartment to eat dinner. And told us that a member from<br />
the deaf branch was in the basement, in the dark doing a cross word,<br />
naked. And he was walking around and the sisters were there and saw<br />
everything and they had to wait there until one of the members from<br />
their branch presidency came and took care of it. He waved to the<br />
sisters like it was nothing but they didn't want to leave a naked dude<br />
in the church by himself. Anyways the situation was taken care of. We<br />
also got stuck in a train for an hour because someone pulled the<br />
emergency brake.. It was a great opportunity to talk to people and get<br />
information so we can teach them, it was fun! We talked to this guy<br />
named John. It was a cool experience.<br />
<br />
Monday we had district meeting and talked about a lot of miracles and<br />
did an accounting where we all talked about one of our investigators<br />
that we are struggling with and get input from the district on how we<br />
can help. Afterwards we helped Carlos at their bookstore do some<br />
renovations, it was all volunteer basis so we helped sand down some<br />
parts of the wall where they filled in holes and paint. We also got<br />
some pretty tasty pizza. Dennis called us and wanted to meet with us<br />
just as we thought he didn't want to meet with us all the time but he<br />
missed us. We did the Book of Mormon board, then had ice cream from<br />
Baskin Robins, a member took us there. Then we met with Dennis and he<br />
wanted to express his appreciation for us and how grateful he is for<br />
us and how we did an excellent job. He had a few questions about the<br />
announcements on Sunday. He also is looking to get a job. Yes a 75<br />
year old man wants to get a job, he's young at heart. I seriously love<br />
Dennis!<br />
<br />
Tuesday we got our Chinese food from our typical place, ate at the<br />
church and then went to get mail at the temple. We did a few look ups<br />
and got to talk to Maliek from last Tuesday and we got him to download<br />
the Book of Mormon app on his phone and he's free for 2 weeks so we<br />
will be seeing him pretty often hopefully. He's a nice guy. We did the<br />
Good Deed Dares at Washington square park and I got to meet a girl<br />
named Jessica who is also from the Sacramento California area, she is<br />
from Folsom so we had a good talk. She knows Mormons because her<br />
really good friend growing up was Mormon. She said she would come to<br />
church. It's cool to meet people from the California area, she was<br />
going to NYU so you never know when you will cross paths with someone.<br />
At a different time lady who was topless was screaming pretty loudly.<br />
That's New York, it's legal. Whatever. We did some look ups and met<br />
some members from Queens, it was fun. We did the B.O.M board out front<br />
of the church and gave out a copy to this super nice man. It was a<br />
long day and I was pretty grateful that it ended but the work is going<br />
good. It's been tough but I'm working hard and trying to be diligent.<br />
It gets a lot more tough towards the end of your mission, but<br />
everything is awesome and we are seeing cool miracles. Time for<br />
another baptism!<br />
<br />
Today we went to the 9/11 memorial and saw the north and south pool<br />
and they are so gorgeous. I love New York City, it's like my 2nd home<br />
and I hope to live here some day. It's awesome. It's been awesome.<br />
<br />
I finished the New Testament as well and now I'm starting over. I love<br />
reading about Jesus Christ and his life. Revelations was fun and I<br />
learned so much as I read the New Testament. If you haven't read the<br />
entire thing, I would invite you to. It will building your testimony<br />
of the simple gospel truths we know. Ponder and pray about what you<br />
read and apply it into your life. I love it. Have a great week!<br />
<br />
1. Chipotle with a Monster<br />
2. The folded baptismal programs<br />
3 and 4. The set up for the baptism<br />
5. Dennis and us with brother Andersen too.<br />
6, 7 and 8. 9/11 Memorial pictures!<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-14323985091313800812016-08-31T12:14:00.001-07:002016-08-31T12:14:18.910-07:00Dennis is getting Baptized on Saturday!Dennis passed his interview, he's gonna get baptized, oh my I cannot<br />
believe this is happening. It's take 21 months to finally have someone<br />
decide to enter the waters of baptism but it's happening. I am so<br />
happy and I don't think I've felt this much joy in a while. I love<br />
Dennis so much, it's the best feeling ever. I love being here.<br />
Anyways! This week has been good. A little slow, but good nonetheless!<br />
<br />
Wednesday we had dinner with a Brother Doxford, we had some chicken<br />
buffalo and meat lovers pizza and seriously, it was way too tasty.<br />
Elder Smiley and I both over ate and had a terrible night. But the<br />
food was good, I got to say the "night night" prayer for the Doxfords<br />
daughter Grace. I am excited to be a dad, it was an incredible feeling<br />
to pray for their daughter. It was an honor to be chosen to pray for<br />
her. It was kind of weird but it was awesome. I love brother Doxford,<br />
he is such an awesome guy and he is totally someone I look up to, and<br />
I aspire to be like him some day.<br />
<br />
Thursday was epic, so epic. I got to do 2 Baptismal interviews for<br />
Liliana and Shira Pareja who got baptized on Saturday. It was really<br />
fun and it's cool to have that opportunity to interview people and act<br />
as the lords representative. We did weekly planning, got mail and<br />
headed back to our chapel. The highlight of the night is meeting with<br />
Dennis with Sister Andersen and being able to teach him what he needs.<br />
He is prepared and it was a good visit. There were some lightning<br />
storms which were amazing to see the clouds being lit up, it's<br />
wonderful.<br />
<br />
Friday we were supposed to do an APF with water cups and give runners<br />
cups of water to drink but someone jacked the ice we had and the cups<br />
so that was no good. We did the big Book of Mormon board instead and<br />
talked to a lot of cool people. We talked to this Jewish dude who took<br />
a Book of Mormon. Then to surprisingly well versed Muslim, Christian,<br />
Warlock, homeless, drunk guy named Daniel who said he was a lieutenant<br />
in the army. He told us he loves us and he will read the book too. It<br />
was great, he was acting out some cool fights and he told me of a<br />
story of when God helped him rob some shoes because "God needs them".<br />
It was hilarious! We talked to this guy named Alexie, he went to<br />
English class in Russia and he read the entire Book of Mormon but he<br />
finds it hard to believe in God and he created everything. And he has<br />
a hard time with the law of chastity. He said some things that were<br />
unexpected but super funny. He said it over and over again, it was<br />
hard to restrain the laughter. Anyways. We taught our recent convert<br />
Avi about the gospel of Jesus Christ. We then did a ton of look ups,<br />
like so many. That's pretty much it.<br />
<br />
Saturday we did service at the temple village and made sandwiches, it<br />
was great. We ate lunch at home and did a quick comp study and then<br />
headed to the temple/Lincoln Square building to go to a baptism with<br />
Dennis to show him another one. On our way to the train station from<br />
our apartment, it was cloudy and it looked like it was gonna rain,<br />
then we got to the 59th street station at Columbus circle and we walk<br />
out side and it's beautifully sunny but clearly we just missed the<br />
rain storm. It was still raining and there wasn't even a cloud in the<br />
sky. Weird but it was refreshing. The baptism was amazing, the spirit<br />
was really strong. Especially as the sisters taught the restoration<br />
right after they were baptized as they were changing clothes. The<br />
spirit was incredibly strong. We taught Dennis the rest of the<br />
lessons, eternal marriage, temples and family history. It was a good<br />
feeling too. He likes everything and he continually says that he wants<br />
to be baptized in one of the fonts in the temple. (The Pamphlet we use<br />
has pictures inside the temple). It was great. We rode the 1 train<br />
back to 14th street with Dennis and he told us that he will put in a<br />
good word to God for us, haha it was awesome! We did look ups<br />
afterwards and sister Andersen took us out to this burrito place, it<br />
was yummy.<br />
<br />
Sunday was good too, church was spiritual and the talks were great.<br />
Dennis and Reggie came, that's it. It did bum us out because we were<br />
expecting a ton of our investigators but that's missionary life.<br />
Sometimes people don't follow through with their commitments and<br />
that's how you know if they are sincere or not. Church was good and I<br />
definitely love learning at church, I love being to church half an<br />
hour early as a missionary. I want to be there 10 minutes early when<br />
I'm home. I know I've changed my perspective on church and I want to<br />
go every week to partake of the sacrament. We are seriously blessed<br />
with the restored truth, it's too awesome and sometimes unreal but I'm<br />
grateful to be a member of this church. We did some look ups after<br />
coordination with brother Leal. We taught Yun over FaceTime and talked<br />
with him about his prayer and reading and he says he will do that. We<br />
had dinner with the Maddux's and they were excited about Dennis'<br />
baptism. It was announced at the end of sacrament meeting and in<br />
priesthood. We have a lot of people coming and we are way excited!<br />
<br />
Monday we had a surprise zone meeting, about how to work with members<br />
and how to keep our faith up. It was a good meeting and they have some<br />
new district videos that we have been watching and using in meetings.<br />
We have been using Facebook for teaching and adding investigators on<br />
Facebook as we first contact them. It's been super helpful. We can<br />
send them videos in between visits and if they are say out of the<br />
county we can chat with them and teach them through Facebook<br />
messenger. So if you see me on Facebook, it's because I am. We taught<br />
Tony afterwards at his work and we told him we are gonna drop by<br />
occasionally but he isn't interested and he tries to tempt us. We<br />
shared a video and the spirit was there but he chose to joke around<br />
afterwards. It was very unsuccessful. We did the B.O.M board out front<br />
of the church and talked to this guy named Chris Washington who lives<br />
in Canarsie Brooklyn but he was walking down the street praying to God<br />
for help and then he comes in contact with us immediately afterwards.<br />
We promised him if he read and prays and meets with us that his life<br />
will be better and he can find purpose. He is also looking for a<br />
church who does Immersion baptism. He is solid and we will see if we<br />
can meet with him. Then we talked to this guy named Neil who passes us<br />
on occasion. He talked to us and said he would be interested in seeing<br />
what our church looks like. Then we talked to Reggie Moody who lives<br />
in the Bronx and he gave us all his info to send to those<br />
missionaries. Super solid. We taught Yun over FaceTime and skyped in<br />
Brother Poon. We connected 3 places in 1 call where the spirit could<br />
be felt. Super dope.<br />
<br />
Tuesday we ate Chinese food, then did some Tracting and went to a<br />
random floor in a random project and the first door we knocked, the<br />
door opened completely we shook his hand and taught him the entire<br />
restoration. We got his Facebook and all his info and invited him to<br />
the baptism on Saturday. The spirit was there as well and he says we<br />
can come by. Then this dude passed us and we said hey, then 2 doors<br />
later we knocked on his door, he opened up we shook his hand and<br />
taught the entire restoration. The spirit was there and it was cool to<br />
see those miracles. It's cool to be a missionary for sure. It all<br />
happened because our appointment got moved 2 hours later. We had to<br />
get mail and then go see one of our members, Luis. We talked about the<br />
importance of church and why he needs to go. He doesn't come every<br />
week but he does come twice a month. We went to our church to get<br />
ready for Dennis to come to fill out his baptismal record. President<br />
came early and met with elder smiley and Dennis came and he showed me<br />
his pass ports and man. Young Dennis. It's funny. He's 75 years old.<br />
Haha. It was cool to have president meet Dennis and elder smiley and I<br />
were smiling so big it was great. Then the interview happened and it<br />
took like 30 minutes and it killed elder smiley and I, the anxiety but<br />
Dennis Passed! Woot! We met with Dennis later that night with Brother<br />
Swiss who is conducting the meeting. Brother Swiss served in Russia<br />
for his mission and he helped Dennis a lot. We read 3 Nephi 11 and<br />
Dennis told us he notices something about members, he can tell who is<br />
members and he wonders when people can tell that Dennis is a member.<br />
Brother Swiss talked about how it's a continuing process and the Holy<br />
Ghost does that. It was very spiritual and Dennis was comforted. We<br />
showed him the jump suit he will wear for the baptism. I am so excited<br />
and I'm grateful to have the opportunity to bring someone down to the<br />
waters of baptism, New York is my waters of Mormon. Dennis will always<br />
have a special place in my heart. I love the gospel!<br />
<br />
I was reading a conference talk from April of 2003 by President James<br />
E Faust called "The Devils throat" and there are some quotes I'd like<br />
to share.<br />
<br />
“If you cross to the devil’s side of the line one inch, you are in the<br />
tempter’s power, and if he is successful, you will not be able to<br />
think or even reason properly, because you will have lost the spirit<br />
of the Lord.”<br />
"If we are conscientiously trying to avoid not only evil but the very<br />
appearance of evil, we will act for ourselves and not be acted upon."<br />
"Preparation, work, study, and service are required to achieve and<br />
find happiness."<br />
"All of us want to find out who we really are and what our place is in<br />
the world. Some of you young people are trying to find your identity<br />
by being different from your parents and families in what they stand<br />
for. God made each of us to be different from anyone else in the<br />
world, as our DNA and fingerprints prove. You don’t have to work at<br />
having a separate identity; you already have one."<br />
"the worldly influences of evil will likely increase, and more people<br />
will become vulnerable to the deceit and enticement of Satan."<br />
<br />
There is a lot in these quotes. Satans influence is real, don't allow<br />
yourself to cross the line, don't even look for a line to cross, stay<br />
as far away from the line as possible. I like how he talks about how<br />
we can find lasting happiness. I would invite you all to read that.<br />
<br />
“One of the best things in the world to be is a boy; it requires no<br />
experience, but needs some practice to be a good one.” It's true.<br />
<br />
1. Hair cut last week, just in time for the baptism.<br />
2. This guy named Alexie from Friday's APF.<br />
3. Zelda Hyrulean shield and an old school link.<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-51079332703202044752016-08-31T12:11:00.001-07:002016-08-31T12:11:22.956-07:007 More Weeks in Manhattan!Hello everyone, transfers came and went and I stayed with Elder<br />
Smiley! I'm glad because Dennis' baptism is in less than 2 weeks and I<br />
didn't want to leave, I love Dennis more than I can put into words and<br />
I have seen him change a lot, every time we meet with him he changes<br />
more and he is really excited about his baptism on the 27th of this<br />
month. August is almost over, haha.<br />
<br />
Wednesday was awesome, we chilled at our church and played his board<br />
game called Pathfinders, then we had a dinner with the Shumways at<br />
this place in the mall down around south ferry called Umami Burger. We<br />
got this burger called "The Manly Burger" and oh boy was it manly, it<br />
had super good beef and Bacon Chunks on it with really good cheese and<br />
amazing sauce. We also got sweet potato fries and these truffle fries<br />
that we so excellent. To top it all off we went to shake shack and got<br />
some of the best shakes ever. So delicious, they seriously love the<br />
missionaries and spoiled us. It was incredible and it tasted so good!<br />
We were pretty full!<br />
<br />
Thursday we did our planning and then we had Dennis with Brother<br />
McKnight, and we talked about the last of the commandments we need to<br />
teach him! Dennis really liked the choices talk by president Monson.<br />
He connected to it and he will follow the prophet, the Sunday before<br />
we talked about prophets so Dennis already knew most of what we talked<br />
about and we just wanted to review. Earlier in the day we went to<br />
trader joes so I could show elder smiley what it is and lo an behold a<br />
missionary opportunity came about in there. This guy came up to us and<br />
told us we should get some of the kind bars and it turns out he talked<br />
with missionaries in Brazil and he accepted a Book of Mormon from us!<br />
Awesome! Good stuff!<br />
<br />
Friday we did a bucket load of look ups and didn't really talk to<br />
anyone except the last dude, who told us to come by around another day<br />
after 6. We got a Frosty from Wendy's and then went to the church to<br />
email a few people and then we went to do a few look ups with no<br />
success. We street contacted for a bit. No success. Then we felt to go<br />
see Sauce to see if Kevin was there and he wasn't. Kevin got mad the<br />
other day and cut his hand, he punched the glass on a stairwell door<br />
in the projects. He is pretty messed up. We got in the elevator to go<br />
down and the elevator took us up to the 21st floor, and there had to<br />
be a reason so these 2 people got in the elevator, Isaiah and Liz and<br />
they saw us sweating and we talked about what we do, they said they<br />
would be interested in meeting with us. We have them both a Book of<br />
Mormon and got both their info, it's pretty awesome how God places<br />
people in our paths and all we have to do is talk with them. It was<br />
awesome! On our way back we happened to talk to a dude and as I turned<br />
around to look behind me I saw Kevin.. Who rode up on his skateboard.<br />
We met with him at the church and threw down on him, telling him that<br />
he is addicted to sauce and his life is a mess and he knows and he<br />
wanted to change and we told him how he can change, through the<br />
atonement of Jesus Christ. It was good. We had dinner with sister<br />
Cabral and it was pretty yummy for sure. It's super awesome. We met a<br />
member who served his mission in the Niagara Falls Canada mission,<br />
that was dope.<br />
<br />
Saturday we did some service at the temple village, and of course it's<br />
been a quadrillion degrees with the humidity, and we had to deal with<br />
potatoes that were sitting in a humid room and let me tell you what, I<br />
don't want to eat potatoes for a while. Elder Smiley and I almost<br />
threw up and I was the one really dealing with them and throwing the<br />
bad ones out and cleaning the good ones. All day we had a glimpse of<br />
the potato smell. It was by far the worst smell I've probably ever<br />
smelled. It was fun to serve! I never want to deal with rotten<br />
potatoes again. We met with our recent convert Avi, who was baptized<br />
in January, and we taught him the plan of salvation.. He's a funny guy<br />
and a pretty quiet one at that. We did comp study and 12 week and then<br />
went to Central Park to do our Book of Mormon APF with the zone. There<br />
is this place in Central Park called the mall. It's this huge strip of<br />
straight walkway where people set up their booths and we put our huge<br />
Book of Mormon board there and a table with books and wanted people to<br />
take free copies. It was fun, a few people took one. We then went to<br />
go see our less active member named Cody Hoyer, we weren't really<br />
expecting much and he talks to us at his door and invites us in and<br />
tells us he has pizza for us, it's called Grandmas pizza. He also<br />
bought us Powerade's and a lot of other drinks. Him and his partner<br />
live there and his partner Kfir doesn't know a ton about the church so<br />
we gave him a Book of Mormon. He is from Jerusalem and wants to learn<br />
about our religion. It was really cool and kind of shocking but it was<br />
awesome. We are gonna get a Hebrew Book of Mormon to give to Kfir and<br />
they want us back over. Kind of a weird experience and we will see<br />
what happens.<br />
<br />
Sunday we got to church and Dennis, Albert, Reggie and Yun came to<br />
church and it's awesome. Dennis asked brother Anderson to baptize him.<br />
He had an index card that said "Dennis Caron Baptism August 27th,<br />
baptizer Brother Tye Andersen" then he said "yes or no?" So it was<br />
totally like Dennis asked brother Andersen to prom. It was wonderful.<br />
Also Dennis threw his coffee and coffee maker away so that's awesome<br />
too! Miracles are happening! We had dinner with a member family and<br />
their family was visiting and one of them served in this mission a bit<br />
ago and he had president Morgan as his mission president so we talked<br />
about the areas we served and it was incredible. I do love talking<br />
about this mission. It was a good day and we handed out some book of<br />
Mormons to end out the night.<br />
<br />
Monday we had our final district meeting and the spirit was so strong,<br />
it was great. It's always sad saying good bye to missionaries. We got<br />
181 book of Mormons handed out as a district this past 5 weeks. We<br />
handed out 9 book of Mormons on Monday, we found this girl named<br />
Mayumi Ihara who met with missionaries in Scotland and has read the<br />
Book of Mormon like 5 times, she wants to meet with us and we will<br />
teach her using Facebook. We had a good day. We had a dinner with the<br />
Calders who fed us chicken enchiladas. We also taught Yun about<br />
repentance and I had a thought during the opening prayer to ask Yun<br />
how his prayers are going. We helped him understand how to pray and<br />
that he needs to be sincere to the answer he gets. We also told him to<br />
ask specific questions because he can get a specific answers. It was<br />
awesome! We asked this guy if he has read the Book of Mormon before,<br />
he said "Yes I've read the whole book, I've looked at your history and<br />
you're all F***ed up".<br />
<br />
Tuesday we helped our sisters with luggage, we carried sister Vassau's<br />
luggage to grand central, then took it all across and went up to<br />
Inwood. It was heavy but it was a good work out. Such a tiring. The<br />
suitcase I took was broken on the back wheels so we used the front<br />
wheels and yeah that didn't work.. My shoulders kill today. We also<br />
got the new sister missionary, sister Leavitts luggage which is new<br />
and it was easy to take it to their apartment. We got a good workout.<br />
We did an APF at Washington Square Park with the Book of Mormon. It<br />
started to rain, and it was super sunny outside. It looked really<br />
cool, eventually the rain stopped. We gave 2 copies of the Book of<br />
Mormon out. I said "how are you doing" to this lady and I thought she<br />
said "good, you?" So I asked "how's the day going?" And then I heard<br />
what she was really saying, she said "F*** you" twice. Yeah. We taught<br />
Dennis with sister Andersen, we taught him about Priesthood and<br />
Auxiliaries, and serving in the church. We are almost done teaching<br />
him everything. He realizes that he is gonna make a big change in his<br />
life but he is excited! It's so awesome! Good way to end the night.<br />
<br />
Today we went to practice our singing at the ambassador room at the<br />
65th street building, we gonna be singing for the Jewish and Muslim<br />
community, we will be singing How great thou art and another song.<br />
Singing is fun. We are getting hair cuts not and then we will chillax<br />
for a bit and do our shopping.<br />
<br />
Being a missionary is the best thing ever, like I don't ever want it<br />
to end. Missions change you, you stretch and grow and are forged into<br />
someone who God wants you to be. It's really cool how the mission is<br />
set up. As you serve others, you are benefitted. It's wonderful and<br />
I'm grateful that's how it works. God knows more than us and we can<br />
never know everything God knows but we can learn a lot. Also I'm<br />
almost done with the New Testament, I'm reading revelations right now<br />
it's it's kick butt. John probably saw all the wars and tanks, and<br />
helicopters and planes with missiles and all that kick butt stuff.<br />
Anyways the church is true, reach out with love and serve those around<br />
you, you will see a big difference in your life. Love you all and have<br />
a fantastic week!<br />
<br />
1. This kick butt comic book store, forbidden planet. Terminator<br />
pose.. Looking good huh?<br />
2 and 3. Our sisters brought donuts so we had a photoshoot.<br />
4. Mtn dew black label<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-4669803188875166822016-08-31T12:07:00.002-07:002016-08-31T12:07:48.637-07:00Sick for DaysHello all, this past week has been pretty terrible, we have seen a lot<br />
of miracles but I have been sick all last week, I've been feeling<br />
better since Monday but it's not fun to be sick on the mission. Dennis<br />
is doing really good and progressing really well. He is really excited<br />
about his baptism and he has everything picked out! I love him to<br />
death, he is truly ready to be baptized and I've been able to see him<br />
change a lot and it's been incredible. We have almost taught him all<br />
the commandments, all we have to teach him is lesson 5: Laws and<br />
Ordinances. He is really excited and I can't believe I'm gonna have a<br />
baptism finally! The only problem is transfers are next Tuesday so I<br />
have a possibility of transferring, it happened while I was training<br />
last time and while I was being trained. So yeah. I'm praying to stay!<br />
<br />
Wednesday we went to Buffalo Wild Wings and I got some pictures for<br />
you. We had a dinner with the Calders and we asked if she could make a<br />
lot of vegetables because we wanted them. She made a lot and it was<br />
incredible. We saw a lot of members on our way home which was super<br />
nice.<br />
<br />
Thursday we helped brother Shumway move some things in his apartment,<br />
it took about an hour and then he took us to this place called Black<br />
Burger and man it was delicious, they had curly fries too! And Dr<br />
Pepper. It was great. The burger tasted pretty similar to In-N-Out and<br />
I cannot wait to have In-N-Out again, first place we go off the plane.<br />
Yeah. Anyways brother Shumway is awesome and we love him. We also met<br />
with Kevin afterwards who is changing a lot, we taught the restoration<br />
and we cleared up a lot with him, he had tons of questions which is<br />
good. We did some planning and also met with this new media referral<br />
named John Sidoti, he has super long hair and we showed him out<br />
church. He really liked it but he said he would come to church on<br />
Sunday and he didn't but he said he would be baptized as soon as he<br />
knew it was true. He is really dope. We did some planning and had<br />
dinner with the Murdochs, dominoes pizza is a very popular place to<br />
get pizza, all the members feed us dominoes it seems but there was<br />
fruit and vegetables too so that made us happy. They are awesome! I<br />
love being able to teach the restoration to people who have never<br />
heard it and John had a question of why God would wait to call a<br />
prophet again and this morning in my studies I read in 1 Nephi 22 and<br />
God waited for the United States of America to be established so we<br />
could have religious freedom and 14 years after religious freedom was<br />
declared, Joseph smith was born. It's pretty cool to see Gods planning<br />
and how America is truly a blessed land for us.<br />
<br />
Friday we had some pizza with Art Perez, one of our members. He fed us<br />
at Gotham Pizza! We had half plain and half Margherita and man was it<br />
delicious. We also saw Kevin outside for a couple seconds and he's<br />
back with his girlfriend Sauce, they have an unhealthy relationship<br />
and it made us pretty mad but we were okay. We went back to the<br />
apartment and slept all day until our appointment with Dennis. I felt<br />
like crap, I needed that recovery and it felt good to sleep and relax,<br />
I've noticed my body hates me recently. I hurt a lot so the sleep was<br />
really nice. We met with Dennis and we brought brother Myers with us<br />
and taught him about tithing and fast offerings and Dennis is going to<br />
pay tithing. He is really excited about his baptism! It's great!<br />
<br />
Saturday we got Chinese food which was great, we planned and met with<br />
this referral who walked into our building on Friday and his name is<br />
Hamed. He is Muslim, but agnostic. He doesn't believe in his religion<br />
but he does want to learn about the Mormons. He always sees us being<br />
made fun of on South Park and other shows and it always shows Mormons<br />
home with their families, that made him curious so he wants to learn<br />
about the church. We taught him the restoration and he's pretty legit,<br />
he invited us to his apartment in a couple weeks to have us on his<br />
roof so we can see a sweet view of all the city. It will be great. We<br />
can also bring anyone we want so member present! It's great, he added<br />
me on Facebook too so that's awesome. We FaceTimed Yun and taught him<br />
about the plan of salvation and it made sense to him and he is really<br />
awesome and he is understanding the gospel more and more. After that<br />
we went home and I slept because I felt terrible and it was nice.<br />
Elder smiley and I stayed up for an hour talking about experiences we<br />
have had and cool stories. It felt so good to sleep.<br />
<br />
Sunday we were supposed to have ward council and after we were at the<br />
church we found out that ward council wasn't happening because bishop<br />
was out of town. We studied and then welcomed a lot of people to<br />
church and it was great. Testimony meeting was awesome, I bore my<br />
testimony about the Book of Mormon. That was the first time I bore my<br />
testimony on a fast and testimony meeting. It was awesome and I love<br />
the spirit you can feel when everyone bear their testimonies. Dennis<br />
wanted to talk to bishop before he was gonna get baptized, and they<br />
announced his baptism in sacrament meeting and they played onward<br />
Christian soldiers (Dennis' favorite song) so that settled it. Church<br />
was great, we met with Dennis afterwards and planned out the program<br />
and we showed him the baptismal interview questions and determined<br />
when he will be interviewed by our mission president. He is amazing!<br />
We had coordination over FaceTime with Brother Leal, he is in Italy<br />
but it was a quick coordination, we then met with Kevin. I am helping<br />
him get his operating system on his laptop, I'm sharing my talents.<br />
After and hour and a half we went home and we went to bed. It was a<br />
good way to end the Sunday. Our district did super good in lessons, we<br />
had a lot of lessons and we were able to use our technology for<br />
teaching and to remember our purpose.<br />
<br />
I woke up Monday and I felt better so we did some workouts and I found<br />
out that I can do the clap push ups now, I'm grateful for the weight<br />
I've lost. I did a 2 minute plank on Monday night, it was easy. I am<br />
getting skinny and I like it. We had district meeting and talked about<br />
the new rules they put out for technology, it's pretty cool. We taught<br />
this dude named Tony who likes us and we are trying to get him<br />
interested but he jokes around a lot. We also taught Dennis with a<br />
member. We taught him Obedience, Pray often, scripture study and<br />
sabbath day observance. It was super legit and the spirit was pretty<br />
strong. It was great! We also got to teach Yun about some of the<br />
gospel of Jesus Christ over FaceTime. A member bought us 2 large<br />
dominoes pizzas and had them delivered to the church. It was freaking<br />
great and we have lots of pizza still. Dennis' friend Eleanor from<br />
Jersey called us because Dennis asked her to give a talk on the Holy<br />
ghost and Eleanor wanted to talk with us for a bit. She's the friend<br />
that Dennis has who is a Mormon. It's great to have her willing to<br />
help and give a talk. It was a good night!<br />
<br />
Tuesday we went to the 87th street chapel so elder smiley could clean<br />
off his Facebook and I cleaned off my pictures off my iPad and put<br />
them on my hard drive. It was awesome. We went to the church to meet<br />
with Kevin who never showed up, we got mail at the temple building and<br />
then came back and did a lot of look ups, none of which were home or<br />
even wanted us to come up.. So yeah. We ate afterwards and went to<br />
Duane reade to get laundry detergent and I'm looking for a back brace<br />
because my lower back has hurt a lot recently and I don't like it. We<br />
did the Book of Mormon board and gave a book out, it was fantastic.<br />
It's funny to watch people see us and turn away. They will start to<br />
talk to us and once they realize who we are they stop talking, or they<br />
pretend they didn't hear us. It's great. A lot of people are super<br />
nice and friendly to us. That's pretty much it. It has been an<br />
incredible week, we have done a lot and we are working hard and we are<br />
excited to meet with Dennis and he is excited for his baptism. I'm<br />
humbled that Heavenly Father has given us one of his children to teach<br />
and to prepare. It's awesome and I'm excited for the 27th of August!<br />
Woot Woot!<br />
<br />
I know the church is true and that the doctrine of Christ is super<br />
simple but it can be hard. Exercise faith, repent, be baptized,<br />
receive the Holy Ghost and endure to the end. For us members we can be<br />
baptized again but we can partake of the sacrament weekly to renew of<br />
the covenants we make when we are baptized. Read 3 Nephi 11, when<br />
Jesus Christ comes to the Americas, the first thing he lets the<br />
nephites do is touch the wounds in his hands and feet and he lets them<br />
go forth one by one. It wouldn't be the quickest thing but Jesus<br />
Christ wanted them to know who he is. It's really awesome and I know<br />
Jesus Christ is my savior and redeemer and through him and his<br />
atonement I can be clean from sin, I can receive help in my time of<br />
trial and affliction. I can change and be a stronger disciple of<br />
Christ and I can have my imperfections made perfect one day. I love<br />
this gospel and seriously read the Book of Mormon! Have a great<br />
week, talk to you next week!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. From left to right: Your Favorite Son, Elder Essler, Elder Smiley,<br />
and Elder Nelson<br />
2. Nissan Z Series parked in Chinatown<br />
3. General Tso's chicken<br />
4. Taco Bell, elder smiley's and mine combined<br />
5. Dennis and Us, I love his smile.<br />
6. The Casper Pillow, I have to look into those.<br />
Bronx Photo Shoot<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-7847858338362899622016-08-31T12:02:00.000-07:002016-08-31T12:02:27.365-07:00Baptismal Dates!Hello everyone, this week has been incredible and the miracles we have<br />
seen have made me so happy. We have a couple baptisimal dates which<br />
I'll talk about in a few seconds. I love the miracles I've been seeing<br />
recently and I know that God has prepared these people to be baptized.<br />
I love it!<br />
<br />
Last Wednesday I got some new sweats and a shirt. We are going to get<br />
some super cheap ones from Burlington coat factory today. We went to<br />
the hydes afterwards for a delicious dinner, we had huge burgers. Yum.<br />
Brother Hyde is awesome and he is our elders quorum president so he<br />
wants to have us help find less actives and get their info in our<br />
records or send them off to the current address. Brother Hyde<br />
suggested that we go to Bermuda one weekend towards the end of our<br />
mission because of how cheap it is. Haha as a joke of course.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had weekly planning and then we got roped into helping do<br />
a musical number. We had to go meet at the 87th street chapel and we<br />
sang the children's song "When I am baptized" and eventually we got it<br />
down. It was with Elders Nelson and Essler, and Sisters Schwarting and<br />
Coffee. It sounded good! We then headed back and ate some food and did<br />
some less active look ups and then met with Dennis and had our bishop<br />
sit in on the lesson. We taught the gospel of Jesus Christ and we set<br />
a baptismal date for August 27th with Dennis! He is really excited and<br />
he wants it! It was slightly emotional for him. We were so excited<br />
after he left! We told all the bishopric about Dennis and his<br />
baptismal date and they were super excited too! It's so awesome!<br />
<br />
Friday we did a lot of weekly planning, some look ups and then had a<br />
dinner with the Doxfords. We did some street contacting outside their<br />
apartment and talked with some cool people and gave a Book of Mormon<br />
out. The Doxfords are awesome! We had such a good conversation with<br />
them and they are awesome. They have 2 kids so they were switching<br />
back and forth and taking turns eating and talking with us. They have<br />
a wonderful family, I love them! Brother Doxford told me of a new<br />
Coldplay album and that blew my mind! I'm pretty excited to listen to<br />
it. A head full of dreams. Anyways we talked to this dude named Tony<br />
right outside their building on the way out who lives in the Bronx. He<br />
is from Dublin and told us we should visit there. He took a Book of<br />
Mormon so that's pretty dope!<br />
<br />
Saturday we helped a less active move, her name is Jolene. She didn't<br />
have too much stuff since it is New York. We had 2 of our members from<br />
the elders quorum come help us out and also her friend from Jersey. We<br />
got it done in less than 2 hours. We then went to a baptism, and<br />
Dennis came! Woot! He loved the baptism! We sang for a musical number.<br />
The spirit was super strong and Dennis felt it. He already knows who<br />
he wants to baptize him and who he wants to stand in the confirmation<br />
circle. He asked if I would stand in the circle. I told him of course.<br />
He wants 3 people in the circle to represent the Trinity aka the a<br />
Godhead. He really liked it! We had to go back to our church pretty<br />
quickly afterwards to start filling up our font for a Chinatown<br />
baptism. We did studies and for dinner we ate dollar slices with a<br />
monster to drink. Afterwards elder smiley did feel well and he threw<br />
up. It was hard for him but it was all good. Our zone leader asked for<br />
us to give a training on the new district videos they are working on.<br />
The church wants us to use Facebook a lot currently so we can be more<br />
effective missionaries and these videos really illustrate how we can<br />
use Facebook. I cannot wait to use Facebook more in our teaching,<br />
following up and how we can help investigators to progress!<br />
<br />
Sunday we went to church and Dennis, Yun and Reggie came. Some of Yuns<br />
questions were answered with the gospel principles class. He wants to<br />
know how to pray more and how to receive answers. Dennis introduced<br />
himself in the combine 3rd hour and told everyone he's getting<br />
baptized on August 27th so that was nice. After we went on a split. I<br />
went with brother poon to teach Yun and elder smiley went with brother<br />
Leal to teach Dennis and it was awesome! 2 member presents in 30<br />
minutes. We then taught Kevin who came out of the blue from meeting<br />
with bishop. He asked when we could meet and we told him right now. We<br />
met. He wants to get baptized. We set a date with him for September<br />
10th and that went well. We were bold with him and told him everything<br />
he needs to fix in his life. He wanted us to go to sauce and get his<br />
wallet and bring a bath bomb that costs $57 and give it to her. We<br />
told Kevin that he needs to stop seeing sauce. He agreed. It was a<br />
wonderful visit and the spirit was there and Kevin is going to change!<br />
Woot! We ate and then had coordination and that went very well. We had<br />
a lot to report and I guess it's been the most we have reported for a<br />
long time. We are seeing miracles and I love it! Hopefully we will<br />
have many baptisms in the following months!<br />
<br />
Monday we went to the Lincoln Center Chapel and we had a 3 hour long<br />
zone meeting so it was fun. It was all about technology and how to use<br />
Facebook. We had to leave a little early and go to help a member move.<br />
Their names are the Hartleys, they are moving to Baltimore! Sister<br />
Hartleys Brother got drafted on the Ravens football team, his name is<br />
Alex. We moved from 2:30 to 7.. Yeah it was intense but it was really<br />
fun and good service! Brother Hartley got to the point where he was<br />
going crazy, he was riding the bell cart through the hallways and he<br />
was throwing stuff up into the truck by the end of it. His arms were<br />
cramping up and it was fun, we did a lot and carried a bunch. It<br />
didn't help much for my sickness. I started getting sick on Monday and<br />
now I'm pretty sick, it's not fun. I can man it up and I'll be fine!<br />
We had some good dominoes pizza while we were there. We had a lot of<br />
fun, it was great. I love doing manual labor. We were standing outside<br />
and this girl saw us and asked us, "why are you guys wearing the Book<br />
of Mormon thing?" We told her that we were the real deal and yeah it<br />
was a good opportunity! It was a great day!<br />
<br />
Tuesday we went on a mini split, so elder smiley and elder lo(one of<br />
the Chinatown elders) could go to Scarsdale. I got to go to a Chinese<br />
coordination meeting. I sat there for an hour and didn't understand a<br />
word they said! It was great! We had rice and some fish mixed with<br />
vegetables and it was good! We started doing some service and then our<br />
companions got back. We did some good deed dares at Washington square<br />
park. On our way to dinner our investigator Dennis called us and told<br />
us that he cleared his entire schedule until the day after his<br />
baptism. He wanted to meet tonight. We went to Grimaldis on 6th ave in<br />
our area (so we can go when I get back and stay in our area! The funny<br />
thing is that there really is no line too!) That was the best pizza<br />
I've ever had. We asked brother Tarbet to come with us to teach<br />
Dennis. We taught him the Law of Chastity and he had no problems! It<br />
was a super spiritual lesson! We have had members at every lesson too!<br />
It feels super good! It was a great way to end out the night! I love<br />
it!<br />
<br />
I just finished the Book of Mormon on Sunday and I know the Book of<br />
Mormon is true. I know it has blessed my life tremendously and I love<br />
it. Everytime I read it, something new sticks out to me. I know that<br />
Joseph Smith translated the gold plates though the power of God and<br />
that we have the priesthood again on the earth. We have the authority<br />
to act in Gods name and we have a prophet leading Christs church. I<br />
love this church and I'm always going to love it. I love you all, have<br />
a wonderful week, talk to you later!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
1. Staten Island Ferry<br />
2. & 3. Bronx Pants Fashion<br />
4. Dollar slice and a monster<br />
5 and 6. Brother Hartley and us in their apartment.<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-25401078629439784162016-08-31T11:56:00.001-07:002016-08-31T11:56:20.551-07:00Meetings For DaysHello everyone, this week has been awesome. We have had a lot of<br />
meetings, the new missionary meeting and zone conference. It has been<br />
a very spiritually uplifting week and we have seen a lot of cool<br />
things happen and I've been receiving answers to prayers so that's<br />
always nice.<br />
<br />
Last Wednesday a member from Poughkeepsie that I have grown to love<br />
here on the mission took us to this place called Bareburger and I had<br />
a Bison burger called El Matador. It was delicious. We even got some<br />
milkshakes, chocolate, peanut butter, banana shake. Was it good! The<br />
message we shared ended up getting turned around on us and I got to<br />
think the ways that I've been blessed since I have been on my mission<br />
and the blessings that you are seeing to have me here on a mission. A<br />
choice to serve a mission blesses everyone and that's so incredible. I<br />
love my mission! I love his mission!<br />
<br />
Thursday was a good day, we did some weekly planning at the apartment<br />
but then had to go to the church to finish it up because we needed<br />
Internet to plan more effectively. We did a lot of look ups afterwards<br />
and then had dinner at the Vogelmann's and we had this delicious sauce<br />
called Tepinade (I don't know how to spell it), we had a lesson with<br />
Dennis again and we had invited brother Andersen and then he invited<br />
his wife so we had them both. We read 2 Nephi 31 with him to show how<br />
the doctrine of Christ is in the Book of Mormon. He really liked it<br />
but he needs to continue to learn and he has a lot of questions. He<br />
has some good friendshippers. He has been thinking about baptism a lot<br />
lately and he probably will get baptized next month. Let's hope and<br />
pray for him to! Bishop got to meet him too. My companion was in the<br />
bathroom and I was talking to bishop and then he saw a mouse behind a<br />
door so he grabs an umbrella and he tells me to put my foot at the<br />
back end of the door so the mouse can't get out and then he starts<br />
shoving the umbrella behind the open door through the crack and as he<br />
goes in the mouse bolts out and starts running down the hallway.<br />
Bishop is trying to hit it and it launches against a wall and it<br />
continues to run and we lose it. That was an incredible experience.<br />
Mouse chase with Bishop! Highlight of my day! Brother Andersen also<br />
gave me advice on how to get huge arms.. I hope I can get huge arms<br />
one day.. Not too big but definitely big. Anyways it's always nice to<br />
have members teach with us because they say the perfect thing that<br />
needs to be said to our investigator.<br />
<br />
Friday was awesome, we had to get up at 5:30 to get ready so we could<br />
make it to Scarsdale for the new missionary meeting. That meeting is<br />
always incredible. I love introducing my companion and I love elder<br />
smiley so much! He is incredible and hard working and I love him. The<br />
more I serve with him the more I learn and man do I have to be humble.<br />
It's great, I love it. We did a lot of street contacting out front of<br />
our church and talked to this lady named Sharice Williams. We had<br />
dinner with one of our members, sister Cabral. We had Pastalitos and<br />
there was chicken and cheese inside of this little tortilla that is<br />
deep fried. It was good. She has 4 less active sons who we want to try<br />
to work with to help them come back into activity. One wants to go on<br />
a mission but he will need a lot of work. It was a very good lesson<br />
and we gave a blessing to one of her sons. I love blessings, I never<br />
remember what was said but I know that's because it's what God wants<br />
to be said and we are just the mouth piece.<br />
<br />
Saturday I got my cavity filled and I have pretty good dental hygiene<br />
so that's good. Only 1 cavity! It was awesome, I could eat sugar again<br />
without my teeth hurting. We had coordination after getting some<br />
dollar slices to eat for lunch. We did the district APF in Columbus<br />
circle and we had the big Book of Mormon sign and we gave a lot of<br />
books out, that was incredible! It's cool to "flood the earth with the<br />
Book of Mormon" everyone needs it and people took it! Awesome. That<br />
board is heavier than it should be, haha. It's a good work out for<br />
sure. We looked up some of our peeps after getting some ice cream<br />
haha. McDonald's ice cream is really good for some reason. We did see<br />
one of our less actives but he can't meet too frequently so we talked<br />
with him at the door and committed him to go to church whenever he<br />
can.<br />
<br />
Sunday we got to church fairly early and elder smiley got roped into<br />
singing in the choir. Church was amazing. Happy Pioneer Sunday! We had<br />
Dennis and Reggie sit with us. Dennis really liked church and<br />
afterwards he asked how soon could he get baptized. We told him less<br />
than a month and he was like oh okay. He was telling us that he<br />
doesn't have too much longer so he wants to get baptized if he needs<br />
too. We are trying to get him as many fellow shippers as possible so<br />
when the baptism comes around he will be able to choose who he wants<br />
to baptize him and who he wants to confirm him. I love Dennis. We went<br />
home and ate a quick lunch and did a quick study and took the<br />
sacrament to Karin Altmayer again. We gave a Book of Mormon to the<br />
front desk dude, he lives in the Bronx so we gave him the number of<br />
those missionaries. Karin told us her life story and her and her<br />
husbands conversion. She is a sweetheart and she is a good missionary.<br />
She told her roommate and we gave her a Book of Mormon. It was<br />
incredible. Karin is like a grandmother figure to me, she is way nice<br />
and I truly do love her. We did a lot of contacting and Tracting, it<br />
was AWESOME! Missionary work is the GREATEST!<br />
<br />
Monday we had leadership meeting and elder Wulff (who is our zone<br />
leader) is trying to change a lot in our zone and it's awesome. We a<br />
trying to find people in our area instead of people who live<br />
elsewhere. New York is a tourist place so we will find people who live<br />
outside of our area but we can find people who live in our area.<br />
District meeting was awesome. There is a fire burning in our district<br />
and we are trying to give out as many book of Mormons as possible and<br />
I love seeing miracles. We were doing the Book of Mormon board out<br />
front of our church but "bees from hell pushed us to do something<br />
else" bees were attacking us but mostly elder smiley. We did some<br />
Tracting and then we were going to get food and a torrential downpour<br />
for hours happened. We got soaked. Went and got an entire 2 bros pizza<br />
for $8 and ran through the rain with it. It was awesome and we met<br />
with our investigator Yun. He is doing good. He has been trying to<br />
pray more and he wants to get answers but luckily we brought brother<br />
Murdoch to help him understand the role of God. It was a super good<br />
lesson!<br />
<br />
Tuesday we had zone conference! I love zone conference. President<br />
promised us that there is someone in our area book that is ready to be<br />
baptized, we need to be very prayerful about that. Sister smith talked<br />
to us about how the Book of Mormon is the only book that claims to be<br />
delivered by an Angel. We got to do a roleplay in front of everyone<br />
and that was pretty nerve wrecking. It was an awesome lesson though<br />
and we used the 3rd paragraph in the introduction to introduce the<br />
Book of Mormon to people. It's cool! President wants us to use<br />
Facebook to see how many friends members have to also invite them to<br />
invite their friends to see them speak or tell everyone that they will<br />
be giving a lesson. It's definitely inspired. President talked about<br />
how much he cared when he proposed to sister smith and he knew it was<br />
going to be eternal. It was awesome. Also we need to work with bishop<br />
more and help him in any way. God answered my prayer through<br />
president. President told us if we want to have our prayers more<br />
meaningful, visualize who we are speaking too. Where is God around<br />
you. Is he kneeling near you, is he sitting on the bed, are you with<br />
god? It's a cool thought. Prayer is a conversation between you and<br />
God. He will answer back. We got a new phone too so we spent 2 hours<br />
setting that up and changing contacts so we could do our work more<br />
effectively. We also saw one of our investigators and did 20 minutes<br />
of personal study to end out the night. Kevin flaked on us again so<br />
that's dumb.<br />
<br />
Today we are going to Burlington coat factory so I can get some<br />
pajamas. Then we are going to Buffalo Wild Wings. I love Bdubbs!<br />
<br />
In the book of Ether it's talking about all the Kings that overthrow<br />
the kingdom and reign in righteousness or reign in wickedness. There<br />
was a king called Moron who was wicked. Moron did that which was<br />
wicked before the lord. He rebelled against the lord and he dwelt in<br />
captivity all his days. There is a lot we can learn from the story. If<br />
we are morons and do wickedness we will dwell in captivity and be<br />
unhappy. So let us not be morons.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. Bare burgers bear out front and brother smith on the left.<br />
2. Milkshake of deliciousness.<br />
3. Casper, better sleep for everyone.. Haha it's because you're a ghost.<br />
4. Someone took a picture of us and it turns out it was president<br />
smiths cousin. President told us at zone conference that he told his<br />
cousin "I always tell the missionaries to carry a Book of Mormon<br />
wherever they go." He posted it on Instagram and it will be on the<br />
mission blog.<br />
5. Doctor who comic.<br />
6. When you're bored in the morning.<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-8677882149837272272016-08-31T11:51:00.000-07:002016-08-31T11:51:03.912-07:00Mission Leadership CouncilHello everyone, this week has been awesome! We are seeing miracles, it<br />
has been a little bit more tough this week but it has helped us<br />
appreciate the miracles. It has been pretty hot the past few days<br />
which is awesome because I'm losing so much weight! I'm almost under<br />
190! It's fantastic! We have had cool opportunities to talk to people<br />
and to share the gospel. Elder Smiley cam so prepared, he is really<br />
good at teaching people and asking questions so I've been learning a<br />
lot from him. It's awesome.<br />
<br />
Wednesday we got to talk with this guy who has a motorcycle, it was an<br />
easy conversation starter but he wasn't interested. He did want the<br />
church address. We had a dinner with the calls too and they are super<br />
awesome and chill but it was a great dinner! We also talked with this<br />
fellow named Brent.. He had no arms. He's homeless and he helps other<br />
homeless people by giving them money and food, he was pretty drunk<br />
though but he talked with us.. It was interesting. It was one of those<br />
experiences that you will remember. We were in Chinatown so he was<br />
pointing to all the Chinese individuals, and talking about how they<br />
don't care to hear the gospel.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had weekly planning, then we had to go to the Lincoln<br />
Square Chapel for a Mission Leadership Council with all the leaders in<br />
the city zones and their companions. It was fantastic, all about how<br />
we can be better leaders and what we can do to help our<br />
districts/Zones. It was an an awesome meeting, it went an hour over<br />
and then president gave us some cliff Builders mint chocolate chip<br />
protein bars. They are by far my favorite protein bar. President talks<br />
about how the thoughts from Satan come, like "Have you even done any<br />
good in the mission?" And president told us to cast those thoughts<br />
away because we have done good, a lot of good. We had to continue<br />
planning, then have dinner with a member family, the Shumways. They<br />
are super awesome! I love them so much! It was a great dinner too. We<br />
were supposed to meet with our bishop but he had to cancel.. Sadly. We<br />
gave out a couple copies of the Book of Mormon so that's good!<br />
<br />
Friday we had a good day. We called Dennis in the morning to see if<br />
maybe we could meet on Saturday and he told us that we are pushing him<br />
too much, he said that he would be at church though. We aren't gonna<br />
push him, it's all up to him. We did teach this guy named Quindral as<br />
we looked up one of our potentials, we looked up another one, tracted<br />
then ran into this guy named Joshua. He wasn't interested at all but<br />
he let us talk to his Spanish grandma, so I talked to her in my best<br />
Spanish (which isn't too great) but we have her the number of the<br />
Spanish elders and she said that she would call them. Josh suddenly<br />
became interested, we talked about the Book of Mormon and he wanted to<br />
come to church and to meet with us more. That was legit. We had an<br />
appointment with Kevin, he flaked so we stood outside the church with<br />
a Book of Mormon board, handing out book of Mormons. We to this lady<br />
named Pam who seems legit. She wants to go to church! Yay! Too bad she<br />
belongs to another area. We handed out a few books too and it is cool<br />
to talk with people.<br />
<br />
Saturday we had Coordination first thing and that went good! We did<br />
the Book of Mormon board and had this lady named Monique come up to us<br />
and ask for a Book of Mormon and she told us she wants to learn. She<br />
gave us her number too, the sisters called her and it turns out that<br />
isn't her number. That's sad. Miguel Lanier came down from White<br />
Plains (my 3rd area) and we got food with him and he stayed with us<br />
and went to an APF with us at the Bethesda Fountains. It's so weird to<br />
see him a year later and we both look different but I do have a<br />
picture to send you guys of us. He's way legit. At the Bethesda<br />
fountains we had this guy from New Jersey walk up to us and tell us<br />
that he wants to learn more and we ended up teaching him a principle<br />
from every lesson in preach my gospel. It was wonderful! I love having<br />
the opportunity to talk with everyone! It's awesome to be able to just<br />
open my mouth, elder smiley told me that I just talk with everyone but<br />
it's funny because he takes awhile to say stuff to people and it's<br />
cool to see the difference. I'm so used to doing it. I love talking to<br />
people. It was raining randomly too so we had to keep moving the board<br />
under cover and take it out but it's wonderful!<br />
<br />
Sunday we had church, I love church! We had Dennis, and Albert came.<br />
Also Reggie who should be going to the 87th street chapel. They are<br />
all awesome! Church was fantastic!! Dennis liked it a lot, we are<br />
meeting with him tomorrow and we are having the 1st counsellor in the<br />
bishopric come with us! It's gonna be awesome! We brought the<br />
sacrament to Karin Altmayer again and she asked us to give her a<br />
blessing, I love being able to use the priesthood and I'm grateful I'm<br />
worthy to answer the call and bless someone's life. She is amazing,<br />
she loves us. She calls us the salt of the earth. It was incredible.<br />
One thing I do not like is the subways on the weekends. They go crazy.<br />
We had to walk over a mile to our dinner in the blazing sun! That was<br />
fun! I love the members here. We also saw Kevin, he told us that we<br />
could meet on Monday so we were excited.<br />
<br />
Monday we had district meeting and it was awesome! We made a goal to<br />
hand out a Book of Mormon a day per companionship. The goal was 21 and<br />
we got 42 handed out as a district! We got some dollar slices and ate<br />
at the church. We did some 12 week and did some role plays for how to<br />
begin teaching. It was great. Kevin didn't show up. We did the Book of<br />
Mormon board and talked to a lot of people. We were out and a bout and<br />
tried to talk with many people.<br />
<br />
Tuesday we did a look up and got mail, did an APF at Washington<br />
square. We did the good deed dares and it was awesome to see how many<br />
people came up to us. We met a lot of people from Houston Texas too.<br />
We were able to talk with this dude who is a minister in Houston and<br />
has a really good Mormon friend. He sent a selfie of us all to his<br />
friend and captioned it CTR. This other dude asked us "is there<br />
anything that you need in New York that you don't have?" Our sisters<br />
said no. Haha but it was so awesome. I love the people here. We did a<br />
few look ups and elder smiley needed some short sleeve shirts so we<br />
went and got some. I bought a $15 Van Heusen long sleeve and I'm now a<br />
15 and a half neck size! Woot woot! Too bad the shirt had a hole so I<br />
need to switch it out.<br />
<br />
Today we are getting a hair cut and yeah it's awesome. I found this scripture<br />
<br />
Ephesians 6:1-3<br />
<br />
"Children, obey your parents in the Lord: for this is right.<br />
<br />
Honour thy father and mother; (which is the first commandment with promise;)<br />
<br />
That it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth."<br />
<br />
I love that promise in verse 3, thou Mayest live long on the earth.<br />
Seriously honor your father and your mother. I love you mom and dad,<br />
I've grown to love you guys so much since I've been on my mission and<br />
I can't wait to see you guys. Thank you so much. Ephesians 6 talks<br />
about the armor of God too, go study that. I love you guys, thanks for<br />
all you do for me!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1&2. Miguel and I<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-39820714403041289892016-08-31T11:46:00.001-07:002016-08-31T11:46:32.879-07:00Suprise I'm Training!Hello, so as you can see by the email title, Surprise I'm training!<br />
His name is Elder Westin Smiley (and yes he does smile) and he is from<br />
Saudi Arabia! Originally from Colorado but he has been living in Saudi<br />
Arabia for the past 3 years, he loves it there and it has been an<br />
interesting conversation starter. He is super awesome, he has so much<br />
in common. He reminds me of myself when I first started my mission and<br />
I asked him what his favorite music is and he said "Anything but Rap<br />
and Country", and that's exactly what I like. It is way awesome, I<br />
can't believe I got someone who likes what I like. He even played<br />
tennis because he's not a sport guy, just like me. He is so cool. Talk<br />
more about him later.<br />
<br />
Last Wednesday we played Gatorball and it was super fun, it was some<br />
serious good exercise. It's always good to play sports on your Pday so<br />
you can relieve some stress and usually we would have trainer calls<br />
that night, I didn't get one so I assumed I was clear.<br />
<br />
Thursday we did planning and street contacting.. It wasn't super<br />
successful but we did talk to some cool people. Even a dude told us<br />
after he rejected us and we kept trying, "I'm shocked at your<br />
persistence in the face of rejection".<br />
<br />
Friday we had an awesome day, we had faith and set a goal of 3 other<br />
lessons taught and we got it! First we had Daniel, he thought that if<br />
he joined our church he had to practice polygamy and that made him<br />
uncomfortable, we cleared that up for him and he told us he still<br />
wants to learn. Then we met Jimmy at our church and taught him the<br />
plan of salvation and he committed to going to church in Brooklyn<br />
(Where he lives) but he didn't but now the elders over there are in<br />
contact with him. He told us that he wants to be baptized and he<br />
totally will be baptized. He wants a church family and boy will he get<br />
one. We then met with this kid named Niyiin (pronounced Nie-yeen) and<br />
he is super cool and not too religious. We invited him to church and<br />
he said he wants to learn more. I asked him after we told him about<br />
church, "what are you doing Sunday at 10am?" He replies "Probably<br />
going to church". It was fantastic. We also saw Carlos after and we<br />
had a good talk with him but we had to leave. We followed up on the<br />
Book of Mormon and he said he will read it. We were seriously blessed<br />
to have those lessons, one right after the other. We also got to help<br />
our bishop take down a bunch of tables that the ASL Branch set up for<br />
their party the following day. Bishops son was being baptized so we<br />
helped him take down all the tables and got to talk with him a bit.<br />
<br />
Saturday we went to the baptism of Bishops son Merrick Arnett. We were<br />
the witnesses and it's always a humbling experience because we get to<br />
use the priesthood to witness the baptism to make sure it is performed<br />
correctly and spoken correctly. We also had Yun Tian come to the<br />
baptism! We stayed after and talked with the members and had some good<br />
desert as well. We had an APF at the Bethesda fountains but we had to<br />
leave early because we went to help a new member move from Astoria<br />
Queens into our area. It was super awesome. They were cool guys and<br />
the girl is a little less active so hopefully she will come to church.<br />
After dinner on our way home we were walking to the projects and<br />
President Smith calls. He says "As I've been pondering transfers, I<br />
feel to call you as a trainer". I felt like he was gonna call me as an<br />
assistant, or a zone leader but I'm fine with a trainer. We did some<br />
looks ups but there was no success. We got our transfer calls and our<br />
entire zone is either whitewash training, just training or being<br />
transferred. 2 companionships stayed the same, that's it. Elder Casela<br />
is going to Yorktown, the former AP is our sole zone leader who is<br />
training. It's super crazy what happened this cycle but I guess that's<br />
what the Lord wants.<br />
<br />
Sunday was awesome, elder Casela said a lot of goodbyes. Dennis, Yun<br />
and Reggie came to church so that's exciting. The talks were amazing,<br />
brother Tarbet gave an amazing talk about shaking off the chains of<br />
the devil. He also talked about the sealed on earth, is sealed in<br />
heaven and loosed on earth, is loosed in heaven. He talked about how<br />
if we repent that sin can be loosed on earth and in heaven because of<br />
the priesthood authority that's in our church. It is seriously<br />
wonderful. It blew my mind. Dennis couldn't stay after the sacrament<br />
but he will come again next week! Yun and Reggie stayed for all 3<br />
hours. We taught Yun the restoration right after church as simply as<br />
we could. He had a lot of questions and we helped him understand words<br />
and helped him relate them to other words he knows so it makes sense.<br />
We will have to go over it a bit more but he liked it and understands<br />
it. Then some members taught him with us about understanding the<br />
answers to his prayers so that's incredible. There was a ward picnic<br />
that night too, before that we brought the sacrament to a member from<br />
Vermont who was baptized here in Manhattan. Yun came to the picnic and<br />
stayed a while, we talked with a lot of members. It was a wonderful<br />
night. Elder Casela had a bit of packing to do.<br />
<br />
Monday was incredible too, we had district meeting, the last one of<br />
this cycle! It was good, we talked about some finding ideas and one<br />
idea that was brought up was having a ward event and we all want to do<br />
that in our wards. It's gonna be sweet.. We will see what happens. The<br />
spirit was strong. We had some dollar slices and got some chips and I<br />
got a Mountain Dew grape kickstart. We had a good time and talked with<br />
elders Newbold and Tatafu, because they are leaving. Sadly. We did<br />
some finding and street contacting to invite people to come see what<br />
our church looks like on the inside. Elder Casela had to pack so I<br />
cleaned the apartment. I was getting pretty nervous to train, but I<br />
slept pretty good.<br />
<br />
Tuesday morning we woke up at 5:30, took all of elder Casela's stuff<br />
with us to go to Grand Central station so I could split with another<br />
trainer. It's really bizarre but it was super fun. We planned a sweet<br />
Pday, we are going to the natural history museum, it's donation day! I<br />
then met elder Westin Smiley from Saudi Arabia! He is cool and we<br />
seriously have so much in common, like everything is in common. He is<br />
a really cool dude, he also reminds me of Garrett a little bit. He<br />
likes a lot of the same things I like. I love him so much, he is such<br />
a good guy and has a good heart and I'm grateful to be able to learn<br />
from his example as I train him. I'm pretty sure he will teach me more<br />
than I will teach him. We went back to the apartment to drop off his<br />
stuff and we were able to talk with everyone, conversations just<br />
flowed. It's wonderful. We went to Washington Square Park and we did<br />
the good deed dares and talked to this guy named John, everything he<br />
was saying was what we would say as missionaries, he was teaching us a<br />
lot of what we already know and believe. Elder Smiley has such a<br />
strong spirit and he was guided by that, he did most of the teaching<br />
and I just testified to what he said. We gave out 4 copies of the Book<br />
of Mormon. We also taught Dennis the Plan of Salvation and Dennis told<br />
us that this isn't contradictory in any way, it's just more in depth<br />
than what any church could tell him. He's also opened to the idea of<br />
baptism. It was so spiritual! We had a fantastic spiritual lesson and<br />
I was praying for my companion and testifying to what he said. We were<br />
both dead tired but it was wonderful to be able to do the lords work.<br />
<br />
I am so grateful to be a missionary here in New York, I have grown so<br />
much here in New York. This is where I have found my Jesus and I am<br />
grateful for every single minute that I can serve here. It is hard but<br />
it's so rewarding. I have been out for 20 months so you could say that<br />
I'm an old missionary, I feel old every single day. Every night<br />
everything hurts but I wake up in the morning and somehow I don't hurt<br />
anymore. I love you, I pray for you. I hope you have a wonderful week!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1-3.At the ward picnic, Yun is the Asian dude in the 1st in 3rd photo<br />
and he is awesome!<br />
4. Bro pizza party!<br />
5. New York City!<br />
Natural History Museum<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-2590708616462504882016-08-31T11:39:00.000-07:002016-08-31T11:39:12.717-07:00Happy Independence Day!Hello everyone, I love being a missionary. Happy Independence Day, God<br />
bless America! It was wonderful this week, there has been a lot of<br />
cool experiences, starting last Wednesday after Pday ended. We went to<br />
go see Kevin because we had an appointment scheduled. We got there, he<br />
wasn't there so we decided to go Tracting. We were knocking doors on<br />
the top floor, this little kid runs out naked down the hall.. Awkward.<br />
Then we talk to his mom, she's not interested. The door directly<br />
across from hers was interested. We told her we were missionaries, she<br />
opened the door and told us she has diabetis so she can't stand for<br />
long. We shared the Hallelujah video with her and halfway through she<br />
says "I lost my sister recently" and I kept that in my mind until<br />
after the video ended. We talked about how she will see her sister<br />
again and testified of the plan of salvation. She was crying the whole<br />
time we were speaking. As we prayed for her and her sister who needs a<br />
liver, she was crying. We testified that God sent us here to tell her<br />
this and that she can know. That was the strongest I've ever felt the<br />
spirit on my entire mission as I testified to someone. I love that<br />
feeling. It was incredible! I want to feel that same spirit every day,<br />
it made me cry because I felt the love that God has for her, I knew<br />
the spirit was there and it testified through us. We felt love. It was<br />
incredible. What a great way to end our night out.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had a conference call, where president talked about how<br />
some investigators are changing based on our emails to him. We had<br />
weekly planning, and had a super great week planned out, and texted a<br />
lot of members. It was good. We had dinner with a member, brother<br />
wood. He took us to this place called Mamouns, which is like a falafel<br />
sandwich place. It was super good. We had pita bread, hummus, and baba<br />
ga nooush. So yummy! Then we went to this place called Rocco's, there<br />
I had the best cannoli that I've ever had, when we come back I'll take<br />
you there. Brother wood is awesome, he is a shirt designer. He is<br />
gonna hook me up with his shirts for free. They are $78. We are about<br />
the same so they should look good. Haha he is such an awesome member.<br />
Him and his wife do a lot of traveling, they are awesome! His wife was<br />
out of town but her parents are in Loomis, they are in our stake!<br />
Woot!<br />
<br />
Friday we did an APF at bethesda fountains. We used the huge world map<br />
again and talked to a lot of people. For some reason people wouldn't<br />
come put where they are from on our map. It really bugged us but we<br />
were happy and kept talking to people. It was super cool. Elders<br />
Newbold, Tatafu, Driggs and Stevens came with and it was cool to talk<br />
with people. We did give out a few book of Mormons so that was cool.<br />
We looked up a few people had dinner and did more look ups. We did<br />
call sauce and she gave us a referral, her assistant. He is a non paid<br />
assistant, he just does things for her. It's weird. She's broke.<br />
That's why they live in projects.<br />
<br />
Saturday morning we helped a member named Bryant move. He lives on the<br />
5th floor in Chinatown. It was a good work out for sure. They offered<br />
to feed us lunch. His wife is Japanese, they both speak it. we had<br />
coordination, then Lunch up at 35th street, we had this place called<br />
Cho Dang Gol, it's a Korean place. I can actually use chop sticks<br />
better than I could have originally. We talked a lot, I got this beef<br />
and vegetables cooked in a stone bowl with rice at the bottom. It was<br />
really yummy. Bryant is a web developer so we talked a lot, he gave me<br />
some helpful tips on how I can learn how to code, especially since<br />
that is what I want to do when I get home. I got his email. He is<br />
super legit, I love talking to him. He was kind of like me when he was<br />
my age, he played video games and he loved it. It was good, they are<br />
moving to Texas. We went to Washington Square park and did an APF as a<br />
zone. It was good deed dares. It was awesome, so funny story! Elder<br />
Driggs have a couple dares to this guy named Paul and Paul is a little<br />
interesting. There is something up with him. Elder Driggs got a hug<br />
from him, he told us that he thought he was gonna get kissed. He then<br />
came over to me and I talked for a little bit and I got a hand shake.<br />
Right as he was about to leave, elder Burt comes over and says "Has<br />
anyone ever told you that you have a light in your eyes?" And then<br />
Paul hugs elder Burt. We give him a Mormon.org card and he stays and<br />
talks for a while. He goes over to the other elders and talks with<br />
them, hugs them and gets a selfie with them. He comes back over and<br />
tells us he wants a picture with us. We get a picture and gave him the<br />
info for the church in Hoboken New Jersey. He tells us that God has<br />
done a lot for him and that he wants to hang out with us. He ends up<br />
hugging me and kisses my neck, that was weird. He hugs my companion.<br />
We tell him we gotta go. He goes over and the sisters start talking to<br />
him, I thought he was gonna try to hug the sisters.. It would have<br />
been funny but they gave him a handshake and we left. That was a very<br />
weird experience. He didn't understand what we were saying and we were<br />
trying to explain where the churches where and we put them in his<br />
phone. Yeah it was crazy. We gave a church tour to this dude named<br />
Rick Bender. While we were in the elevator he tells us he would be a<br />
hypocrite if he joined the church because he is gay. He said he may<br />
come to church but that he would just go to experience it.<br />
<br />
Sunday we had church and it was super great, I love 3 hours of church!<br />
It's so great! Albert came and so did Reggie. Albert left after<br />
sacrament but Reggie stayed the whole time. We have been trying to<br />
talk with the members more and it's been working, the members are<br />
offering to feed us again. Church was good otherwise. We looked up a<br />
lot of project peeps and we found Jamont home. He said he would come<br />
to our church on Monday for a church tour. We looked up Dennis, he was<br />
the one we got from the zone leaders that is super prepared. He wasn't<br />
home. They have these NYCLink wifi stands and we wanted to see what it<br />
was. It is right next to Dennis's apartment. We were there for<br />
probably 5 minutes, we opened up Mormon.org on the device you can use<br />
so people will open up the Internet and see Mormons. Dennis walks<br />
around the corner and we talk with him for about 10 minutes, he will<br />
come to church this Sunday. It was awesome. If we didn't spend 5<br />
minutes looking at the wifi thing then we wouldn't of seen Dennis.<br />
<br />
Monday we had Zone Meeting! Yay! Elder Burt talked about how to be a<br />
successful missionary, elder Driggs talked about how to gain trust<br />
with the bishop and members, sister Montemayor talked about the<br />
Christlike attribute of hope, and sister Lunt talked about our new<br />
Baptisimal goal in the New York New York North mission. 30.30.30 30<br />
baptisms every 30 days for 3 months, president knows we can accomplish<br />
this and that if we pray in companionships and on our own we can have<br />
90 baptisms in the next 3 months as a mission. It was awesome. We got<br />
Wendy's afterwards, we ate with elder Newbold, Tatafu, Driggs,<br />
Stevens, Essler and Stevenson. We were about to go to Five Guys<br />
instead but chose the cheaper option. We met with Jamont, he liked the<br />
restoration and he said he would be baptized when he knows it's true<br />
and as we meet with him. Elder Newbold and Tatafu came with us to<br />
Columbus circle to do an APF. We talked to so many people. We have a<br />
huge American flag painted board and people came and got pictures with<br />
it, it was pretty successful. So this dude was playing some terrible<br />
music with his speaker, it was loud. I decided to request a song so we<br />
could change the crap music. I requested for A sky full of stars by<br />
Coldplay. It was a lot better than filth. We as missionaries were<br />
appreciative. We were out until about 8, on our way back to the temple<br />
building, everyone and their dog wanted pictures.<br />
<br />
Tuesday we had another APF! We did the good deed dares in Washington<br />
square park. We wanted to leave because it was so hot out but then a<br />
member came and bought us some ice cold water. We talked to some cool<br />
people. I talked to this girl named Alessandria and I gave her good<br />
deeds and she told me I was making her cry. She wants to come to<br />
church. She told me she knows us because her favorite band growing up<br />
was a member. The lead singer from Panic! At the disco. Anyways it was<br />
super cool and she said she would go to church! We got a dollar slice<br />
afterwards, and a vitamin water. It was super good. We found this kid<br />
named Lewis afterwards. We tracted. Nothing too spectacular. It was a<br />
pretty good day. It's been getting a lot warmer outside lately. Today<br />
is Blazin.<br />
<br />
Today we are gonna have some fun playing sports. We also went to an NBA.<br />
<br />
I love preach my gospel, I've been studying about finding people and<br />
it's been strengthening my testimony of how people are prepared.<br />
Everyday as we walk outside, God has been preparing people and it<br />
really requires the members to introduce their friends to the<br />
missionaries. This gospel will bless everyone's life. I know that your<br />
friends will be blessed to. I love you all and I hope you are having a<br />
wonderful week.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. The old new member discussions<br />
2 & 3.American Flag APF<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-30768345519504310232016-08-19T10:07:00.001-07:002016-08-19T10:07:52.097-07:00June's Over, and the change the gospel bringsHello everyone, I literally cannot believe where the month of June<br />
went, I don't even want to know how fast July goes! How crazy is this.<br />
The mission literally flies by, it's too crazy and it's not a good<br />
feeling to know that my mission is coming to a close. Anyways I have<br />
loads of time left so no need to worry!<br />
<br />
Last Wednesday we got our hairs cut so that was nice, I look better<br />
than ever! Haha as always, just kidding.. But I think I look handsome,<br />
I don't know maybe it's because I see myself daily, I don't know. It<br />
went a little over and our appointment with Kevin got pushed to<br />
Thursday.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had weekly planning and we felt to text a bunch of members<br />
to ask how they were doing and to see if we could do anything for<br />
them. This led to us having a lot of members offering to come with us<br />
to teach people. It was wonderful though, I also found elder Casela<br />
doesn't really like me all that much, which is fine. We still get<br />
along but it's just we aren't best buds. Sometimes you have companions<br />
like that, but the wish is to have a companion who you get along with<br />
super well and then they become like your bestest friend. That's what<br />
I want. Anyways we went and saw Kevin, but he wasn't there, he went to<br />
the store Zumies, and we went there and it turns out he just got home<br />
right as we got to Zumies. We got to go talk with him and right now he<br />
is super humble, he really wants the gospel and he notices the change<br />
the gospel brings. Whenever him and his girlfriend (Sauce, who is a<br />
member) get into a fight, he will read the Book of Mormon to calm<br />
himself down, they will read it together. That is powerful because it<br />
is true that as you read the Book of Mormon you can calm down. He<br />
remembers quite a bit but it will be a while when he will be baptized.<br />
Whenever we think he's ready, he is getting there but he isn't there<br />
yet. It will probably be August, it depends on if he will move out of<br />
Sauces apartment. We then headed to the Calders for dinner where<br />
brother Calder showed us his newest video for his company. If you<br />
search Anson Calder you can find it, he has a super sweet wallet and a<br />
new bag that he is coming out with. Anyways I absolutely love their<br />
family, it's cool to see their little family and how crazy everything<br />
is. I love it.<br />
<br />
Friday we get a phone call from a fellow who found the Chinatown<br />
missionaries and they gave him our information. He told us he was at<br />
the church, we told him we could be there in half an hour. We booked<br />
it there and gave him a church tour. He really liked our church, we<br />
then taught him the restoration and he just believed everything we<br />
said. He loves it and then we told him about President Monson and his<br />
recent conference address about choices and we said the quote "May we<br />
choose the harder right than the easier wrong." He told us that's what<br />
the other elders talked to him about. He has always made good choices<br />
and he told us the world has hated him for it. He is on a search and<br />
wants to learn about the gospel. He has been reading the Book of<br />
Mormon and had lived it. It's wonderful, miracles! We also talked to a<br />
less active from Florida named Rafael. Cool dude, we gave him a new<br />
Book of Mormon since his was worn out. We also taught Carlos and he<br />
asked us if we could choose the church or the teachings of the Book of<br />
Mormon, what would we choose? We told him that the teachings are the<br />
church. It was a long conversation but a good one. We taught Albert<br />
too that night with our bishop and Brother Hyde. We got a lot of input<br />
this time as we taught and we covered everything. The spirit was<br />
strong. Albert also got emotional thinking of his grandma dying and<br />
that's the beauty of the plan of salvation.<br />
<br />
Saturday morning we did some service, this time we talked to a lot of<br />
people and they know who we are now. I talked to this lady who grew up<br />
in Auburn! She asked if I have ever been to the Lincoln Logs and I<br />
told her I live in Lincoln so I see those logs like every day. It was<br />
cool. We also talked to this guy named Dave, I talked for like 15<br />
minutes about the mission and what we do, he thought it was<br />
incredible. He wasn't interested sadly, but it was a good talk.<br />
Afterwards we went up to Harlem to do an APF, we were gonna tract some<br />
Columbia university housing but a security guard kicked us out. So<br />
yeah we headed all the way back down and did some tracting. We also<br />
went to look up a dude named Tony who we were gonna teach with the<br />
Spanish elders but he said it was a bad time and told us to come back<br />
around 6:30, so we did. We ended up going to his apartment and we went<br />
to the door and no luck but as the other elders were leaving elder<br />
Casela looked over and saw him sitting on the bench so we went to the<br />
other elders and told them and they had a sweet lesson with him! We<br />
did so much tracting that day. Not too much luck though!<br />
<br />
Sunday we had a great turn out at church, we had Albert, Yun, Reggie<br />
and Kevin all come to church. I love 3 hours of church, it really was<br />
awesome. I just love the spirit that you can feel and all the things<br />
we are able to do at church. Really I hope all you love 3 hours too.<br />
It is only a spiritual experience if you make it a spiritual<br />
experience. Kevin flaked out on us after but we talked to a ton of<br />
members who want to feed us! Yay! we love it. Sunday was national<br />
gay pride day or something like that, our church is located in the gay<br />
part of New York and I got checked out way to much by all the gay guys<br />
out. They were everywhere! Crowds all over our area so we couldn't do<br />
much. I felt so uncomfortable, it was no good. It wasn't effective<br />
because no one would listed because they know our church. Yeah. We<br />
were getting stared down, I saw too many things I wish I could Unsee.<br />
Anyways.. Yeah everything was gross, I didn't want to see that.<br />
Everyone said that in Chelsea (the area where the church is located)<br />
it's "Adam and Steve". Also if you remember Lee Samedy (the one who we<br />
taught the doctrine of Christ too) well yeah he went to church with<br />
the Manhattan YSA and he has a baptismal date for July 30th. We will<br />
see what happens but the sisters went by on Wednesday and he was<br />
telling them how excited he was to be able to go to church. He hung<br />
out with the elders the rest of the day and went to a dinner<br />
appointment. Where he was taught the restoration.<br />
<br />
Monday we had a pretty killer district meeting! We talked about the<br />
gift of discernment and the doctrine of Christ and went through and<br />
found scriptures for each of them. We had brownies and Crepes<br />
afterwards for elder Casela's birthday. It was fantastic. It was fun.<br />
We tracted Aton so that was good. We found 1 cool person for our<br />
sisters. Yeah pretty much it.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was wonderful, we had interviews and a zone study with<br />
president smith. In the zone study he talked about how only through<br />
the atonement of Jesus Christ can we have lasting change. And he<br />
showed that. He also talked about developing Christlike attributed and<br />
how that should be something we always try to do. Every week choose<br />
one and try to develop it. It was a wonderful study, how are we<br />
applying what we learned from elder holland as well as elder Bennett.<br />
I loved it! We ate some Halal food with elders Newbold and Tatafu. We<br />
got mail and ate dinner. We tracted and found this one girl who<br />
remembers that missionaries used to stop by to teach her deaf brother<br />
(we have ASL missionaries) like 13 years ago. She is interested in<br />
what's it's like being a Mormon and she wants to come to church. It is<br />
so awesome. We also met with Kevin! Sauce got mad at him and he hasn't<br />
been able to get in all day and he was about to drop us again because<br />
he was saying if God is doing all this to me then I don't want a part<br />
in it. We read Mosiah 24, which talks about the people in bondage and<br />
if they prayed they would be put to death. He loved the counsel the<br />
lord gave to the people. We also showed him some of our favorite<br />
scriptures and he smiled so big as he read it. He just wanted to read<br />
and read and read. He did the opening and closing prayer. He wants to<br />
meet with us today as well. The change you see the gospel make in<br />
someone's life is incredible. I just love seein it. I love Kevin a<br />
lot. He is gonna read the Book of Mormon over and over because he<br />
loves it that much.<br />
<br />
This morning we helped some members move, and we are gonna go to the<br />
temple chapel and go play some sports and chill. I love New York. I<br />
know the gospel is true and I am so grateful to be here. I know that<br />
Jesus Christ's Atonement is real and that we can all use that power to<br />
be forgiven of our sins. The gospel is 100% true, find out for<br />
yourself, pray and ask and you shall receive. Talk to you next week!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. Saw one of our cards on a door to a Hispanic lady.<br />
2. The top sticker is dope.<br />
3. California Republic!<br />
4. A weird statue up in Harlem<br />
5. Too legit to quit!!<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-35903396950154497862016-08-19T10:03:00.001-07:002016-08-19T10:03:58.372-07:00Miraculous Golden InvestigatorHello everyone, this week has been incredible, we have seen so many<br />
miracles happen and it's been awesome! Also I'm finally below 200<br />
pounds, I woke up this morning and weighed myself and it was 197.6 so<br />
yeah that's incredible. I was super happy! It's all the sweating I've<br />
been doing. Yeah I'll go through this awesome week.<br />
<br />
Thursday was fantastic, president did another conference call, it was<br />
about the miracles that have been happening in the mission. We talked<br />
to a lot of people so that's been good, nothing too crazy just some<br />
chill people. I've noticed that people call us elders and when they do<br />
that I always take advantage of that and talk with them, usually they<br />
are active members or sometimes they are less active or just know the<br />
church. It's been a good way to talk with people about the church. We<br />
also dropped Jose Buco, he wanted us to ask our bishop if he could<br />
Scan him with his machine, that was the end of it, he wants to build<br />
his business, not learn about the gospel.<br />
<br />
Friday we had to go to the Lincoln Square building to meet Elders<br />
Newbold, Tatafu, Essler and Stevens, because we were doing another APF<br />
at the Bethesda fountains. So we got to the temple, carried the huge<br />
world map, people always say "You are carrying the world!" So it's<br />
fun. We got to the Bethesda foundations and we talked to a lot of<br />
people like usual. A lot of people didn't want to put where they are<br />
from, we talked to these ladies from Brazil, they taught me some<br />
Portuguese. Yeah. Also elder Stevens and Newbold gave this lady who is<br />
from Mexico a Spanish Book of Mormon, and the lady saw the Book of<br />
Mormon and started crying saying it was in English, even though it was<br />
clearly Spanish. Elder Stevens has a cousin who is serving where this<br />
lady lives. She is totally gonna get baptized. This member came up to<br />
us and we got a picture with her, she has a son on a mission. Air drop<br />
for the win, the perks of having an iPad. We went and met with Carlos<br />
who we talked to for a while. We found out that he believes in<br />
reincarnation, and what he believes is very similar to what we<br />
believe. We told him we would talk about that next time we come. He is<br />
a really cool dude, oh yeah we got some cake! It was pretty cool<br />
though. We also talked about the significance of the beehive for our<br />
church.<br />
<br />
Saturday was depressing, first of all we went to the temple village<br />
and did some service, we made a crap ton of sandwiches, and we helped<br />
wherever possible. 3 people asked about our missions and church. One<br />
lady wants to come to a church because she hasn't found one yet, well<br />
we told her about ours and she said she would come, she didn't on<br />
Sunday though. We went home and ate, we call Jose Martinez who is the<br />
guy we met a few weeks back, he told us that he can't meet anymore and<br />
they won't be coming to church sadly. That made me very upset, so I<br />
washed some dishes because it calmed me down. I love doing the dishes,<br />
it relieved some stress. We had to be at the church to give elder<br />
Stevenson his letter that we had. Elders Stevenson and Essler are<br />
awesome. We then went to coordination and told brother Leal all that<br />
happened, he was pretty upset too. It's all good though. They will<br />
come back they said. We went home and ate, then went to the projects,<br />
and looked up one of our potentials, wasn't home, then another and his<br />
roommate was home. We asked who would be interested so he gave us his<br />
friend across the street who is pastor for his own church. We got<br />
there and he speaks mostly Spanish but some English. They came up<br />
right as we were about to leave, him and his little church group of<br />
all ladies. We talked for a long time with him and one lady was<br />
standing up and shouting about el Diablo, and all that stuff. They<br />
wanted us to pray with them so we stood in a circle holding hands, I<br />
prayed and they were all whispering in Spanish throughout the prayer.<br />
It was pretty weird but it was a cool experience. We are going back<br />
with the Spanish Elders next Saturday, they will preach the word to<br />
him! That was pretty cool.<br />
<br />
Sunday we went to church and none of our investigators were coming but<br />
we did have Myron, and Reggie. They randomly came, Myron came last<br />
week and this week. We also met a family from Gunnison Utah which is<br />
where Elder Burrell is from, it's a small town in Utah. This guy and<br />
his wife came in and they saw my name tag and this lady asked where my<br />
grandparents are from. I used the family tree app and it turns out I<br />
met my cousins! William Casper who is my great great great great<br />
Grandpa had his wife Avarilla Durbin, they had a kid named William<br />
Wallace Casper who had a wife Sarah Ann Bean, it was cool to do some<br />
research with her there. There is an ensign article on her, search<br />
Sarah Ann Bean on LDS.org and you can read it from a while back. It's<br />
cool! Do some family history! Our family has been in the church for<br />
quite some time. Legit! We taught Myron and he has some serious<br />
problems in his life. We gave him the addiction recovery program time<br />
and he is pretty sincere about learning. He says "if you don't know<br />
the LDS church then you live under a rock". He talks about BYU<br />
football and now everyone knows our church. It's cool. Yeah also<br />
Reggie wants to learn too! He is coming next week. Man it is awesome!<br />
We street contacted and talked to this dude who has a cousin who is a<br />
member! How dope is that? He wants to get together and have lunch! The<br />
only problem is that he lives in Brooklyn but we will meet him<br />
somewhere here.<br />
<br />
Monday we had district meeting and our zone leaders came. It was good.<br />
We talked about what we learned from elder Bennett and how we can<br />
continue to apply that. I cannot wait for the day that I don't have to<br />
lead district meetings. Haha. We had waffles afterwards as a district,<br />
one of the sisters saw me doing the dishes and she told me that my<br />
future wife will be happy with me, because I like doing the dishes.<br />
There will never be a dish in the sink when I'm home, haha I don't<br />
know why I hated doing it? We talked to a lot of people, including a<br />
less active member from Jamaica Queens, his name is Cleon Von Dothard,<br />
he wants missionaries over there again so ha we will send them! Yeah<br />
we talked to some cool people, didn't see much success come from it.<br />
It was good though! A member gave us some food to go because we can't<br />
have dinner with the sisters, so we got a little to go bag, it was<br />
chicken enchilada soup! I asked her for the recipe, it's way good.<br />
Yeah. We were able to talk to people and that's pretty incredible,<br />
it's fun to see crazy people as well, this crazy dude came up to us<br />
and asked us what Jesus would do if someone tried punching him, of<br />
course turn the other cheek, but he asked what we would do if someone<br />
came and tried punching us, of course we would defend ourselves.<br />
Anyways as he walked away he was punching invisible air. It's super<br />
funny.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was a miraculous day! So the zone leaders found someone for us<br />
to give a church tour to, his name is Dennis. We came to the church<br />
and the zone leaders were already started but we took over and we<br />
showed him the whole church. He understands everything and he pretty<br />
much agreed with the restoration and believes it's true. He has a<br />
Mormon friend in New Jersey, they will get together and he will tell<br />
her what he thinks of our church. He says he will come to church! He<br />
is super legit, he lives really close to the church too. He told us<br />
that the pope gave a speech and he said that it's alright for us to be<br />
atheist, like what? It's crazy and it really doesn't make too much<br />
sense. He is way legit, he told us that he is on a quest to find what<br />
he needs in his life, we promised him that this is the quest. He is<br />
cool and likes our church. We went home ate, and had to book it to the<br />
church because we found out mail was coming in like half an hour. We<br />
got back to the church and elder Burton and Richards come to the door<br />
and say "hey I got someone for you to meet, this is Sauce and Kevin."<br />
Sauce is a member who was pretty recently baptized and Kevin is her<br />
boyfriend who broke up a while ago but are back together. Kevin was<br />
taught pretty much everything and he was living the gospel and his<br />
life was so much better but then they broke up and his life went on a<br />
down hill spiral. Anyways he want to get baptized. He loves the church<br />
and he has a lot of things to work on but elder Burton was setting<br />
goals with him and he will move out of Sauces house, get a job, stop<br />
smoking weed. He will get baptized within the next couple months. He<br />
needs to be living the commandments for a while before he can get<br />
baptized. He is pretty serious about it too. They will be at church on<br />
Sunday! We are meeting with them on Wednesday. Miracles all around!<br />
Afterwards we did a little APF, and talked to a lot of people. Even<br />
some who went to school in Utah but weren't too interested, they said<br />
"you may see us". It was pretty dope. The last thing we did was go see<br />
Lee Samedy, he talked to us at the door and then said "we can do a<br />
lesson if you would like." So we went in and decided to read 2 Nephi<br />
31 all about the doctrine of Christ. He understands he needs to be<br />
baptized but he works on Sunday the same time that our church is but<br />
luckily we are in Manhattan where there are like 15 wards that meet,<br />
he will go to the YSA ward which meets an hour after he gets off of<br />
work and it's 9 streets away from his work so it will be easy, and he<br />
will be dressed up. It will be awesome!! It's legit to be able to see<br />
all these miracles. I know this is the lords work and he knows when<br />
people are ready to receive the gospel and come closer to him. I love<br />
doing this work and I'm not looking forward to going home because then<br />
I won't be a missionary any longer. I can't believe June is almost<br />
over, like it's unfair. Where does time go? Right out the window. I<br />
know that no effort is wasted, everything we do helps people, no<br />
matter if we are talking to people or if people just see 2 goofy<br />
elders walking down the street with a big smile on their face. You<br />
never know. I love it's,<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. The member we got a picture with.<br />
2. I cracked up hysterically when I saw this.<br />
3. A video I took in the subway station.<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-9554471519562172842016-08-19T09:58:00.001-07:002016-08-19T09:58:13.473-07:00The Peculiar MissionaryHello, this week has been incredible! It has truly brought miracles to<br />
implement what elder Bennett taught us, we have seen cool things<br />
happen because of it. The reason I entitled this email "The Peculiar<br />
Missionary" is because that's what we are, we are weird, why not<br />
embrace it and talk with everyone? It's been really cool to push<br />
myself. Sadly the end of last week I didn't have that push but after<br />
our Zone meeting on Monday I got that increased Desire. I desire to<br />
bring others to Christ, I desire to talk with everyone, I desire to do<br />
heavenly fathers will.<br />
<br />
Last Wednesday we taught 2 people by being bold and straightforward<br />
that we have the most important message you could ever hear. I just<br />
don't care if something is embarrassing anymore, I talk pretty loud on<br />
the train so everyone can hear what I am talking about, especially if<br />
they hear that we have the most important message that they will ever<br />
hear. We taught this guy named Jose Garcia and then Edwin. I love<br />
being weird, that's who I am, I've always been weird, I'll embrace it<br />
now.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had weekly planning, yay! We did some finding too so that<br />
was fun, not too many crazy things happened that day, other than a<br />
dude who saw us and took a picture of me close up and then took a<br />
picture right up close and personal of my face.. I felt awkward, he is<br />
Jewish too so that was weird. I smiled super big though.<br />
<br />
Friday we did an APF with elders Newbold and Tatafu, at the Bethesda<br />
fountains in Central Park. We used the big world map! There was this<br />
group of kids and I asked where they are from, they tell me<br />
California, I tell them me too, I asked where, they said Roseville. I<br />
told them I'm from Lincoln and they said they are from Lincoln too!<br />
They are freshman now. I was shocked! That's the first time that I<br />
have met anyone from Lincoln. I didn't know what to say, they asked<br />
when I graduated from Lincoln High. I told them 2013, they are cool<br />
kids! It was fun talking with them, I didn't tell them where our<br />
church was in Lincoln but hopefully they will talk to some Mormons and<br />
figure it out. We also talked to this lady who is from Houston Texas,<br />
she didn't want to come over to do it but I convinced her, she just<br />
didn't want us talking to her.. Haha. We talked to a bunch of people<br />
thought and it was super fun. We went to see Carlos and he showed us<br />
some banned Mormon cartoon, and got our input on it. We cleared up the<br />
false doctrine and he is super legit. We answered a ton of questions<br />
and got a tour of his work. Legit.<br />
<br />
Saturday we went to do some service at a soup kitchen, we cut onion<br />
and man I thought I was gonna die, my eyes were watering like a baby<br />
and I hate it so much. I did think my eyes were gonna fall out of my<br />
head though. Then we went and cleaned the church, it was fun. We went<br />
home and ate lunch and then had to go to Columbus circle for a Book of<br />
Mormon APF. We just offered so many book of Mormons to every person<br />
that walked by. We had boxes of book of Mormons. I talked to this lady<br />
from Alabama who took the Book of Mormon and was super appreciative of<br />
it. Then I talked to this lady who told me that her daughter told her<br />
to come get the book because "it's the best book you will ever read".<br />
She asked what we were doing and she asked about our missions. Before<br />
she left she gave me a hug.. Yeah but it was sweet because she was<br />
truly grateful for it and she loves us. She even told me that. This<br />
non member who lives in Arizona with his member wife, took a picture<br />
with me at our big Book of Mormon sign. I talked to this guy who is<br />
familiar with California, it turns out when he first married they<br />
lived in Lincoln, he lives in Idaho Falls now. I love people from<br />
Idaho, I just love Idaho. The people are alright.. Haha just kidding,<br />
I love the people there.<br />
<br />
Sunday we had church and the Martinez family didn't come! but Yun<br />
did, it was super awesome to have him come and the meeting was very<br />
spiritual and the gospel principles lesson was on how God is our<br />
father and Yun is learning about God, since he comes from a Chinese<br />
background and knows nothing about God. Also a homeless guy came to<br />
church, we sat next to him. Yeah he stunk. We also found Jay again, it<br />
turns out he does live in the house but his younger brother doesn't<br />
know him as Jay, his real name is Jamont. Very solid dude, we gave him<br />
a Book of Mormon and he wanted to know what to read. Too bad we<br />
couldn't meet with him Monday or Tuesday because he had some stuff<br />
come up, we will be meeting with him soon though. His younger brother<br />
Slater meets with the Young single adult missionaries.<br />
<br />
Monday we had Zone meeting, and we talked about what we learned from<br />
Elder Bennett. Something one of the sister training leaders said was<br />
that we need to line our desires up with what Heavenly Father desires<br />
and that can be an inner struggle. This is something Elder Bennett<br />
said "When Jesus Christ suffered in the garden of Gethsemane for us,<br />
he saw everything we would go through and felt that and all his<br />
godliness, super naturalness, all that power was set aside and he<br />
suffered as a mortal man, exactly how we would feel those pains." That<br />
really means a lot to me, and to know that Jesus Christ suffered<br />
exactly how I would suffer, makes me realize that he does know how to<br />
help each and every one of us. We got some dollar slices, and ate with<br />
8 other elders. I have been getting really good at complimenting other<br />
people, I saw a guy who was wearing a kings hat so I could tell him<br />
I'm from the Sacramento area. Also a guy was wearing a San Francisco<br />
Giants hat so I talked to him. We talked to so many people, we even<br />
followed a guy to the Staten Island ferry so we could tell him the<br />
restoration, to bad he took off running because he was late. We talked<br />
to every person we could. It's cool to have a time I can push myself<br />
to talk to people, even though I don't want to most of the time. We<br />
taught this kid named Bryan, he is cool and we got him to want to read<br />
the Book of Mormon, we will see what happens with him.<br />
<br />
Tuesday we had an incredible time doing a good deed dares APF in<br />
Washington square park. We had this group of girls come over and tell<br />
us how this is the best thing ever. We also talked to this guy from<br />
South Jordan Utah, and he is not a member. He talked to us for a<br />
while. One of the elders came up to him and asked if he was a member<br />
and he was like "No but it's okay though." He is super funny, and he<br />
was with this girl who doesn't know much about the church. Her<br />
neighbors were Mormon but never talked about it. And she only knows a<br />
little so we gave her a pamphlet so she could read it. It was cool to<br />
talk with her! We told her that she is always welcome to come to our<br />
church! She lives in Hartford Connecticut where they are building a<br />
temple. We picked up mail at our church and waited for an hour for the<br />
office elders! It was way to long. We did get the chance to share a<br />
message with our bishop afterwards. It was legit, he wishes so much<br />
that he could be a missionary with us and go hit the streets and find<br />
people to teach. He gave us advice to go and give your all to Heavenly<br />
Father. The sprint was strong. I love our bishop, he has desires to<br />
serve God and he loves us so much and wants us to work hard. I love<br />
him to death. Our appointment flaked on us but that's alright.<br />
<br />
I am grateful to be here serving Christ and doing all I can to bring<br />
people to this great message. I love having the opportunity to study<br />
every morning, I always get something out of my studies too which is<br />
incredible. I love this scripture: "Therefore, that we should waste<br />
and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of<br />
darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from<br />
heaven--" Doctrine and Covenants 123:13 This scripture is magnificent,<br />
we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the<br />
hidden things of darkness. I think a<br />
Of missions and missionary work for all members. Waste and wear out<br />
our lives. I love it. Also happy Father's Day in advance, I love my<br />
dad so much and I'm so grateful for all he has done in my life. If you<br />
go to fatherhood.mormon.org there is a website that talks about<br />
fathers but you can also view the video on the lds.org homepage. Thank<br />
your dads for all they have done for you. They are incredible! I love<br />
you all and I hope you have an incredible week! Talk to you next week.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1&2. Zone picture<br />
3. New Yorker! Pizza place at the bottom left and Empire State<br />
Building in upper right.<br />
4. Elder Newbold (Left) from Sacramento California and elder Tatafu<br />
(Right) from America Samoa.<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-28107840004894121322016-08-19T09:48:00.000-07:002016-08-19T09:48:57.556-07:00Mission Tour with Elder Bennett of the Seventy!Hello, this week has been pretty awesome and yesterday we had a<br />
mission tour with a Elder Bennett. Not too much has happened this last<br />
week but some cool miracles took place!<br />
<br />
Wednesday we went to look up this lady named Senka O'Connor and we<br />
have looked her up numerous times with no luck. Well this was the<br />
perfect time, we knocked on her door and the door behind us opens so<br />
we start teaching and share the Hallelujah video with her. She loved<br />
it and she took a Book of Mormon and after we talked a while we asked<br />
her name and it turns out it's Senka! She wants a copy of the Book of<br />
Mormon in Yugoslavian, we have those in the office, I know because I<br />
saw them. It was super successful, it was nice talking to her. Now we<br />
just need to get a copy for her so she can easily understand.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had weekly planning, when we got to the church we got this<br />
referral named Lawrence Grecco. We called him and he is super<br />
interested in our church. He went to temple square a few years back,<br />
visited the conference center and saw the tabernacle. Lately he has<br />
been doing research on how we do missionary work and he felt inspired<br />
to learn, he also has a wife! Families can be together forever! We<br />
also had to go to the 87th street chapel to get a Spanish Book of<br />
Mormon and pamphlets for Jenny Martinez. I got to see my MTC companion<br />
again, elder Essler (since he is in the same zone as I am). I love it!<br />
We call him Honey Bear, it's been his nickname for his entire mission.<br />
It's great. We got back and finished our planning and then had a<br />
dinner with the Calders! Yay! We had dinner on the roof of their<br />
building, we ate some yummy hamburgers. Brother Calder has a business<br />
and he makes the smallest wallet I've ever seen, it's called the 1/8th<br />
inch wallet, you can search his company, Anson Calder. It's awesome.<br />
They are so awesome, I love em to death! We quickly went into<br />
Century21 and I bought 2 new short sleeve white shirts for the summer.<br />
They were $13 a piece. The brand is Pierre Cardin and I want to buy a<br />
couple long sleeve shirts so I can retire some of my older ones. I'll<br />
probably wait awhile. I also got this super awesome floral tie, for<br />
floral tie Friday. Century21 is the go to place to buy ties, I love<br />
penguin ties, I also love floral ties. Yeah. We ran into a guy who<br />
used to work for Bonneville audio place which is the same company that<br />
does general conference. It's sweet. We met some members from Utah and<br />
when I told them how cheap the shirts are, this guys wife didn't want<br />
to leave until they bought him a new shirt.. I felt bad for the guy.<br />
<br />
Friday was fun, as we are walking to the projects and this guy stops<br />
us, his name is Dave Michaels, he lives in Staten Island and Has met<br />
with missionaries. We talked with him for an hour and he told us his<br />
life story. It was a super cool experience, and he is a good guy. We<br />
had to go and pick up mail. One of the elders convinced us to go get a<br />
gourmet New York donut, so we went to this place and the line is out<br />
the door, 3 stores down so we turn around and go back to the church. I<br />
guess New York donuts are good? Idk Krispy Kreme is here too, good<br />
enough to me! Our appointment with Lawrence canceled until this<br />
Thursday so I'll let you know how it goes! At night we went to go see<br />
a less active and her non member husband to teach them the lessons. We<br />
went with our bishop and our elders quorum president. They taught the<br />
restoration and we added some comments and got some time to speak. We<br />
will be meeting with them pretty regularly! It was super cool and it<br />
was a fun lesson. Their names are Albert (non member) and Lorraine<br />
(less active), they are getting married by bishop super soon. It will<br />
be cool.<br />
<br />
Saturday we did a huge zone APF in Central Park, at the Bethesda<br />
fountains. We had 3 companionships there at a time and we switched off<br />
every hour and a half. Some people flaked though. It was pretty<br />
successful! We talked to a lot of people and had them come put where<br />
they are from on our huge map! It was fun. We talked to a lot of<br />
members. A lot of them kept trying to give us money and some<br />
successfully did. One of them says that general authorities give money<br />
to missionaries. One lady gave us $100 to go buy some ice cream with<br />
all of us. We told her no quite a few times but she persisted. She is<br />
this cute old lady from West Virginia and loves us. We have money to<br />
use for missionary purposes, yay! We stayed there from 12-4 so I got<br />
quite burned. My arms and face were as red as a lobster, whoops my bad<br />
forgetting sun screen. After we left supposedly it poured. We met s<br />
guy who served here in our mission, he got home 3 years ago. He had<br />
the old president smith and president Morgan. It was great. We had<br />
some Brazilian food at the Leals, we had coordination with the<br />
sisters. The food was amazing! Brother Leal talked about his play<br />
station 4 to me, and showed me the game he was playing right as we<br />
came in. It's a good game. Anyways. I love their family.<br />
<br />
Sunday was great, we had 4 people come to church! The Martinez family<br />
and Yun. We won't be able to meet with the Martinez family until next<br />
Saturday, so yeah it will be awhile with them. Yun is having a good<br />
time at church, we are trying to set up a time to meet with him. It<br />
hasn't been super successful, but we will keep trying. We had dinner<br />
with the Vogelmann's, they are super great to us, I love them to<br />
death. When we walk into their home, I feel like I am walking into<br />
grandmas. Haha. Also we had a flash flood that evening, we talked to a<br />
lot of people and also found this legit guy named Jay who told us to<br />
come by tomorrow so we did on Monday with no luck.<br />
<br />
Monday we had district meeting, we set a goal last week to get 100<br />
contacts, talking to someone and talking about a gospel principle. We<br />
got 109 this week and we are gonna exceed it! We set a new goal of 130<br />
so we will gradually get better and talking to more people. I did a<br />
way better district meeting than I have done in the past, it was<br />
awesome, it was about chapter 10 of preach my gospel which is all<br />
about teaching skills. It was powerful! In the district, I have been<br />
out the longest! We did a lot of walking and did look ups. We also had<br />
dinner with Brother Smith who lives up in Poughkeepsie, I know him<br />
from the many times he has fed us and done stuff with us. We had Thai<br />
food, it was super delicious, the place is called Thais New York. I<br />
love him. He was baptized 3 months before I was and he worked at IBM,<br />
yeah. He did computer science, one of my dreams. We will see.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was awesome! We went to the Lincoln square chapel, so the<br />
temple and we were taught from on high. Elder Bennett is a funny guy,<br />
he served as a missionary in 2 missions, got transferred to a new<br />
mission halfway through his mission. He proposed to his wife 4 times,<br />
before she finally said yes. He made sure we know, not to tell a girl<br />
that you have received revelation for her. Never! He talked about<br />
their mission to a Russia Mission and he told us how his missionaries<br />
got punched, kicked, spit on, hit in general daily. Our mission has<br />
cuddly, fluffy rejection. He told us how his missionaries got rejected<br />
100 times a day, we don't get close to that at all. He told us to open<br />
our mouthes, we are already weird, show it, be peculiar, stick your<br />
arm out and smile and shake people's hands. Talk to people at every<br />
opportunity, there is no day that is too busy that you can't talk to<br />
people. Open your mouth. He told us a beautiful way to introduce<br />
ourselves and get straight to the point. "Hello we are representatives<br />
of Jesus Christ, we share the most important message you will ever<br />
hear, will you take 3 minutes to hear this message?" And when he said<br />
that the spirit was so strong, I wanted to listen to that message. I'm<br />
gonna try to use that. He also talked about how we hold more power and<br />
authority than any president, King or queen on the earth, we are the<br />
only ones who can bring people to Christ. Many missionaries have<br />
served in the area I am in, many missionaries sowed, it's time for you<br />
to reap. The field is white already to harvest. Asking for referrals<br />
from everyone, also about being consecrated which is to make<br />
everything sacred, to give everything you have to this. This is the<br />
Lords mission, not mine. Make every moment count, use his time wisely.<br />
He talked about how our current companion can be affliction, we need<br />
to learn to be humble. The mission is the best time to prepare for an<br />
eternal marriage. The doctrine of Christ isn't just a cycle, you have<br />
faith, you repent, you are baptized, you receive the Holy Ghost and<br />
then you have faith again. It isn't just that but it is more like a<br />
spiral staircase in which you go up everytime you exercise faith, you<br />
repent, renew your covenants, have the Holy Ghost. It's a lot cooler<br />
to think about it like that. When Jesus Christ was in gethsemane he<br />
saw each of us individually and saw everything we would go through and<br />
he took that upon him. He suffered for much for me, you and everyone,<br />
and if you think about that it brings a lot of joy. Also he told a<br />
cool story of missionaries who walked outside during lunch to do work<br />
as they were having a meeting. They talk to this guy who tells them<br />
how he hates missionaries, these missionaries ask why so this guy<br />
tells them the story. The senior missionary comes up to him and talk<br />
to him, the guy tells him "I don't believe in God" the missionaries<br />
say "How come?" And the guy says "Because I haven't seen him" the new<br />
missionary says "well do you believe in Africa?" This guy is like<br />
"yeah", the missionary says "well have you seen it?" And this guy<br />
tells the missionaries to leave. 12 years later he runs into the<br />
missionaries and now he wants to know because it's been on his mind<br />
ever since. Elder Bennett said he could imagine the spirit just poking<br />
him over and over and over again. Because he just realized I don't<br />
believe in God, but I believe in Africa. It was Hilarious! Anyways it<br />
was a super spiritual meeting and we had a super good time. I loved it<br />
and being able to be taught from on high is so cool. We taught Jose<br />
Buco as well, he recently returned from Ecuador and he got us a<br />
souvenir! It's a little statue of the center of the world. We taught<br />
him the plan of salvation and he really doesn't understand it. When we<br />
ask questions he would tell us some crazy answer. We will have to go<br />
back over it again with him. Jose is an interesting one but we love<br />
him. That's been our crazy week, we will definitely be more effective<br />
now than we were 2 days ago. I love this work.<br />
<br />
I know this church is true, I know that our savior Jesus Christ<br />
assigned me to the New York New York north mission through an apostle,<br />
the creator of the universe assigned me here, and he assigns every<br />
missionary that has ever been on a mission or that will ever go. I<br />
know this is his work and he knows when people are ready for the<br />
gospel. I'm grateful to be here and I know I'll see more miracles in<br />
these last few months. I love you all, I really do. I hope you know<br />
that. Take care and have a great week!<br />
<br />
Also this is my new favorite scripture: "And whoso receiveth you,<br />
there I will be also, for I will go before your face. I will be on<br />
your right hand and on your left, and my Spirit shall be in your<br />
hearts, and mine angels round about you, to bear you up." D&C 84:88<br />
but in order to have people receive you, you need to open your mouth.<br />
Which leads to this scripture: "I, the Lord, am abound when ye do what<br />
I say; but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise." D&C 82:10<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. A group of us at Bethesda fountains taken by a group of girls from BYU.<br />
2. 14th street!<br />
3. The statue from Jose Buco<br />
4. Elder Casela and I while we were waiting for our clothes.<br />
5. A video of a storm in the summer time here in New York.<br />
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Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-39115814664927060652016-06-01T13:10:00.001-07:002016-06-01T13:10:10.615-07:00Martinez Family, Baptism, Hot JuneHello, this has been an incredible week, I did get sick Thursday<br />
evening to Friday morning. Just a sore throat, not too terrible but I<br />
have gotten better,but it's still there. I am like my normal self but<br />
just with a sore throat and I've been sweating buckets out here. Man<br />
when New York gets hot, it gets hot. We pretty much skipped spring and<br />
went right to summer.. It's gonna be a hot summer! Anyways it's also<br />
been a little tough because our money didn't come in until this<br />
morning so I had to use a lot of my personal funds for both of us<br />
since elder Casela doesn't have a personal fund. I'll get it all<br />
reimbursed. I already sent the receipts in so it should be coming<br />
soon. I'll get right into it! Oh Transfers happened too, Elder Casela<br />
and I are staying!<br />
<br />
Last Wednesday we had Coordination because the Sisters had a baptism<br />
of Lucinda coming up so our ward mission leader wanted to talk about<br />
that. We also got an egg on bread, Brazilian style (since our ward<br />
mission leader and his wife are Brazilians). Really good!<br />
<br />
Thursday we had weekly planning, Elder Casela had a head ache so he<br />
slept until about 12:30 after we did studies. We left around 1:30 and<br />
got to the church and did our planning. After our planning we had to<br />
go to our dinner appointment at the Sotos where I helped Sister Soto<br />
figure out how to work her nutri bullet, and also they asked if I knew<br />
how to fix computers, I told them I could give it my best shot and<br />
yeah they need to go to the geek squad, they need the disk in order to<br />
start up. But it was fun working with technology again, I miss it!<br />
This is where a super cool miracle happened. We were walking home and<br />
Elder Casela stops on this corner and says "let's go this way", I'm<br />
like "but our apartment is down the road here" we talk for acouple<br />
seconds and then as we start walking this guy and his wife come up to<br />
us and ask us where our temple is. We told them 65th and Columbus but<br />
then told them where our church building was and we told them about<br />
the baptism too, and they seemed excited to go. This is the Martinez<br />
family, they had 3 other encounters with missionaries. Once in Queens<br />
about 10 years ago. They are cool, Jose and Jenny Martinez. They gave<br />
us their number.<br />
<br />
Friday we were lucky to help with an APF and the Zone leaders, but on<br />
the way to a look up prior to we met this lady from Caldwell Idaho. I<br />
was like oh I used to have an Uncle and Aunt that lived there. She<br />
took our picture and put it on this Facebook page Missionary Mommas..<br />
I guess it's for moms who have sons on missions and you hope that<br />
someone puts our picture on there so you can see us. Yep. Anyways. We<br />
had an APF in the Blazin sun at the Bethesda fountains in Central<br />
Park. I swear people probably thought we were crazy because we had a<br />
huge world map pained on a board and we were standing in the sun for<br />
over 2 hours. Members were coming up to us and thanking us for all we<br />
do. Sweating for days but we had a purpose and talked to a lot of good<br />
people. I'm gonna tell 2 good lines one of my zone leaders used. One<br />
was to a family from London, he asked "Do you like Harry Potter?" And<br />
the other one was to these people from Ireland, "Do you like Lucky<br />
Charms?". Anyways it was incredible, he is funny. We had to go to<br />
Staples that night to print off papers for an APF we had on Saturday.<br />
Using those computers costs an arm and a leg. Yeah. 33 cents every<br />
minute. 50 cents per page. I printed off a lot of pages. I will get<br />
reimbursed.<br />
<br />
Saturday we went to the Bethesda fountains and did good deed dares and<br />
we talked to a lot of people, it was super awesome. And this guy came<br />
up to us and told us that the Bible has the final say in anything, he<br />
talked about how either Joseph Smith was true or he wasn't. He invited<br />
us to read the bible... Haha it was funny, we just tell him to have a<br />
good day, there isn't much to say. We went to Lucinda's Baptism and I<br />
got to be a witness, it's really cool to have that opportunity to use<br />
my Priesthood and see that baptism happen, it was very spiritual. At<br />
the end, the Martinez family showed up! Jose, Jenny and Jean all came<br />
to sacrament. They felt super welcome, everyone talked with them and<br />
one of our members Sister Willford talked with Jenny in Spanish, even<br />
though she didn't remember Spanish too well. Sister Willford brought<br />
them up to do a chapel tour so we went up and we were just there. We<br />
did give them each a Book of Mormon and a restoration pamphlet. They<br />
said that they would come to church. And boy they did. Sister Willford<br />
testified how the Book of Mormon has helped her in her life,<br />
especially when her dad died. Oh I also got to have a Dr. Pepper ice<br />
cream float, livin on the edge! It was like the time I had a monster<br />
smoothie.<br />
<br />
Sunday we got to church right as it started. The trains were super<br />
delayed but we had to wait. We got there and too bad they weren't<br />
there. We were asked to help pass the sacrament and during the water,<br />
all 3 of them walked in and sat down with Sister Willford. It was<br />
awesome! The ward literally just took care of them, we didn't do<br />
anything! It was super great! I love when you have wonderful members<br />
who just talk with our investigators and do the work for us so we can<br />
talk with other members. It was super awesome. We didn't have much<br />
else to do other than a lot of looks ups, it's hard when you don't<br />
have money to use so you walk everywhere. It was incredible. We met a<br />
member from Staten Island.<br />
<br />
Monday we had aDistrict Meeting, yay the last one of the cycle! It<br />
was good. We had to go to grand central afterwards to go to Scarsdale.<br />
I met with President and man I know that the Atonement is real, we can<br />
be cleansed and any burdens we feel can be lifted off of us. It's a<br />
painful process but I know repentance helps us change and be better.<br />
We can receive help from our Savior Jesus Christ, I plead with anyone<br />
who feels guilt or shame, or has sins that remain on their minds, you<br />
can have those sins completely wiped clean. It's worth it! We talked<br />
to so many people that night who knew about our church and even have<br />
met with missionaries before. We met this guy who studied our religion<br />
and loves us. He is an atheist though. It was just incredible. We had<br />
a Dinner with the Leals and Brother Leal plays PlayStation 4! We had a<br />
good long talk about video games as we were waiting for the pizza. He<br />
gave me some games I need to play when I get home, I'll check those<br />
out haha! I love em!<br />
<br />
Tuesday we had to travel up to the Inwood Chapel which is like forever<br />
on the A Train, we were barely on time. President talked about how<br />
Elder Bennett is coming to our mission to do a mission tour next week.<br />
Ours is on Tuesday. Yeah. 6-4.. We will be taught from on high! It's<br />
gonna be wonderful. He also talked about Safeguards for using our<br />
iPads, and how if the devil gets ahold of a missionary then it can do<br />
a lot of harm. Don't ever allow Satan into your lives, try your<br />
hardest to do what is right. We had a dinner that night with the<br />
Myres, Sister Myres served in the Bacolod Philippines mission, she<br />
speaks Illongo brother Myres served in Brazil. It was fun to be<br />
there, we had dumplings! It was amazing. We street contacted<br />
afterwards, talked to this guy named Jay who knew who we were and took<br />
a Book of Mormon, but wasn't really interested, then Joe who doesn't<br />
believe in God and didn't even care, and then we talked to Bryan<br />
again, the guy who taught us history last time about New York. We<br />
talked for 5 minutes and then had to walk home. I really missed the<br />
spirit, there is such a difference when you have the spirit. I'll be<br />
sitting there and I'll feel the spirit hit me to say hi to someone.<br />
It's super cool to have the spirit so strong again. It helps a lot in<br />
testifying to people. I love being a missionary!<br />
<br />
I know this church is true and it has blessed my life tremendously,<br />
the atonement of Jesus Christ is real, it cleanses people and we can<br />
be forgiven. We can have the spirit again with us. Jesus Christ died<br />
for each and every one of us so we can be happy and we can be clean,<br />
"no unclean thing can inherit the kingdom of God" so we need to be<br />
clean. Repent and be forgiven, feel burdens lifted off your shoulders.<br />
Do not procrastinate the day of your repentance. I'm grateful to be a<br />
member. I love you all and this gospel blesses our lives!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. Freedom Tower<br />
2. Elder Casela and I on the A train<br />
3. Elder Burrell who is one of my best buds in the mission who sadly<br />
went home today!<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-81113794256460002652016-05-25T11:41:00.003-07:002016-05-25T11:41:45.904-07:00The Power of the PriesthoodHello everyone, straight off the bat I want to tell you of a miracle<br />
with the priesthood, I was on a split with Elder Sanford, our zone<br />
leader and I was in his area. We went to see this guy named Gabe who<br />
told us that he feels spirits and he is being touched by these<br />
spirits. Anyways we try to teach him the restoration and he starts<br />
flipping out and telling us how he is being possessed or something and<br />
he couldn't focus, so elder Sanford asks him if we can give a<br />
blessing, but that we need to go somewhere more private. He did not<br />
want us going into his house. He was freaking out so we told him we<br />
would give him a blessing right there in the middle of the courtyard.<br />
The blessings was quick, direct, and it helped him. On Monday night<br />
elder Sanford calls and tells me that Gabe is normal and he was having<br />
a good time and that the blessing helped a lot. I am grateful that I<br />
am able to hold that priesthood that Jesus Christ held and that I can<br />
bless people. It's been so helpful in my life! Also I am grateful that<br />
I'm not from Utah because I was asked if I was from Utah like a ton of<br />
times and I'm grateful to be able to say "No! I'm from California" and<br />
that always catches them off guard because every Mormon is from Utah<br />
right! Ha wrong!<br />
<br />
Thursday we did weekly planning and taught Jose Buco, he did a Nu Skin<br />
presentation for me, and showed us these videos and yeah 45 minutes<br />
later we taught him the restoration in a simplified manner and it made<br />
sense to him but we aren't sure how genuine he really is in learning<br />
but it feels like he just wants us to join Nu Skin.. Haha he did come<br />
and are a baptism and he came to church on Sunday. He is progressing,<br />
but we will see.<br />
<br />
Friday we went and did an APF at Madison Square Park with elder<br />
Stevens and Essler(my MTC companion). People talked to us there and we<br />
had this board that said Be Happy and then had a quote about how God<br />
wants us to be happy, anyways this drunk homeless Vet comes over to us<br />
and his grape beer was spilling all over the board and he was talking<br />
to us and eventually he asked us to tell us what was in 1 Samuel, so<br />
elder Stevens quotes the primary song about following the prophet<br />
about Samuel the Lamanite. Anyways regardless I got some beer on me..<br />
And the board was soaked.. Yeah, it was pretty bad. Afterwards we<br />
split with the Zone leaders, yay! First I want to say the I love elder<br />
Sanford, he is from San Diego and is very good at missionary work, i<br />
always learn a lot from him. We saw Gabe as well as had Chipotle for<br />
dinner with a member. We taught an investigator at that dinner and her<br />
name is Tanya. She is really cool, we taught her the first half of the<br />
plan of salvation, she really enjoyed it. That was probably like the<br />
5th or 6th time I've ever taught the plan of salvation on my mission,<br />
we usually will talk about it sometimes when we contact but it's a<br />
less frequent lesson. We don't teach it much, just because lack of<br />
investigators. It was a super good lesson though and it cleared a lot<br />
up with Tanya. We talked to this guy on the way back who would want to<br />
read the Book of Mormon. And also talked to this guy who met with<br />
missionaries from New Jersey but then moved to New York! He will be<br />
taught again! We wouldn't have found him if elder Sanford didn't think<br />
to go an unusual way home.<br />
<br />
Saturday we had a great opportunity to try to do some service, but<br />
that didn't work because they needed us there longer than we could<br />
have done it. So we talked to this guy who is super optimistic, he had<br />
a 22cm tumor removed from near his heart. It was 10 pounds and was a<br />
bowling ball. It was crazy. He showed us a picture and everything.<br />
Crazy. We had coordination with their ward mission leader Hiro who is<br />
Asian. He is super awesome. We then Unsplit. Had a cool APF in<br />
Columbus circle, talked to a member from Idaho and Arizona. The one<br />
from Idaho lived in Rigby Idaho but clearly they were less active.<br />
It's cool to run into people from Idaho because I love Idaho! I'd live<br />
there some day. We went to a baptism that Jose said he would come to!<br />
We gave him an art tour since they have a lot of beautiful art work in<br />
the 65th and Columbus chapel. Aka the temple building. It is<br />
absolutely beautiful, Book of Mormon art work. When we come back I'll<br />
show you guys. After Jose we gave a blessing to a sister in my<br />
district, then to a members mother (who isn't a member) in a hospital.<br />
I love being able to exercise my priesthood. It makes me want to<br />
always remain worthy so I can exercise that priesthood. I had to carry<br />
my stupid suitcase with me everywhere because I didn't have anywhere<br />
to put it. I use my small suitcase for splits, I want to buy a back<br />
pack. A suitcase is such a hassle.<br />
<br />
Sunday we had church, I spoke on my conversion and how we can remain<br />
converted. The members really liked it, I think. Jose came, also this<br />
kid who is interning at Google! Church was fantastic as always. The<br />
sisters have a baptism coming up so I got to interview their<br />
investigator Lucinda, she is from Australia and is super legit. We<br />
looked up a lot of people too but no success. Our bishop wants to help<br />
us teach people, he tells us to invite him and that he will come.<br />
<br />
Monday we had district meeting, I am trying to help the district to<br />
teach more people but we aren't doing too great but sisters Hart and<br />
Vassau are killing it. Our zone leaders gave us good advice, use the<br />
area book and look up people. Since I got here we do finding all the<br />
time and don't teach anyone. We have made some improvements and did a<br />
lot of look ups. We are Still use the finding times. We set up a few<br />
teaching appointments. It was successful.<br />
<br />
Tuesday we did an APF in Washington Square Park and talked to this<br />
dude named Isaac who talked about choice to us and how we never really<br />
have a choice, that it's all predetermined.. Anyways. He was cool. We<br />
got mail, looked up a ton of potentials and less actives. That was our<br />
night, no success sadly.<br />
<br />
Today I got my hair cut, it's super nice to have short hair, I look<br />
pretty good. Just being humble.. Haha just kidding I probably look<br />
okay. Ha. Anyways I love to study the scriptures and I am still<br />
remembering scriptures everyday and it's been cool. I love New York<br />
and I love serving here, it's cool to meet people, you never know who<br />
you will see. I love meeting members here, I love the mission, every<br />
day flies by, soon I'll have no time left at all. I know this church<br />
is true. Here are some pictures!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. Empire State on the left and freedom tower on the rough and the<br />
epic city in between.<br />
2. Google<br />
3. 23rd street from the hallelujah Easter video<br />
4. Sidewalk chalk art.. Wow that's detailed!<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-41678587829355104742016-05-18T13:03:00.002-07:002016-05-18T13:03:48.738-07:00Zone Conference and Get Thee Behind MeHello everyone, we had zone conference this week, also I'll explain<br />
the title later. It's been a pretty good week. A very spiritual week<br />
at that and we haven seen too much success but so far this week we<br />
have seen some.<br />
<br />
Wednesday we finished out the night eating dinner with the Calders,<br />
while we were there, brother Calder told me of that amazing pizza<br />
place acrostic the Brooklyn bridge called Grimaldis and right next<br />
door there is a place called Julianas which is really good too. I<br />
won't ever get to try them on my mission but they are super good.<br />
After the mission . Brother Calder gave us a brilliant finding idea,<br />
to have a board that says "What are you most passionate about?" And to<br />
be able to answer that question. Like I'm passionate about technology,<br />
or the gospel ya know? They are super awesome!<br />
<br />
Thursday we had Zone Conference! President had volunteers teach the<br />
restoration in 5 minutes, it was super spiritual and you could always<br />
feel the spirit when the first vision is taught, some sisters taught<br />
it in Chinese and it was super cool. It made me want to be able to<br />
teach it that simply and powerfully. We also had a training by a<br />
senior couple about family history and how we can help retain the<br />
people we teach and help them to be more involved in family history.<br />
The church came out with a new pamphlet for family history which will<br />
be super nice. The spirit was there, it's super cool to be able to<br />
feel the spirit so often as a missionary. I will miss being able to<br />
feel the spirit this much all the time, but I know I'll be able to<br />
have spiritual experiences without being a missionary. President<br />
talked about building relationships in the ward. Sister smith talked<br />
about sacrament meeting and how we can make sure we have spiritual<br />
experiences. I hope you all have spiritual sacrament meetings, it's up<br />
to you and how well you prepare for sacrament meeting. Give all the<br />
burdens you carry to the savior, forgive yourself. It is so powerful.<br />
We had dinner with the Croppers, they are awesome. Good conversations<br />
and delicious food, sister cropper made the Cafe Rio sweet pork, it<br />
was super bomb diggity. They are a great family and they have a kid<br />
named Ladd.. Like that is super cool.<br />
<br />
Friday we did our weekly planning and then went to the Doxford's for<br />
some pizza and a delicious cheese, beef, cream cheese, spicy chili dip<br />
that brother Doxford was craving. His wife went somewhere so it was<br />
just us guys and his 2 young kids. He has these posters up of New York<br />
in his kitchen. They are called Ork Posters, I super want those<br />
posters. Brother Doxford is super awesome, it was a fun dinner and we<br />
talked about his life and his conversion story. It was awesome.<br />
<br />
Saturday we had service, coordination meeting which was fun. A pretty<br />
unsuccessful APF At Washington square park which is part of NYU. Not<br />
many people are interested but it was cool to have the opportunity to<br />
talk about temples. It was super legit. One of our members bought us<br />
some Halal food and left it at the temple. On our way back to eat it,<br />
we talked to some members from New Jersey, I love running into members<br />
and talking to people. We walked around some parks and said hello to<br />
other people and got to talk to them. It was a super tough day but you<br />
have those as missionaries.<br />
<br />
Sunday was good, Saturday was one of those days where I just wanted it<br />
to be over and wanted the sacrament. I wanted to restart and try<br />
better because last week was pretty bad. I was grateful to see Yun<br />
come to church again. I am giving a talk next week, I already know<br />
what I'm speaking on. My conversion. It will be super powerful, I was<br />
pondering and praying about it and that's what came to my mind. After<br />
church we finished our studies and then went to the Vogelmanns, they<br />
are so cool, they had some members over from our ward and then 1 from<br />
Manhattan 1st ward. We talked about the sacrament and invited them to<br />
invite their friends to church. It was a super good day, and some<br />
members are moving and they gave us missionaries a lot of their food<br />
they can't bring with them. That's the disadvantage of living in New<br />
York. People are only here for a small period of time because they<br />
move elsewhere. That's how the wards are here.<br />
<br />
Monday was fantastic! The zone leaders came to my district meeting and<br />
it was way spiritual, we talked about ways we can make baptisms more<br />
spiritual. We teach the restoration in 5 minutes and it will help. We<br />
also talked about ways we can help each other find more people and the<br />
simplicity of opening your mouth. It was super spiritual and we<br />
learned a lot. I love when we can feel the spirit, I hope to feel the<br />
spirit a lot when I return home. Elder Casela cooked us a ton of<br />
Filipino food, vicol express, patim, lumpia, pork chop, siomai. It was<br />
all super good, it was like mana from heaven in form of a Filipinos<br />
cooking. We went to DSW and I had to exchange the shoes I bought for a<br />
size bigger, now they fit really nice. Mail came and we picked that up<br />
and walked around Union square park with a visit Mormon.org sign. We<br />
taught 2 lessons but one person was trying to convert us to become<br />
Muslim. This other guy was super legit. His name is Michael Herrera,<br />
he's been praying to God to find the right religion, he is on a<br />
spiritual journey. When we told him the first vision he knew what we<br />
were saying was true, he knows that other churches don't have the<br />
authority and he wants to come to church. He lives up in Washington<br />
heights which is Inwood. He works down at Union square and said he<br />
would come to our church sometime, so hopefully we will see him!<br />
<br />
Tuesday we did all our studies and went to Washington Square Park and<br />
talked to people, they are always doing street performances there and<br />
they are always super good. We went to the church and went to do an<br />
APF at Union square and it was raining but we talked to a guy who<br />
lives in Brooklyn who wanted a Book of Mormon but wasn't interested in<br />
meeting with us. We did a lot of street contacting. Then we went home<br />
and ate and back out to go tracting. On our way to the projects we ran<br />
into this girl. We just said hey and she asked us if we had a lighter.<br />
She had a blanket around her and she asked us why we were dressed so<br />
nice, she also asked if the Book of Mormon had Devils in it and she<br />
thought I was engaged because I have the choose the right Ring on my<br />
right hand. She was super crazy and when we told her that Jesus Christ<br />
came to the Americas, she was like "yeah the melting pot" anyways we<br />
got out of there and gave her the Book of Mormon. She asked where<br />
elder Casela was from and he told her he's from the Philippines. She<br />
starts to speaking to him in some random language like Ghanaese to him<br />
thinking its a language from the Philippines. As we were walking away<br />
elder Casela said get thee behind me Satan. We looked back at her and<br />
she was running away. It was a weird. The whole time we were talking<br />
with her she was sticking her tongue out and doing weird things. It<br />
beats me. She was probably a drugee because of her initial question.<br />
Tracting was fun but we ended up going back home afterwards. So there<br />
is this guy from Provo Utah who recently moved to New York to work, he<br />
got off his mission from Brazil 3 years ago but on Saturday night he<br />
came over to grab his keys because we were holding onto them for him.<br />
Last night he came over to borrow our ironing board and iron and he<br />
brought us a bunch of chips. He is super cool. His name is Daniel. He<br />
has offered to come to lessons with us, the only problem is he is in a<br />
different ward, the Manhattan YSA ward. He is legit and he lives<br />
directly behind us.<br />
<br />
So lately I have decided to remember a scripture a day. Today I<br />
remembered Doctrine and Covenants section 4. I know I have been on my<br />
mission for a while now but I finally have it down. My mind has been<br />
filled with scriptures lately which has helped me. One of my previous<br />
companions told me of a promise that President Monson said quite a<br />
while back when he was in the Quorum of the Twelve. "If a missionary<br />
will remember a scripture a day, he will come back with a photographic<br />
memory." I took on the challenge a little too late but I think it will<br />
be really helpful for me to have a better memory and to understand<br />
things better. I'm gonna keep it going and try to remember lots of<br />
scriptures so they can be in my arsenal for when the spirit needs to<br />
pull them out. I love this gospel and I hope you all have a great<br />
week! Love you!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. Zone Conference, from left to right. Elders Stevenson, Essler,<br />
Cheney, me, Sanford and Casela being lifted up.<br />
2. Battery Park<br />
3. That cool Jenga looking tower<br />
4. New Jersey<br />
5. Our area from the top of a project.<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-72371849997915108022016-05-13T08:54:00.000-07:002016-05-13T08:54:20.821-07:00Mother's Day and 18 Month Mark!Hello everyone, I hope everyone had a good Mother's Day. It was my<br />
last time talking to my parents on my mission. Tomorrow I hit my 18<br />
Month mark, it still blows my mind how fast time is moving but I'm<br />
gonna work hard for the next 6 months, I'll give my all so I don't<br />
feel like I wasted time. This week has been crazy awesome, there has<br />
been a lot of things going on.<br />
<br />
Wednesday we finished out our night tracting some project buildings<br />
and talked to some really cool people that we hope we will be able to<br />
teach. It was fun, I love tracting!<br />
<br />
Thursday we had weekly planning, we did some street contacting that<br />
night at Washington square park which is the park on New York<br />
University, we talked to a lot of people. I said hello to this guy and<br />
he was like "what, you want weed? What do you want?" And I was just<br />
like "no, just wanted to say hi and have a good day". That was<br />
interesting in itself but then we talked to this gal and she told us<br />
she was gonna check out our church next week. Then that same guy came<br />
over to us and her and told her to start selling weed. Regardless she<br />
was cool and they were cussing each other out so we were just like<br />
okay, have a good one. Bye. Awkward. Funny stories you have on your<br />
mission.<br />
<br />
Friday we waited for our landlord who never came to come fix our sink,<br />
we left at about 1:30 and decided to do some street contacting on 6th<br />
avenue. We talked to this guy who asked us about what happened to the<br />
part of Jesus that was circumcised, but we got to testify of God and I<br />
even got to use something from my studies that morning in Mosiah 4:9<br />
about believing in God and that he created both the heavens and the<br />
earth. We talked to a lady who was older but knew about our church. We<br />
also talked to this Chinese girl who thought that south was east, and<br />
east was south.. Yeah we explained where she wanted to go and it made<br />
sense and she left. We had a Mother's Day APF in the union square<br />
subway station. A lot of people saw our sign and took pictures with<br />
it. It's funny because as soon as we are ready to leave, that's when<br />
everyone comes and wants pictures. It's super funny. We talked to a<br />
lot of of really cool people! Even this guy who knew who Joseph smith<br />
was and he was yelling how he loves Joseph smith. This other guy also<br />
yelled at us and called us children of Satan and how we are Satan<br />
worshippers. It's like "dude, you don't even know.. Last time I<br />
checked we worship our Heavenly Father and Jesus Christ.. I mean it is<br />
the church of JESUS CHRIST". We did some street contacting in the<br />
financial district to finish the night.<br />
<br />
Saturday we went to do some service at the village temple, we cut some<br />
celery and carrots and I washed the dishes. Since I have been on my<br />
mission I really love washing dishes. It calms me. I dislike when<br />
people call us by our first names, hello my name is elder Casper.. I<br />
don't like hearing my first name in person. Only because I'm a<br />
missionary. Afterwards we went to the church and there we talked to<br />
the ASL missionaries for a little bit, and there was an alarm going<br />
off downstairs and we didn't know the password, after falling some<br />
people to try to figure it out, one of the elders went over to it and<br />
started guessing from 0000, to 9999, to 8888 all the way down and it<br />
turns out the password was 1111.. Haha. The ASL missionaries from the<br />
south mission come to the 15th street chapel for church and<br />
activities. It's always weird to see them in our mission.. It's<br />
awkward to talk with them because they are foreign to us and we know<br />
from whence they came. We tried to street contact on the Brooklyn<br />
bridge, that didn't work. They are all tourists. This random girl<br />
screamed Elders! It was a group of friends who are going to school at<br />
BYU but doing a semester in New York. They took a picture of us,<br />
probably put it on snapchat. We went to Columbus circle after dinner<br />
to do more Mother's Day stuff, this guy called us Satan Worshipers,<br />
but he was kidding. He is American Indians, a Lamanite by chance? We<br />
talked for a while with him and he really had a good conversation with<br />
us. We talked to some cool people, a lot of people got pictures. We<br />
ran into some members. This one member gave us an idea. Have a piece<br />
of paper with these 2 statements. I'll join the Mormon church. And I<br />
don't love my mom enough to live with her for eternity. We would<br />
probably have a lot of new investigators.<br />
<br />
Sunday was awesome, it started out pouring in the morning but by the<br />
time church was over the sun was out and it was beautiful! Yun came to<br />
church and Danny went to the Chinatown branch because he rides a bike,<br />
and it was raining in the morning. He lives right next to the<br />
Chinatown chapel. I felt the spirit so strong while I took the<br />
sacrament, I am trying to make my sacrament meetings more spiritual.<br />
Honestly I am grateful for the burden that was lifted off of me, all<br />
the guilt that had been lifted off of me. I want to be better and I<br />
strive to be better everyday, repent daily. A member Invited us over<br />
for a Sunday dinner because she wanted us to have dinner on that day.<br />
We had a wonderful time with them. Then I got to talk to my parents, I<br />
seriously love my mom and dad and am so grateful for them. Everyone,<br />
love your moms! They are the greatest and listen to them. You can<br />
watch the Mother's Day video on LDS.org, check it out.<br />
<br />
Monday we had district meeting and we talked about how we can be<br />
better. We need more accountability and we set goals and made plans.<br />
We are gonna have a great APF with the big Book of Mormon sign, it's<br />
gonna be fantastic. I love this district, we are all in tough areas<br />
but it's amazing to see success. We have had a tough time but I know<br />
that we will see miracles. Our area is a lot of tourists and people<br />
have hardened their hearts. We had a pass of lesson with Danny, the<br />
plan of salvation was taught by the other elders and it made sense to<br />
him. I seriously love Danny and he has been learning a lot about the<br />
gospel and is loving it. He is changing the way he is living which has<br />
been incredible. That night we had Dinner with the Howells, brother<br />
Howell told us he was in a bad mood. He also talked about how he had<br />
nightmares about his mission. It was crazy over there, they are a cool<br />
family. Love em. We did street contacting afterwards, talked to some<br />
people so that was cool.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was cool, we planned to go street contacting on one of the<br />
piers, but the zone leaders called and asked us if we would like to go<br />
do an APF with them in Central Park. We did and it was super fun! We<br />
tasked to a lot of people and even taught the restoration to them. So<br />
many members came to put where they are from on the huge board. A<br />
member family came over, their daughter returned home from the south<br />
mission a year ago. It was cool to talk with them. The sound of the<br />
world caused everyone to stop coming over to us. There were people<br />
doing this street performance near us so the sound of the world, the<br />
great and spacious building.. Haha. We carried the board back to the<br />
temple 65th and Lincoln center building. It was awesome. We had some<br />
look ups, then dinner at our apartment. We went to the top of battery<br />
park and talked to this guy named Bryan. To say the least, he is an<br />
interesting fellow. He taught us about the history of battery park and<br />
it was legit. We gave him a Book of Mormon and by the time we were<br />
done talking with him it was time to go home. We walked back, it was<br />
totally fun. It's not that far of a walk when you walk like a<br />
missionary does, "walk quickly and with purpose".<br />
<br />
Today is a pretty chill Pday, going to the Chinatown chapel for elder<br />
Casela to get his hair cut by Jay. We will go shopping later, buy a 20<br />
pound bag of rice. We go through rice way too quick.. 2 weeks we are<br />
already done with a 20 pound bag. Wow. So quickly! I love rice.<br />
<br />
"How else can we increase our power in the priesthood? We need to pray<br />
from our hearts. Polite recitations of past and upcoming activities,<br />
punctuated with some requests for blessings, cannot constitute the<br />
kind of communing with God that brings enduring power. Are you willing<br />
to pray to know how to pray for more power? The Lord will teach you."<br />
(The Price of Priesthood Power by Russell M Nelson) I love this quote,<br />
the talk itself is amazing, I've been reading it over and over again.<br />
I would invite you to read this to learn how we can have more<br />
priesthood power.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. The temple<br />
2. The Empire State Building<br />
3. Brooklyn Bridge view<br />
4. Mothers Day APF in Columbus Circle<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-85279692159722908482016-05-13T08:46:00.001-07:002016-05-13T08:46:30.169-07:00Power House DuoHey so one of the counselors on Sunday called elder Casela and I a<br />
power house duo because we have been bringing people to church and the<br />
members are noticing that! It was funny, he also called us Michael<br />
Jordan and Scotty Pippen.. I wasn't sure what that meant but<br />
regardless we are seeing miracles here in south Manhattan! The union<br />
square 1st ward is growing. The members are incredible here and I'm<br />
grateful for their desire to help in this great work! The weather here<br />
has been pretty gloomy, the sun hasn't shown his face for about a<br />
week. The clouds have been take over and the rain has been here, I<br />
guess its springs? Haha. Also, I got a hair cut from Jay last Pday, he<br />
cuts missionaries hair for free and he did a great job, I really like<br />
my hair now. Short is better. Shout out to him. He lives in queens and<br />
I told him that Justin served there and I told him his blog web<br />
address and also mine so hopefully he will read this.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had a wonderful opportunity to go to this company called<br />
BioLumina down near the bottom of the island. First some back story.<br />
This member in San Fransisco called us and told us her work colleagues<br />
are coming to New York for a day to do a training at that company and<br />
then will be going to see The Book of Mormon play on Broadway. She had<br />
a genius idea to send us over there to give them each a copy of the<br />
Book of Mormon. We brought 12 copies with us and gave them all out and<br />
even signed one of the ladies Book of Mormon.. That was kinda weird<br />
but the asked us a lot of questions and they were pretty cool people<br />
to be honest. They asked us what we thought of other religions and<br />
what we had to tell them. We invited them to read the Book of Mormon<br />
and to pray about it and they said that they would! It was cool and<br />
then they gave us these fancy cheeses and brownies and other things.<br />
It was a cool experience. As we were walking into the room where they<br />
were at, people were saying "oh it's them" and other things. They<br />
noticed us. When we were weekly planning we were talking about how we<br />
had no baptismal dates. I was joking around and was like "someone will<br />
fall out of the sky and want to be baptized" and I'm not even kidding,<br />
5 minutes later we get a text from one of our progressing<br />
investigators Jose Buco, his text says "Hey! If I want to be baptized<br />
on Sunday, can it be done?" We jumped for joy and told him he could be<br />
baptized but not this Sunday because we still have more things to talk<br />
about. We originally set the date for May 15th but he missed church on<br />
Sunday so we moved it to May 29th. He is awesome, straight up slightly<br />
crazy but a very good guy. I love him so much.<br />
<br />
Friday was just tracting and street contacting all day with no<br />
success. It was a tough week overall until Sunday. It's pretty<br />
depressing when you don't see success. I know that this is what<br />
missionary work can be at times but it always gets better.<br />
<br />
Saturday was a good day, we helped with some service at the Temple<br />
Village, it's a soup kitchen so we got to cut vegetables. We started<br />
cutting onions... I don't know if I've ever cried as much as I did<br />
when I was cutting the onions. It's always the worst after you are<br />
done cutting the onion. The guy who was cutting the onions with us was<br />
asking about what we were doing, why we are there, how the mission<br />
works, what we will be doing after, and questions like that. His name<br />
is Jason and hopefully he is there this Saturday so we can teach him!<br />
After the service we went to the church to grab the supplies needed<br />
for an APF we were doing up in morning side park which is up in<br />
Harlem. The sisters in our district cover that area so we did a good<br />
deeds dare APF where we challenged others to do a good turn daily. We<br />
invited them to do service and people were really nice to us. We saw a<br />
lot of success as we talked to people, the sisters taught the<br />
restoration to a dude, it was pretty cool. I got some pictures too ill<br />
attach. We did some look ups afterwards of less active members and<br />
there was no luck. We talked to a good amount of people!<br />
<br />
Sunday we went to church, the sisters got a call from a guy named Yun<br />
who lives in New Jersey but is going to come to our church. He came<br />
after the sacrament but he is cool. He stayed all 3 hours. Gospel<br />
Principles was about Eternal Marriage and Yun comes from China with no<br />
background in religion. He doesn't even know about God.. It was a<br />
pretty deep subject for him but he understood. He says he will come<br />
next week, and the members were talking up a storm with him too. He<br />
felt welcome and he really liked it. He was telling us about how he<br />
has stepped out of his comfort zone to even come to church. That's the<br />
power of fasting, we fasted as a district for success in our areas and<br />
since that fast we have seen a lot of success. We were gonna bring a<br />
couple of our investigators to a baptism but they couldn't come so we<br />
tracted in these projects and found a guy named Michael George, he<br />
wants to learn! It is the best feeling when you find someone who is<br />
genuinely interested in learning how they can bring their lives closer<br />
to Jesus Christ and learn how to have peace in this life.<br />
<br />
Monday we had MLC and us district leaders were invited to attend. We<br />
met at grand central station at 7:30 to get on a train to Scarsdale.<br />
MLC was awesome, here are some of the things that really struck me.<br />
"Do we have the faith to believe to see miracles? This church is led<br />
by revelation in every council of the church. We all had the faith to<br />
come on our mission. We had faith. We are stronger than the adversary!<br />
For the rest of your life, that's why you go to church to make a<br />
covenant that this week will be better. That is why we come to church.<br />
As you understand the atonement you marvel like Enos "Lord, How is it<br />
done?" The sacrament becomes more important to you. Are we looking for<br />
limits to press? What I want to do is who I am! What other limits do<br />
you have? Other than what the Holy Ghost is telling you. Don't flirt<br />
with sin. Be wise stewards, how can we find new people? Drift starts<br />
happening, then you don't know where you are and you didn't mean to be<br />
there. Key indicators is a life lesson. Do you have a sense of<br />
gratitude for that burden that was lifted from you during sacrament?<br />
We take the spiritual experience with us to church. We have to want to<br />
have a spiritual experience. Do you have a sense of gratitude for that<br />
burden that was lifted from you during sacrament? Afterwards we went<br />
to the church with the other leaders in our zone and planned zone<br />
meeting. All 3 of us district leaders were assigned to speak on<br />
Sacrament meeting, I was stressing out a lot that night so we got some<br />
McDonald's ice cream to chill the nerves. I prayed a ton to know what<br />
to say. If I was a zone leader I'd be terrible. Probably not but I<br />
feel like it wouldn't turn out well.<br />
<br />
Tuesday we got to the church earlier than usual and prepared the<br />
training, we prepared it nicely but when we gave the training, we<br />
didn't have like any time so we just went through it pretty quick and<br />
asked a lot of questions. It went well. We had a member come speak to<br />
us about how we can use Facebook better and more effectively. He<br />
taught us how Facebook really works and how we could use it for<br />
missionary work. His name is Ryan Koch(Ko) and he told us that he<br />
loves his job because he can talk about the gospel all the time but he<br />
can't invite. That's where we come in! He also told us a really cool<br />
scripture that I will put at the end of this email. We met with Danny<br />
Tan who came to church a couple weeks back. We taught him the<br />
restoration and everything we said made sense, especially with the<br />
restoration and how God and Christ both appeared to Joseph smith. He<br />
was like "oh yeah, like other prophets." He is so awesome! He loved it<br />
and said he will come to church, he will read and pray about the Book<br />
of Mormon and he said he will be baptized. We explained the gospel of<br />
Jesus Christ to him to. Everything made sense! He is so awesome and we<br />
will meet with him again on Monday. We had to wait for mail afterwards<br />
which took way to long! They came over an hour late. Anyways that's<br />
pretty much it. Our day wasn't super productive afterwards. We did<br />
email Danny back and I Facebook messaged some of the people used to<br />
teach in previous areas. I am grateful for Danny, I know that God has<br />
put him in our path, the only sad thing is he technically doesn't live<br />
in our area, so we will have to pass him off to other elders.<br />
<br />
Here's the scripture the Brother Koch told us that I really liked:<br />
<br />
"For it shall come to pass in that day, that every man shall hear the<br />
fullness of the gospel in his own tongue, and in his own language,<br />
through those who are ordained unto this power, by the administration<br />
of the Comforter, shed forth upon them for the revelation of Jesus<br />
Christ." (D&C 90:11)<br />
<br />
Each person will hear the gospel in the tongue they need to hear it.<br />
We are here to teach the people in their language! Thank you for your<br />
love and support, it really means a lot to me! Can't wait for Mothers<br />
Day, love you Mom, you have no idea how much more I appreciate you and<br />
all you have done for me. I love you!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1-5. Our little Chinatown apartment, my closet is the first room and<br />
I'm bottom bunk.<br />
6. Good Deed Dares.<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-88849023605475927302016-05-13T08:31:00.000-07:002016-05-13T08:31:44.086-07:00First Week in Manhattan!Hello, it's crazy to think that I've already been in Manhattan for a<br />
week but I'm seriously loving it, the ward is great the people are<br />
great. It's a new experience for sure! This week has been the longest<br />
week of my life.. Not really but yeah it has been long because I'm<br />
experiencing a new area. We do a lot of street contacting here and try<br />
to talk to people, but people are so busy they don't have time to talk<br />
to us. Especially because we cover the financial district, Wall<br />
Street. Man it's busy but it's fun to talk to everyone!<br />
<br />
Thursday we had weekly planning and discussed how we are gonna help<br />
this area progress, because it really needs it. For dinners here, you<br />
can text the members and ask if we can come by to see them and they<br />
will feed us. I don't like asking for food but the members do love us.<br />
We also did some street contacting in the financial district. We take<br />
advantage of people sitting down chilling to go talk with them. I've<br />
said "have a good day" so many times in the past week. It's great! We<br />
talked to this guy named Muhammad but he lives in Brooklyn and he<br />
wouldn't take the Book of Mormon because he is already reading the<br />
bible, we gave him a restoration pamphlet and testified of the truth.<br />
Hopefully he will call us and come to church.<br />
<br />
Friday we went to look up this potential named Shaimaine and he wasn't<br />
there. Here in the city you can't just go look up people without being<br />
invited up so the front desk guy called up and no luck. On our way<br />
back we ran into a member from the Manhattan 1st ward and we also ran<br />
into a member from Arizona whose son is coming to our mission in July!<br />
She got a picture with us, it's super cool to get pictures with random<br />
members. We went home and changed into non pros so we could go help a<br />
member move at 2. We helped the Burrs move, they moved back to Utah<br />
but we invited 2 other Elders to help us. We got it done in 2 hours<br />
because we are bosses. It was fun to do a move and it's convenient<br />
when there is a service elevator. They took us to this huge food court<br />
called Gotham west market.. I guess we're in Gotham city or something.<br />
It was super good! So many different options for food. We tracted in<br />
the 26th street project buildings and found a lady named Carmen for<br />
Sister Hart and Vassau. Sister Vassau started her mission while I was<br />
in Scarsdale and I was her district leader. I know sister Hart from<br />
BYU Idaho, she lived in the same apartment complex and she was in my<br />
ward so it's pretty weird. Carmen was awesome though, she has 6 birds<br />
and a couple dogs. They birds were flying around the apartment and the<br />
dogs were barking the whole time we were standing outside the door.<br />
<br />
Saturday we had Coordination with Brother Leal who is from Brazil. Our<br />
ward missionaries were there too, it was pretty successful. Sister<br />
Leal fed us all a Brazilian breakfast. I could eat that every morning.<br />
They are super cool and I can't wait to get to know them more. We did<br />
an APF afterwards with sisters Hart and Vassau and Elders Driggs and<br />
Stevens over in union square park. We have this huge board with a map<br />
painted onto it and we had people come put where they are from on a<br />
sticky arrow thingy. It was cool, we talked to so many people! We met<br />
someone that used to live in Poland and met with missionaries, she is<br />
moving to Astoria Queens but is always in our area, she said she would<br />
come to church sometime. We had to wait at the church afterwards<br />
because we had an investigator who was coming to see our church. His<br />
name is Jose Buco. He is from the Philippines. He loved the church!<br />
Then we went and saw our recent convert up around 42nd street, we met<br />
at a Burger King. It was super fun he is a cool guy. We went home and<br />
ate dinner and then street contacted.<br />
<br />
Sunday was fun. The union square 1st ward is awesome, there are Aton<br />
of good members here. A cool miracle happened, this guy went to the<br />
Chinatown branch last week and he couldn't understand because he<br />
speaks Cantonese not mandarin, so he had a hard time understanding<br />
what they were saying. He decided to come to our ward and he stayed<br />
all 3 hours and loved it. Jose Buco came to church too! We had 2<br />
investigators at church! Danny wants to learn more and he said he<br />
would love to meet with us. He is 33 but looks 20, it's weird. He is a<br />
super cool guy! We also had Linner with the Vogelmanns, so much food!<br />
I ate like a king. They had their kid visiting from Darien Connecticut<br />
which is in our mission. They are super awesome and they have a cool<br />
view of New Jersey haha. And the Hudson River. They are fantastic!<br />
They are like our grandparents, they treat us like we are their kids.<br />
We walked a lot after to do look ups.<br />
<br />
Monday we went to the 15th street chapel to have leadership meeting,<br />
instead of meeting together in one building we FaceTime each other and<br />
it was pretty cool. District meeting was legit, it's us and sisters<br />
Quackenbush, Johnson, Hart and Vassau. It's pretty weird to have us 6<br />
and just to meet with the sisters. It's pretty weird but they are<br />
super legit and we are gonna have a great cycle. They are super<br />
awesome! We did a lot of street contacting and walking around saying<br />
hey to everyone. People weren't interested. We walked so much! Some<br />
members said hey to us so that's pretty cool.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was a good day. We are in charge of getting the mail when the<br />
office elders come and drop off mail. They have been doing it weird<br />
and they change every week. So our plans went down the drain because<br />
we had to go pick the mail up and wait for the other district leaders<br />
so we could open the door for them. We waited for the other<br />
missionaries for over an hour and we brought sisters Quackenbush and<br />
Johnsons mail to them at the Lincoln Center chapel and this guy and<br />
his wife are members from Connecticut, just spending a week down here<br />
and we got a picture with his wife. It's always cool to be spotted by<br />
members and it's cool that we can meet members from all over the place<br />
here. We tracted after dinner in some project buildings and talked to<br />
one of the sisters investigators who used to be close to baptism but<br />
it was cool to talk with her. No one was interested. Everyone down<br />
here thinks they are too cool for the gospel but they need to be<br />
humbled and learn about the gospel of Jesus Christ. It seriously<br />
blesses lives as we live it, especially with our families!<br />
<br />
This week has been awesome, I'm getting a hair cut today and we are<br />
gonna take it easy. I'm grateful for being able to study my scriptures<br />
every morning, to come to know the word of God and how it can bless my<br />
life. I've been feeling the spirit in my life more abundantly as I<br />
take my studies seriously. I invite all of you to make some time to<br />
study.<br />
I wanted to end on this scripture for you to ponder.<br />
"For behold, it is not meet that I should command in all things; for<br />
he that is compelled in all things, the same is a slothful and not a<br />
wise servant; wherefore he receiveth no reward.<br />
Verily I say, men should be anxiously engaged in a good cause, and do<br />
many things of their own free will, and bring to pass much<br />
righteousness;<br />
For the power is in them, wherein they are agents unto themselves. And<br />
inasmuch as men do good they shall in nowise lose their reward." D&C<br />
58:26-28<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
1. Financial District<br />
2&3. Empire State!<br />
4. Ladies and Gentlemen! The freedom Tower!<br />
5. Freedom tower at night<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-41777951809815700142016-05-13T08:22:00.000-07:002016-05-13T08:22:33.985-07:00Goodbye Bronx, Hello Manhattan!<div>
Hello, as you can see by the title of my email I am no longer in the</div>
<div>
Bronx. On Saturday I found out that I was getting transferred to Union</div>
<div>
Square at the bottom of Manhattan Island. My area covers from 42nd</div>
<div>
street all the way down to the bottom on the west side. We have such a</div>
<div>
beautiful area, we cover the Empire State Building, the 9/11 Memorial,</div>
<div>
the freedom tower, and battery park at the bottom of the island (where</div>
<div>
the ferry to liberty and Ellis island is). It blows my mind that I am</div>
<div>
here in New York, it's so beautiful here. I was really shocked to find</div>
<div>
out that I was transferring, elder Clark is taking over the area and</div>
<div>
an Elder Vieira is coming to replace me. I have confidence in elder</div>
<div>
Clark, he knows the area well and we have been finding a lot of cool</div>
<div>
people to teach there so they will do awesome and work many wonders</div>
<div>
among the people in the Bronx. I'm with Elder Casela, who is from</div>
<div>
Isabela Philippines, he has been out for 5 and a half months. He is</div>
<div>
funny and he knows how to speak English well. I'll talk more about</div>
<div>
this area later.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Thursday we had our coordination meeting and did weekly planning and</div>
<div>
planned a pretty awesome area and we went to city island afterwards.</div>
<div>
We finally met up with Matt, who was a potential. We have been texting</div>
<div>
him and haven't been able to get in contact with him but we finally</div>
<div>
got to sit down with him. We got a tour of his big white mansion. He</div>
<div>
wanted to feed us goat curry (Indian Style) next time we go over. I</div>
<div>
wasn't expecting a 40 year old man, but he loves the Mormons and is</div>
<div>
pro Mormon. He got a job offer in Provo once and went out there and he</div>
<div>
says it's heaven. He is really cool. He had a church tour once in new</div>
<div>
Rochelle and loved the church. He is really cool.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Friday elder Clark and I saw a lot of success. We took brother Ford</div>
<div>
with us tracting in elder Newbold and Davis's area, he was telling us</div>
<div>
that he doesn't want to know his neighbors because then they will be</div>
<div>
knocking on his door and want things. The funny thing is that we only</div>
<div>
found people on his floor and they are super legit! We had to take a</div>
<div>
detour because of the stupid subways were not running on certain</div>
<div>
tracks for certain times. I'm glad we did because we met this guy</div>
<div>
named Bart who respects Mormons. He was telling us how we need to</div>
<div>
leave a good posterity. He was also telling us how he is handsome and</div>
<div>
how he is rich. Anyways very cool guy and says that missionaries are</div>
<div>
welcome anytime. We tracted that street and on our way home we</div>
<div>
couldn't get on the 2 train because they were all packed as we turned</div>
<div>
around we saw our bishop sitting in a delayed train. It was super</div>
<div>
legit. We also met a less active member who referred herself to get a</div>
<div>
finding faith in Christ DVD. She said she would come to church! The</div>
<div>
rest of the night was crazy, we split with our zone leaders, I split</div>
<div>
with Elder Sorensen.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Saturday elder Sorensen and I saw a lot of miracles. We talked to a</div>
<div>
lot of people and looked up some potentials. We were walking to this</div>
<div>
less active and we said hey to this group of guys and we walked by and</div>
<div>
one of the guys said "what, did god tell you not to stop and talk with</div>
<div>
us?" And we said "no we can talk if you want", they didn't even want</div>
<div>
us to talk with them. Anyways we looked up this less active, Sister</div>
<div>
Rochester and Ashani. Ashani was home and he was saying how he needed</div>
<div>
to clean before his mom got home so we offered to help and swept his</div>
<div>
floors and carpet. We talked to him for a while and it turns out he is</div>
<div>
doing the BYU-Idaho pathway program. He is doing online classes. It</div>
<div>
was legit. We met with another less active as well as an investigator</div>
<div>
named Rico Blando. He asked us so many questions that really didn't</div>
<div>
matter. We answered questions and the spirit was there. Rico asked us</div>
<div>
what time our church started, he came to church too! Elder Sorensen</div>
<div>
got called as an Assistant to the president as we were talking to this</div>
<div>
less active member named Megan. She is germaphobic and scared of large</div>
<div>
groups of people. Why are you in the Bronx? On our way home we got on</div>
<div>
this bus and this lady said "hey come pray for my son, he needs change</div>
<div>
in his life!" We talked with him and he is probably 14 and was</div>
<div>
interested in learning more and his parents wanted him to learn more.</div>
<div>
He lives right behind the church too. What are the chances of that?</div>
<div>
Elder Sorensen is awesome, and I learned so much about how I can be a</div>
<div>
better missionary. I have been working on talking to people and asking</div>
<div>
questions to get to know them and people are more interested. It's</div>
<div>
really cool. We got transfer calls as we were un splitting. It shocked</div>
<div>
me to find out that I was being transferred and I won't get to finish</div>
<div>
training elder Clark but he will be fine.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Sunday we had to church and I said goodbye to a lot of the members.</div>
<div>
I'm gonna miss Olmstead because every week is a new adventure and you</div>
<div>
never know what to expect. Rico came to church and this solid</div>
<div>
investigators of the zone Leaders named Jason and he got to church</div>
<div>
early and he is totally legit. Church was great, we had an appointment</div>
<div>
set up that night for a pass off lesson with the sisters and they</div>
<div>
cancelled so our night was shot. We went to do less active look ups</div>
<div>
and we found Monique, she is really cool just living with her partner.</div>
<div>
We talked to them for a bit outside and they are totally legit! Her</div>
<div>
partner really appreciated us giving her a Book of Mormon. Now she can</div>
<div>
read the book and pray about it. They are gonna try to meet with her</div>
<div>
partner and hopefully they will change their ways. They are super</div>
<div>
legit! Monique was wearing a legend of Zelda shirt, dope.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Monday was great, we had a great district meeting and the spirit was</div>
<div>
so strong. I love the spirit. We had the opportunity to eat a cross</div>
<div>
Bronx slice, they are so good just so bad for us. When we come back</div>
<div>
after my mission, I'll take you there! We looked up this media</div>
<div>
referral named Tesouro Miranda who is super cool and wants more in his</div>
<div>
life, he has a family and he speaks Portuguese. Elder Vieira speaks</div>
<div>
Portuguese. It was legit. I packed from 6-9 and my suitcases were</div>
<div>
bulging hard core, I was afraid that my suitcases were gonna explode.</div>
<div>
They could very well. Haha they are pretty wrecked, not too much time</div>
<div>
left now.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Tuesday morning I was pretty nervous to leave the Bronx because I was</div>
<div>
scared to be in Manhattan where everyone is so busy and it's not easy</div>
<div>
to talk to people. I'm in a highly populated area and I have to push</div>
<div>
my self in order to say anything to strangers but I've met a lot of</div>
<div>
people who are nice and a lot more who are rude and won't say a word</div>
<div>
back to me. We got to the Inwood chapel where we switched companions.</div>
<div>
I'm with elder Casela and elder larkin (I took his place) told me that</div>
<div>
I'm gonna get hooked up in this ward. He was saying the members make a</div>
<div>
lot of cool things and they just give it to us because they love us.</div>
<div>
This ward is a very wealthy ward and they are very busy but make time</div>
<div>
to feed us. Exactly an hour. Go in the door and the clock starts</div>
<div>
ticking. I can't wait to meet the members. Elder Larkin told me I'll</div>
<div>
probably be speaking in 2 weeks. We took an A train all the way down</div>
<div>
to West 4th Street, then transferred to an F train to the last stop in</div>
<div>
Manhattan, east Broadway. If we miss this stop then it's so long</div>
<div>
Manhattan, then we are in Brooklyn. Haha so we got to pay extra</div>
<div>
attention to where we are at. We don't want to go to the South</div>
<div>
Mission. We live in the most tiny apartment I've ever lived in. The</div>
<div>
last apartments front room is as big as this apartment. We live in</div>
<div>
Chinatown. The sisters in our district live right above us. The stairs</div>
<div>
up to the apartment were ridiculous to carry my suitcases. They were</div>
<div>
super heavy. They are still in one piece though. We did a lot of</div>
<div>
street contacting in battery park, we talked to this guy from Hawaii</div>
<div>
who knows missionaries on their missions. He thought it was "pretty</div>
<div>
freaking cool" that we are serving in New York. We talked to a lot of</div>
<div>
people. We had a good time, we were tracting a project building and we</div>
<div>
couldn't open the door, this guy yells to us "Pull harder!" We yanked</div>
<div>
the door open. As we were leaving we talked to this lady named Vianny</div>
<div>
and she talked to us a lot but speaks Spanish. Luckily I get language</div>
<div>
study because elder Casela is called English. I'll study Spanish so I</div>
<div>
can learn and teach her a bit. She gave us free Pastelillos, which are</div>
<div>
like a little tortilla that's shut and has meat in it. So many humble</div>
<div>
people here, they are trying to make a living in the big city and its</div>
<div>
hard but they are so kind to us. I love our mission.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
Elder Casela is awesome, he kinda reminds me of a Filipino version of</div>
<div>
Conner Bowden! Haha. It's great though, he is awesome and we get along</div>
<div>
well. He is funny and he told me that after his trainer he wanted to</div>
<div>
be my companion because he met me once. I love him and we have so much</div>
<div>
fun. I'm grateful for this church and this time the lord has given me</div>
<div>
to serve in Manhattan, I know that I'm gonna see miracles and that</div>
<div>
people are so prepared here. We have a lot of work to do.</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
1. The salinas family and I</div>
<div>
2, 3. The Olmstead zone</div>
<div>
4. Elder Newbold, Joe and I.</div>
<div>
5. Freedom Tower</div>
<div>
6. The plan of salvation=Love</div>
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Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-21331738013635052982016-05-12T16:47:00.000-07:002016-05-12T16:47:22.950-07:007 Month's Left!Hello everyone, so first of all I want to talk about how hard of a<br />
week it was. On Thursday I was super depressed because we weren't<br />
seeing any miracles.. Everyday was tough and I honestly didn't want to<br />
do anything but we continued doing work and we saw some cool things<br />
happen. It was just a weird week but I'll go into it right now.<br />
<br />
Wednesday night we got a referral for a bible, her name is Isabel<br />
Vasquez. We called her right away and set up a time to go by, Thursday<br />
at 3:30, so it was in our plans but we were excited because she seems<br />
legit!<br />
<br />
Thursday we had coordination like usual, it was a little longer<br />
because Michael is planning a fireside for this ward, a service<br />
activity that will help this ward be unified and be more effective and<br />
want to do missionary work. We got home ate and then shot to planning,<br />
we got like a third of the way through when we had to go see Isabel,<br />
we went and buzzed for her apartment and we got let in. We went up and<br />
there was this guy standing outside of her apartment, he was just<br />
leaving. It turns out it is her husband Mike. She isn't there and he<br />
tells us that she will be home around 8, so we tell him that we will<br />
be there around 8. We went home and did more planning and then ate<br />
dinner and went out to go see Isabel and Mike. When we got there at 8<br />
we rang the buzzer twice, gave her a call and got let in by some<br />
random people so we knocked on her door 3 times and no answer. I was<br />
like whatever lets go do something else. We went and tracted with no<br />
success. It was about 8:45 and we were walking by their apartment<br />
building so we decided to try again. We buzzed a couple times, left a<br />
message on her phone. Got let in by random people leaving, and we<br />
knocked on her door. I was ready to give up but we heard something<br />
behind the door and she came to the door. She apologized a lot, we<br />
gave her the bible she wanted and we talked about the Book of Mormon.<br />
She told us she had heard about the Book of Mormon before from her<br />
husband and that "it contains the fullness of the gospel of Jesus<br />
Christ?". She let us in and her husband came out and asked if we<br />
wanted to go into the living room. He was getting ready to go back to<br />
do his own thing but we invited him a couple times and she also<br />
invited him. He stayed and we talked about the Book of Mormon. He told<br />
us that he notices the lack of gods servants at all the churches they<br />
go to. They are super awesome and want to learn more. The spirit was<br />
strong and they wanted us to go back today for dinner, they are Puerto<br />
Rican so rice and beans! And lots of it. Sadly they cancelled<br />
yesterday because Mike has to work overtime. They live in a project<br />
building but the inside of their apartment is super nice, it doesn't<br />
even feel like a project. Mike works a lot for everything he has. He<br />
works hard and the funny thing was on the way out Mike gave us a $10<br />
bill, even though we resisted. He wanted us to go buy some food if we<br />
were ever out. We called president that night and told him about that<br />
miracle! It was awesome.<br />
<br />
Friday we were in coop city doing a lot of work and not seeing any<br />
success. It was hard work, I was tired and my shoulder was hurting and<br />
we walked a ton. But we got to take one of the youth with us, his name<br />
is Clifford Oti. We looked up this one less active and this lady on<br />
the other side of the door asked if we wanted juice immediately after<br />
the door was opened. It turns out that less active passed away Several<br />
years ago... Yeah and she told the missionaries about a year ago and<br />
they didn't tell anyone. She has a parrot, she brought it out and it<br />
literally started to laugh at us, like super loudly and yeah Satan was<br />
that bird.. Trying to make our job more difficult. Dumb parrot. We<br />
helped with scouts, we were actually in charge of scouts with the<br />
other elders. After that it makes me not want to have kids, haha.<br />
Elder Clark started to not feel good so after we got some subway and<br />
went home.<br />
<br />
Saturday was not legit at all. Elder Clark was sick and slept all day.<br />
I read all of 1 Nephi and man could I feel the spirit. I love the<br />
spirit and I'm grateful for what I learned. There were a few<br />
scriptures I really liked. I finished from Ether 13 to the end of the<br />
book and then restarted. My testimony grew so much of the truthfulness<br />
of the Book of Mormon. We also had a dinner with a member, she cooked<br />
us chicken curry! I love curry! We shared a object lesson with her,<br />
her recent convert son who is 10. We shared the importance of<br />
scripture study, prayer and going to church, using cups and knives.<br />
I'll have to show you it when I get home. Anyways one of her less<br />
active grandsons was there and he watched us do that object lesson. We<br />
think his heart is softening. His name is Trevor and we want him to<br />
come out with us one day to see how missions are and to help him come<br />
back to church. Elder Clark rested again and I continued my study.<br />
<br />
Sunday we had church and boy was it great to take the sacrament after<br />
general conference. Sacrament meeting was boss, it was fast and<br />
testimony meeting so there were some throw down testimonies. The 2nd<br />
counselor, brother Salinas bore his testimony of how he isn't perfect<br />
and how he tries, then this lady goes up and says "I don't believe<br />
that we aren't perfect, we try" she was totally dissing on brother<br />
Salinas and everyone knew it. The Olmstead ward though! This guy came<br />
into church holding a pass along card with Jesus on it and was showing<br />
it to everyone as he walked in. It turns out that he was found on<br />
Saturday and decided to come to church. The zone leaders will be<br />
teaching him. Church was fantastic. We went to go see Francis (who is<br />
the less active member from Inwood). We rushed out of the apartment to<br />
catch the bus because they were 30 minutes apart. I forgot my tag so I<br />
had to use my pocket tag on my shoulder strap. You would think after<br />
17 months of being on a mission, I would remember to grab my tag for<br />
my jacket. Haha. We did a bit of walking, we had to wait for the bus.<br />
It was super annoying because all the buses that pass are filled to<br />
the brim. We literally shoved ourselves into the bus and rode in the<br />
very front, buses are cool. I love public transportation.<br />
<br />
Monday we had district meeting, I led it all on accountability and how<br />
we can be accountable to our monthly goals we have set. It was a super<br />
good district meeting, revelation came on how we can work better with<br />
our members to have more member present lessons. It was a tough week,<br />
we have a lot of other lessons to catch up on. We will catch up<br />
though. It's going to happen! We got some cross Bronx pizza, man I<br />
cannot wait for you to one day try it. Yummy pizza. We ate with the<br />
zone leaders. They are cool people. We went and did work and were<br />
called CIA because we wear huge black jackets and dress slacks. This<br />
high schooler didn't believe us when we said we weren't. Whatever. We<br />
did a lot of finding in a project building and found some really cool<br />
people. Project buildings are awesome because we can find a lot of<br />
people and work more effectively. We taught 6 lessons on Monday which<br />
is a big help to help us catch up.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was awesome. We were finally able to do 12 week and catch up a<br />
bit. We got mail and I got Justin's graduation card. Donna Canceled<br />
the appointment she set, and as of now we don't know when we will meet<br />
with her again. Isabel and Mike also canceled our dinner appointment<br />
too but they will reschedule. We brought 11 book of Mormons with us to<br />
a project building to go tract and our shoulders were killing us. We<br />
talked to a lot of people and I spoke some Spanish to a couple people<br />
and actually understood them! The gift of tongues is real. My<br />
shoulders are wrecked, I can't wait for the day when my shoulders<br />
won't kill. 7 more months! Project buildings are ridiculous, there is<br />
pee in every stair well, I swear people must have pee competitions to<br />
see who can pee the highest on the wall. True Doctrine. That night I<br />
made the mistake of not wearing a jacket, of course it then got real<br />
cold. We talked to this girl named crystal who seems interested and<br />
liked the invitation in the Book of Mormon to read, ponder and to pray<br />
about it. She said she would text us and we could set up a time to<br />
meet with her and her family. The only problem is she is probably 16<br />
at the oldest. We did a bunch of tracting and tracted a building full<br />
of Muslims. We ended up leaving cards on every door and leaving. We<br />
didn't see too much success sadly. It was a good night, I'm grateful<br />
for what Heavenly Father has done for us this week. We have seen<br />
miracles and it's been a good week.<br />
<br />
I've been reading in Acts, and hopefully you know who Saul is, in the<br />
scriptures it says:<br />
<br />
"As for Saul, he made havoc of the church, entering into every house,<br />
and haling men and women committed them to prison." (Acts 8:3)<br />
<br />
Saul and 2 other men were with him journeying to Damascus and this is<br />
what happens:<br />
<br />
"3 Suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:<br />
4 And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul,<br />
Saul, why persecutest thou me?<br />
5 And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom<br />
thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.<br />
6 And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me<br />
to do? And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it<br />
shall be told thee what thou must do. (Acts 9: 3-6)<br />
<br />
In this account we see that Jesus appears to Saul asking him why does<br />
he persecute him, with this vision Saul was blind for 3 DAYS! Until<br />
Ananias came and touched Saul and he received his sight. That vision<br />
was incredible, Christ appeared to Saul and then he becomes Paul and<br />
is incredible. For the rest of his life he devotes his time to serving<br />
Christ until he dies. I love reading in the New Testament, the spirit<br />
is super strong and I know that this is the true church of Jesus<br />
Christ and that we need to devote our time to the church and help the<br />
missionaries, go to lessons with the missionaries and help them teach.<br />
I love when members offer to come with us and help. I love it! Have a<br />
great week!<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. We had a zone activity and ate hot dogs and the sisters made a<br />
chocolate chip cookie brownie cake for me.<br />
2. We used photobooth with Zahil and sister Boothe.<br />
3. Murica!<br />
4. Cross Bronx in comparison to our heads.<br />
5. We were alone in the subway... I remember Justin's picture when he<br />
was on his mission.<br />
6. Apparently they don't like Jehovah's witnesses. They didn't seem to<br />
pleased with us either but they were nice to us.<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-41890157962376403992016-05-12T16:39:00.001-07:002016-05-12T16:39:56.444-07:00General Conference and Happy Birthday!Hello, before I say anything I just want to say how bipolar the weather here in New York is. One day it's pooping hot and then the next it's like Antarctica and then the next it's snowing and raining and just freezing cold winds blowing at us. Anyways it was terrible in the sense that the weather here just doesn't know what it's doing. Yep, and yes I did have a fantastic birthday, I'm now 21 so that's like super weird but it was good to be able to watch conference and to receive revelation on what I need to do with my life after the mission. I don't know if it actually spoke a lot about it but I felt like it was talking a lot about marriage, and being a father and in general just being a parent and not putting off marriage after the mission. I guess that's what the spirit was telling me.<br />
<br />
Thursday we did the same old, coordination with Michael and then did weekly planning and then some referral looks. Elder Clarks metro card was expired so we did a lot of walking. Did a look up of this lady whose name is Brenda and it turns out her parents referred her to the church because they are members but she is not, she isn't interested but one day! We walked more and I got to practice my Spanish to a recent convert who moved from Oklahoma. We tracted in that building and this one guy from the other side of the door said "not interested, back away from the door, don't knock again, I'm calling the cops to come remove you". Anyways we just kept knocking doors. We have our ministerial certificate, the cops will just tell us to leave. Haha.<br />
<br />
Friday was a hot day, we tested the weather by sticking our hand out the window and it felt cold and it looked like it was gonna rain. We wore our huge jackets to go look up this referral named Kenrick, who we just got in coop city. We went there and looked him up and it turns out he just referred himself that morning and the lady on the phone told him that he should be expecting 2 missionaries to come by and probably sit down and talk abit. He let us in and we shared some of the restoration with him. He loved it and he has a grandson in California who helped him be a little more interested. When we went outside afterwards it was way hot. We went to the 12 bus and we met a member who lives in the Kingsbridge ward. We talked the entire way back. He is a cool kid. He joined because he wanted to have a better life. That's exactly what the gospel brings! A better life! We dropped our big jackets off and went to see Gabriel Claudio who told us that he would want to come to all 3 sessions of General conference on Saturday, priesthood session included. Too bad he didn't come. We helped with cub scouts and we helped make the pinewood derby cars and paint them.. It was fun in a white shirt, I didn't get anything on my shirt though.. It was fun to help those kids.<br />
<br />
Saturday we went to see our less active, Francis. He is doing awesome and we always brighten his day. It was raining pretty hard. We went to see general conference and I loved it. It was so much fun. President Eyring started off conference so perfectly. The spirit was so strong. All the talks were amazing! Elder Bednar's talk was good but I really loved elder M Russell Ballards who talks about family councils and those are inspired. I loved this quote "Now, brothers and sisters, there was a time when the walls of our homes provided all the defense we needed against outside intrusions and influences. We locked the doors, closed the windows; we shut the gates; and we felt safe, secure, and protected in our own little refuge from the outside world.<br />
<br />
Those days are now gone. The physical walls, doors, fences, and gates of our homes cannot prevent unseen invasion from the Internet, the Wi-Fi, the mobile phones, the networks. They can penetrate our homes with just a few clicks and keystrokes." That hit me, that's council from our leaders in what we need to be doing in order to live a safe life, to have our own little refuge from the outside world. The priesthood session was my favorite. There was a lot of marriage talk and how priesthood holders should be better to their wives. I loved president Uchtdorf's quote "My beloved brethren, may I remind you, if there were a perfect woman, do you really think she would be that interested in you?" I loved how he talked about how can save our marriages and how we can have a successful marriage. It was so good! It was good to hear the prophet speak too, it was so short but meaningful.<br />
<br />
Sunday I woke up dead tired but I rolled slash jumped out of bed because I'm on the top bunk. It didn't feel like I was 21, I still feel like the same old kid who entered the MTC at 19 and now it's almost 17 months later and I feel like the mission has changed me a lot. When I go home I'll be a completely different person. It's super cool. General conference was fantastic. Jeffrey R Holland ended it so amazing. Here is his quote "Satan wants people to not progress. Why does he do that? Because he never can progress. He wants us to be miserable too.. Don't listen to that. We can improve. The great thing about the gospel is we get credit for trying.. Even if we don't succeed. If God were to reward the perfectly faithful, he wouldn't have much of a distribution list". We can all improve and become better and try to be better. Don't listen to Satan, it's true, he cannot progress but we can! It was so good to finally get out and do some work for a couple hours. It was freezing, we didn't dress appropriately for cold weather but we went out anyways and did work.<br />
<br />
Monday was fantastic as well. We had Zone Meeting and we set a goal of teaching 568 lessons in the month of April. We set goals for every key indicator for this month. We are all so pumped up! It was a great day. We did go see Sister Archibald like usual, and John Cofie. He had to get up to use the restroom and as he was walking out of the bathroom, he said "By the Grace of God, I'm walking.. Have faith." Haha it was funny. He's a good guy. That's his saying for every answer "By the Grace of God." We looked up this Lady named Brilludene and she is super cool. She wants to come to church. Let's hope she doesn't get lazy on Sunday. Something I've thought about recently is as a kid we are told to never talk to strangers or go into random peoples houses. That's exactly what we do as missionaries, talk to strangers and go into random peoples houses. It's funny. We looked up some people that night. It rained all day. This bible basher started talking to us and he told us how Jesus was black and he proved it using Songs of Solomon.. Yeah we just said have a great day and walked away. We decided to stop by Donna and she answered! Hallelujah, she is alive and well and she wants us to come by hopefully this week! She misses us and we told her how much we missed them. It's gonna be dope sauce.<br />
<br />
Tuesday we were supposed to meet with Kenrick but he canceled on us. We were asked to go get the mail from the office elders. Then we went to City island and had a wonderful time tracting and talking to people. We didn't see much success but it was super fun. We tried talking to people, no one is interested but there is some good potential on that island. It was pretty cool. We then had to go to the church to copy elder Clarks license for elder Garnder. We walked a ton, like 2 or 3 Miles on city island and the same for the rest of the day. We walked so much. And we didn't see too much success but we really tried. I love talking to people, you never know who you will talk to. We were so tired, my left heel has been killing me. When I rolled out of bed this morning I was limping hard core but it's better now. Stupid planter fasciitis. Anyways sleep last night was good, Ta bien (Dominican Slang for its good).<br />
<br />
I love this work, I know I'm supposed to be here to find those who are prepared to hear the restored gospel. 7 months left, I'm working hard. I don't know how I've been out for this long but soon I'll have a couple cycles left. I love you all and am grateful for your love and support.<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Domenick Casper<br />
<br />
1. Helping at cub scouts.<br />
2. Selfie with the church.<br />
3. These ads are all over the subways.<br />
4. We found this in our apartment, look at the little piece of ramen next to it..Grateful it was dead.<br />
5 & 6. City island view of Manhattan! And Queens.<br />
7. 9/11 memorial painting graffiti art. It's dope.<br />
8. Georges Diner, all us missionaries eat there pretty often. The owner loves us and gives us free Drinks and unlimited refills! It's good! And affordable.<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-81726316002392532382016-05-11T16:31:00.000-07:002016-05-11T16:31:51.451-07:00A Day of Urgency! Happy Easter!Hello, what's up with y'all? This week has been epic and we worked so<br />
hard. I love that feeling when you put forth all the effort and serve<br />
Jesus Christ. What a beautiful week! It will now be my pleasure to<br />
talk about what has happened over this past week.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had coordination with Michael, and it's good to see him<br />
again because he was in Washington for a while but he is back now! We<br />
did weekly planning and then were asked by the zone leaders to go to<br />
the church and wait for the office elders, so we waited and they<br />
didn't show up until an hour later.. Yeah. We got some more initiative<br />
cards though which were useful, 150 cards per English companionship.<br />
It was seriously super nice to get some more cards. We went and looked<br />
up a media referral named Yenice Rosado and she is so prepared. She<br />
wanted a Book of Mormon. We showed her the hallelujah video and she<br />
asked if she could share that video and we gave her a card. She wants<br />
to learn more and so does her family. So we are going back this week<br />
Friday.<br />
<br />
Friday was "A Day of Urgency" just like the title of this email. It<br />
was a day in which as a zone we would reach the standard of<br />
excellence, so 3 new investigators for each companionship. It was a<br />
little harder because we had 12 week as well as lunch immediately so<br />
we didn't get out of the house until 12 but we went straight to a<br />
project building to tract and I have strong testimony of project<br />
tracting. Of course as we were on our way there it started raining<br />
hardcore, our faith was too strong for Satan to influence us. The rain<br />
stopped. We knocked so many doors and talked to so many people and<br />
shared the hallelujah video. A lot of them were interested and we<br />
taught 6 people in that building and got 2 new investigators in the 3<br />
hours it took to knock 63 doors. You never know what to expect on the<br />
other side of that door. We talked to this lady who calls herself<br />
"ghetto mama", who wasn't wearing a shirt in particular, just a jacket<br />
that she was holding over herself. Like what are you doing woman? Put<br />
some clothes on! We are two 20 year old young men who don't want to<br />
see any of that. Seriously. She also told us that it's getting warm<br />
outside so we need to duck.. Like what?! Anyways that was one of those<br />
interesting experiences you have while on your mission. We also talked<br />
to this lady named Shila who wants to bring the Book of Mormon to her<br />
pastor for him to check it out.. Haha. We were walking around the<br />
corner and this lady sees us and she waits for us. She asks us where<br />
we were from and we told her "California and Idaho" she sees<br />
missionaries at her job all the time. We shared the hallelujah video<br />
and she cried! Yes!! Its not good to see a lady cry, but when they cry<br />
because the spirit, it's like the best cry out there. She thought of a<br />
friend who recently passed away and she was so grateful to see that<br />
video. She goes to Times Square church.. A lot of people go there<br />
here. Why go down to a church in Manhattan when you can just stay in<br />
the Bronx and have a better experience? Blessings for days! Later that<br />
night we tracted and met this guy named Gabriel who wanted to watch<br />
the video. He's in his 20's for sure and he asked if he could grab a<br />
cigarette. He loved the video. We talked to him for 30 minutes and he<br />
loves spiritual stuff, he was awesome but as we walked away we<br />
realized we forgot to set up a return visit. We texted him asking if<br />
we could come back in a week and he told us yeah. We got our 3rd<br />
investigator 5 minutes before 9. It was such a blessing. We prayed so<br />
much for us to be able to reach that goal, and Heavenly Father does<br />
answer prayers. We taught 11 lessons in total.. It was seriously a<br />
great day, I knew I did everything for Jesus Christ. It was a great<br />
night sleep for sure.<br />
<br />
Saturday was pretty sweet too. We met with our less active who lives<br />
in Inwood but is in a care center in our area, his name is Francis.<br />
His life is changing and he says it's because of his bishop and us.<br />
The spirit is strong and he called us good Samaritans for him. I love<br />
him. I got pretty emotional while we were talking to him. I didn't cry<br />
but I love him a lot. We did an area Proselyting focus at the<br />
metropolitan oval and it was cool. We talked to so many people who<br />
were prepared and we reminded them about the importance of church. A<br />
lot of them said they would come to church. We talked to this guy who<br />
lives in New Jersey too, but it's not as cool as New York. We shared<br />
the hallelujah 4 times in English and 1 time in Spanish. Gave out 4<br />
copies of the Book of Mormon and got 4 peoples contact info. It was<br />
super successful and we talked to some crazy people. It was good. We<br />
looked up potential and less actives the rest of the night.<br />
<br />
Sunday was awesome, it was Easter Sunday. There were quite a few<br />
people there. Church was great though. We taught elders quorum about<br />
the first presidency message in Aprils ensign. It talks about how we<br />
need to be prepared for general conference. So start preparing, write<br />
questions down you are having and pray about them. General conference<br />
is a great time to have your questions answered! We didn't have anyone<br />
sign up for us to eat for Easter dinner. That was the first time on my<br />
mission but it is my last Easter and I don't have any other big<br />
holidays really. It's pretty weird. We did stop by the Danquahs and we<br />
woke up brother Danquah but he is super awesome. I love him and he<br />
gave us these big glasses full of apple cider. That was good. We<br />
brought the sacrament to sister Johnson and then went back to around<br />
our apartment and saw Sister Boothe and Zahil. We shared the Easter<br />
videos with them, Hallelujah and Follow him. Sister Boothe wants to<br />
feed us in a couple weeks.<br />
<br />
Monday was fun too. We had a good district meeting, we talked about<br />
our goals and actuals and how we can be more accountable and we had a<br />
great idea. We are gonna be having a ward activity that we are working<br />
on. We will talk more about that. And we need to figure out how to get<br />
the ward council involved. We were super pumped. We need the people in<br />
this ward to become more active and involved. We saw a few people<br />
later and met this guy named John Williams (who told us to come back<br />
last Friday when we knocked into him), he let us right in and we<br />
shared the beginning of the restoration. He has a lot of other beliefs<br />
but he used to meet with missionaries. We are for sure going back. We<br />
split with a Elder Newbold and Elder Davis. I went with Elder Newbold<br />
in his area. We set a goal to hand out 78 hallelujah cards on Tuesday.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was awesome. We walked around and gave cards to as many people<br />
as we could. We went back and forth because we had to get mail as<br />
well. We did so much finding and tracting. We ran into this lady named<br />
Ada who used to meet with missionaries too. And we talked to another<br />
girl wasn't wearing anything but a bra. Dude people, do you even know<br />
how to wear shirts? It's not a hard concept.. She watched the video<br />
though and yeah we left after. She didn't seem interested at all<br />
either. We went down to the bottom of hunts point and got some sweet<br />
pictures and talked to so many people too. We met this guy who was<br />
wearing an Oakland Raiders hat and we had a good conversation and<br />
shared the hallelujah video with him. He told us that there must be a<br />
reason we crossed paths. We ended up giving 84 cards to people.. We<br />
were blessed by Heavenly Father for sure. He is a great guy and since<br />
we are from the same area. Wilton and Lincoln California, Elder<br />
Newbold is awesome and we have so much fun talking about random things<br />
and we start cracking up about random things. I love him, he's a good<br />
elder!<br />
<br />
Here is a scripture which fits perfectly for general conference:<br />
"Therefore, go ye unto your homes, and ponder upon the things which I<br />
have said, and ask of the Father, in my name, that ye may understand,<br />
and prepare your minds for the morrow, and I come unto you again."<br />
3 Nephi 17:3. Prepare your minds for the morrow, prepare for conference.<br />
It's really soon so start preparing. Oh I'm in the Book of Mormon in<br />
the Book of Mormon! It's awesome. I'll be finishing the book within a<br />
couple weeks. I love the Book of Mormon and I hope you do too!<br />
<br />
Much love from the man above.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. Elder Clark and I at the APF with our sign.<br />
2. Port Morris in Hunts Point.<br />
3. Me and Manhattan.<br />
4. For some reason I look super short in this picture.<br />
5. A panorama of our area.<br />
I also got a sweet Facebook cover photo, check it out! I love New York!<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-56660048247926000552016-05-11T16:19:00.000-07:002016-05-11T16:19:46.986-07:00Interviews, Zone Study and a successful APFHello everyone, welcome to another episode of what happens in the<br />
Bronx. Everything is awesome here, the Bronx is just so unique and<br />
amazing and I just love it here. Yeah, good stuff.<br />
<br />
Thursday we had interviews with president smith, in our interview he<br />
asked a question to me.. He said "So Elder Casper, you go home in<br />
November right?" And I said "Yeah", he then proceeds to let me know<br />
that I have less time than he has been out as mission president. So he<br />
was letting me know that these last 7 and a half months will fly by,<br />
just fly so fast. That really hit me, my thoughts were to give my all<br />
these last few months I have here in the New York New York North<br />
mission. The Zone study was pretty legit, here are some of the notes I<br />
took. "Serve where you're asked, and give where you can. Watch the<br />
casualness, it's only for 18 months or 24 months where you can be<br />
Elder or Sister. Are you wearing your best to the temple? Wear your<br />
whitest shirt to the temple. Have you thought about why you're going<br />
to the temple? When you have time after your mission, go to multiple<br />
endowment sessions, back to back. The iPad can bring the spirit, or it<br />
can suck the spirit right out of you." He talked about the importance<br />
of talking with everyone and sharing the Hallelujah video with<br />
everyone. The spirit was so strong and president always talks about<br />
things that I need to be thinking about. It's super cool. We had to do<br />
weekly planning, then we went to city island which is the farthest<br />
part of our area and it doesn't feel like we are in the Bronx but<br />
technically we are. It's a good place, we talked to this guy named<br />
Luis Lavoy for about an hour, and by we talked to him, I mean he<br />
talked our ear off about all the miracles he has seen in his life. He<br />
is a super good guy.<br />
<br />
Friday we continued weekly planning after our studies and I took a nap<br />
because I got sick again and my throat was hurting pretty bad. I took<br />
a nap for about an hour and then we went to see a new referral we got<br />
named Nicole. We looked her up and she is super cool, she is in her<br />
twenties and is a single mother with 2 daughters. We talked to her at<br />
the door and she seems interested in coming to church. We tracted<br />
after another look up and the first door we knock on this lady named<br />
Kesha comes to the door and we share the Hallelujah video and it turns<br />
out she wants her sons to have a youth program, so young men's is<br />
perfect for her. She liked it and wants to read the Book of Mormon.<br />
After some look ups we had to go eat and go to the church to help with<br />
scouts. Sister Salinas heard that I was eating just pop tarts for<br />
breakfast and she told us that's not even cool that she has so much<br />
food that goes to waste so she will bring us some food. I am so<br />
grateful for that, we had so many meetings this month, I don't have<br />
enough money to buy all the food I want but I will have the money<br />
soon. It was an answer to prayers for sure. We have also bought<br />
cleaning supplies and the office wouldn't reimburse me for them but<br />
you live and you learn. It almost a new month, we get some extra money<br />
at the end of each month too.<br />
<br />
Saturday was an awesome day, we went to sister Ramdhans but the only<br />
problem is we need a 3rd male so we brought Felipe, Jojo and Arnaliz<br />
Salinas to come with us and eat. Sister Ramdhan starts cooking the<br />
food right as we walk into the door so we were playing hymn charades.<br />
We also played Mafia and just talked about scriptures and stuff. They<br />
are awesome kids but you know how kids are. They will fight sometimes<br />
but it was fun to have them. After some curry and rice and good food<br />
in general, we went to the church to drop of the food and then walked<br />
with the kids to a bus stop to swipe them in because we have unlimited<br />
metro cards. We called some of our referrals and some people weren't<br />
interested. We met with our district and did an APF over at the subway<br />
stop on the 6 train, Westchester Square. An hour of goodness. We<br />
stopped everyone and talked with them and shared the video. We talked<br />
to this 20 year old girl named Sabrina, we shared the video with her<br />
and gave the Book of Mormon. She said she wants to go to church and<br />
that she wants to get her niece involved in young women's. It was so<br />
cool to meet her. We also talked to this guy named Peter. His brother<br />
passed away from cancer a couple weeks ago and he was a little sad, we<br />
shared some of the plan of salvation and shared the hallelujah video,<br />
because it talks about "they all shall be made alive". He liked it and<br />
said he used to meet with missionaries so too bad he lives in the zone<br />
leaders area. We talked to a few more crazy people and homeless guys<br />
but they gladly took the Book of Mormon and said they would read and<br />
try to come to church. We shared the video 7 times, gave out 6 copies<br />
of the Book of Mormon and got contact info from 2 people. They will be<br />
baptized one day. We didn't reach our goals but it was still an<br />
awesome experience to be bold and to put yourself out there and talk<br />
to people. You never know who is prepared.<br />
<br />
Sunday was so good. I gave a talk on missionary work and hopefully<br />
that helped the ward want to go and do missionary work. I'm working on<br />
another talk just in case I get asked again. No one came to church. It<br />
was a sad day, we had a pretty full house with members but not<br />
investigators. Next week we will have tons of investigators at church.<br />
I have faith. Elder Clark wasn't feeling well, we still went out to co<br />
op city but it wasn't super successful. I absolutely love church and I<br />
hope you all will go to church this week, it's Easter Sunday, don't<br />
forget Jesus Christ. He died for us all. Remember him and go to<br />
church, renew of the covenants you made when you were baptized. Church<br />
is amazing and there is a spirit you can feel. I want to feel that for<br />
the rest of my life.<br />
<br />
Monday we had district meeting. We talked about our numbers and things<br />
we can do better. We set a goal of 100 times sharing the video this<br />
week, so far we are at 19 and a half. It was super helpful to talk<br />
about our district. The spirit was strong, then I felt inspired to<br />
talk about accountability so they can remain accountable to this goal<br />
we have set. Accountability is an eternal principle, we will be<br />
accountable for everything we have done on earth. In your nightly<br />
prayers tell Heavenly Father what you have done this day, tell him<br />
things you could improve on, repent daily. I love accountability, be<br />
accountable. Our Heavenly Father already knows what we did today, we<br />
just need to tell him. We were having a tough time sharing the video<br />
with people we were talking to on the street, until we came in contact<br />
with Jose, he loved the video and he watched it and he wants his<br />
family to have Christ in their lives but he isn't comfortable with us<br />
coming over. We gave him our number, and a Book of Mormon. He will<br />
call us. Sister Mojica called and told us about Donna and how she just<br />
needs a little alone time. She realizes that the spirit in her home<br />
isn't there anymore and she misses it. She wants that spirit. She also<br />
told sister Mojica that it's been 3 weeks since she has taken the<br />
sacrament and she knows she needs to take it, even though she isn't a<br />
member, it's good practice for when she is a member. She loves<br />
president Monson too. She wants to be baptized, everyone is sick so<br />
it's hard for us to come over. When they get better we will teach them<br />
again. Her testimony is so strong, I'm grateful that she called us my<br />
first day in the Bronx. We went out and tracted after and shared the<br />
video with everyone! In reality just this dude named Marcel who was<br />
pretty cool. He works at restaurants.. Dope.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was a good day, we got a referral that morning, her name was<br />
Wanda. She want d a bible but we are out at the moment. We gave her a<br />
Book of Mormon, shared the hallelujah video with her and testified of<br />
prophets, talked about Joseph smith and the first vision. The spirit<br />
was so strong as I quote the first vision. After I said it, her<br />
thoughts were "Wow". The spirit was strong and we told her about<br />
general conference. She wants to hear the prophet speak and I think<br />
she will be at church on Sunday. That was the coolest feeling ever. We<br />
had to pick up mail at the church from the office elders. We waited<br />
for them for about an hour, we updated to iOS 9.3, it was super quick<br />
and it's a little more reliable. I got your package mom and dad,<br />
thanks for the candy and the journal. I don't know how you knew I<br />
would need one in a couple months. It was perfect. We did so many look<br />
ups and talked to a lot of people. We shared the hallelujah video with<br />
these 3 guys and the younger guy was crying as it was playing but his<br />
colleagues weren't interested so he followed. Seeds were planted. We<br />
were in co op city again, it's a good place. It was cool to talk to<br />
people and be out and about. Good stuff. It was a good day.<br />
<br />
Today we are going to the Metropolitan museum of art, until about 3 so<br />
it will be fun and I'll get some pictures. It's gonna be fun, they<br />
have an armor section so we are gonna go "put on the armor of God!"<br />
Haha.<br />
<br />
I know this church is true, I know the Book of Mormon is the word of<br />
God and it was given to us by a loving Heavenly Father, and that it<br />
was translated by the gift and power of God through the prophet of<br />
Joseph Smith. I know that Thomas S Monson is a prophet of God and that<br />
if we follow his council we will never go astray. I know that Jesus<br />
Christ is the Son of God and that he is our Savior and our redeemer,<br />
Christ suffered for all of our sins. He can take away all our sorrow<br />
and sadness, forgive our pain. As we follow Christ we can be made<br />
clean, as we repent every single day. I know all these things by the<br />
spirit, I've prayed and I have a firm witness of the truth of this<br />
church. I know these things are true.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. City Island, settled in 1685.<br />
2 & 3.New York New York North Mission.<br />
4. Follow him and find new life #Hallelujah, this was during the APF.<br />
5. It snowed the other day.<br />
6. The view of Manhattan from city island. That's my people!<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1822336174114714448.post-49592134598314340252016-05-11T16:09:00.000-07:002016-05-11T16:09:14.356-07:00The Miracle of Splits!Hello everyone, thank you for all you do! I really appreciate it!<br />
<br />
Starting with last Wednesday, our recent convert Dalton offered to<br />
have us come to his house on Saturday night for a delicious treat so<br />
I'll talk about that a bit later. Dalton is doing awesome, he is<br />
getting ready to go to the temple in September, it will be a year by<br />
then for him. The temple is awesome and he is super strong in the<br />
gospel.<br />
<br />
Thursday we went to see a part member family Roberto who is the member<br />
and Paula is the investigator. Paula has schizophrenia so it makes it<br />
interesting and next time we go over there, Roberto wants us to give<br />
her a blessing to get rid of the voices in her head. The power of the<br />
priesthood can do anything to those who have faith. We then ate and<br />
did our planning. I've been living off of top ramen and pop tarts for<br />
the past week and still am. I don't know how healthy it actually is<br />
but you got to do what you got to do! We had some pretty sweet plans<br />
for this past week and a lot of them have failed us but we have found<br />
some cool people. I love looking up referrals, they either super<br />
prepared or they are just flakes, so yeah. They are fun to look up. We<br />
met with our elders quorum president to see how we can help him, and<br />
he needs help with home teaching. It seems like home teaching is the<br />
hardest thing for people to do. He gave us a ride to -co op city which<br />
was fun. There are 5 sectors to co op city, and we were in the very<br />
bottom one. We looked up a lot of people and did a lot of walking.<br />
It's good exercise.<br />
<br />
Friday we had to get up at 5:30 so we could make it to the Fordham<br />
train station by 7:05 to catch the metro north train to Scarsdale for<br />
the new missionary meeting. That meeting was fun. President talked<br />
about how it's cool to be married to a returned missionary. Also about<br />
missionary work. He talked about when he was at the mission conference<br />
in Ohio at the Kirkland temple. Even though our church doesn't own<br />
that building its still dedicated as a house of the lord. We don't<br />
have un-dedicating prayers, it's dedicated until it's destroyed. He<br />
talked about how when we stop by people and they aren't interested for<br />
us to ask if we can stop by in a year because our message won't<br />
change! It's the same message forever. It's unchanging. Also when we<br />
go to the temple, are we going there to converse with God or just to<br />
sit there? He used to analogy if He went into someone's house and<br />
watched a movie and didn't say anything and then left. That's how it<br />
is with the temple, we need to go there to converse with God and talk<br />
to him, there is a reason we are there. President also stressed the<br />
importance of planning, he said this "So much of how much success we<br />
will see, takes place last night." It was super powerful. We looked up<br />
so many people and no one was there. It was frustrating, we didn't<br />
know exactly what to do so we prayed and felt inspired to go see<br />
someone. We walked to this street and I told elder Clark that we have<br />
someone to look up on that street and we were standing there. This guy<br />
pulled over and said "Need help finding where you need to go? You look<br />
lost." We talked to him for a while, he used to meet with Jehovah<br />
Witnesses and he is interested in our church a bit. He wouldn't give<br />
us his info but he said he would call us.<br />
<br />
Saturday we saw a lot of miracles, everyone was talking with us and we<br />
taught so many people about the restoration of the gospel of Jesus<br />
Christ. We talked about the Book of Mormon to people and gave people<br />
pamphlets and had such an epic day! We spent our day looking up people<br />
but we saw miracles. Dalton fed us Goat Curry with dirty rice and a<br />
salad and a drink which was super delicious! We ended up getting home<br />
at 10:30, we were in bed so quickly.<br />
<br />
Sunday we forgot it was daylight savings so we woke up at 7:25 but<br />
church was so epic. I loved church, there was like no one there<br />
though, not many males there but it was a fun day. Elder Clark and I<br />
are giving a talk next Sunday. I chose a topic of missionary work,<br />
it's gonna be so epic! We were in co op city again and met with a less<br />
active in the Spanish ward, he speaks perfect English. It was a good<br />
day to be out. It gets dark around 8 o'clock now, which is super nice<br />
but that means in the morning it's very dark when we get up. I love<br />
being in New York City!<br />
<br />
Monday was nice, district meeting was awesome. Our mission president<br />
is encouraging us to set personal and companionship goals because<br />
that's how we stretch and grow. It takes setting goals and reaching<br />
goals and measuring our progress. Our district did pretty kick butt<br />
this past week. After district meeting I split with Elder Li and we<br />
went to King Wok Chinese, it's super good. President called us at our<br />
apartment just to see how our apartment was and if they should keep it<br />
or if they should get rid of it. I like our apartment and he may move<br />
another companionship into it! It's super awesome. All of our<br />
appointments canceled but we did look up a referral and her daughter<br />
watched the hallelujah video with us at her door and we explained the<br />
Book of Mormon and she seemed interested. We still need to go see her<br />
mom and show the video and give her a Book of Mormon. It was super<br />
awesome, on that same floor, the same exact floor on the other side of<br />
the building we found a guy named Edwin who told us that he has had a<br />
feeling like he shouldn't go out for the past 3 weeks because<br />
something was coming, and he believes that what we shared is what he<br />
needs. He is a dope guy. It was super fun. We did so much look ups and<br />
tracting and talking to people. I love when people come to the door<br />
and yell who, and then you hear them on the other side of the door. We<br />
tell them missionaries and they just walk away. Elder Li and I had a<br />
great time and I learned a lot in how I can be a better missionary and<br />
what I can do to see miracles. It was just epic. I cooked him some<br />
spicy lemon chicken with ramen. It was delicious if I do say so<br />
myself.<br />
<br />
Tuesday was fun. Elder Clark and I were back together again. We did so<br />
many look ups again but also got to have a dinner with the Salinas<br />
family, they are so awesome! We had meat loaf, mashed potatoes and<br />
Quinoa (It's a rice substitute). We had a pretty awesome day. We felt<br />
like we should stop by Donna, we did and she wasn't there but we did<br />
leave one of the new initiative cards and she texted us about an hour<br />
later. Her son got s respiratory infection and they have been sick.<br />
Satan is really working on them, we just hope and pray that they can<br />
continue to find joy in the gospel. We love them so much.<br />
<br />
That's our week, it has been pretty crazy but I know that everything<br />
I'm doing here in New York will bless someone's life and I hope that<br />
Im blessing your lives in something I say. I know Jesus is the Christ<br />
and that through him I can be forgiven of my sins and I can find joy<br />
and happiness. Jesus Christ died but was resurrected and we can all<br />
make it back to our Heavenly Father and be relieved of any guilt or<br />
shame we feel. Give it all to Christ, he is willing to take it so we<br />
can live happily. I love this gospel, I love all of you.<br />
<br />
Love,<br />
Elder Casper<br />
<br />
1. Elder Clark and I.<br />
2. All the trainers and their trainees.<br />
3. Welcome to Co-op City<br />
4. Bronx Zoo (We missed our stop and ended up next to the Bronx zoo)<br />
<br />
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<br />Elder Casperhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15856148207391100364noreply@blogger.com0