The Work is Still Movin'!

Well everyone, it's a new cycle here in the NYNY North Mission. The
city is still buzzin', the people are still crazy, and the work is
still movin'! I've got a new companion, Elder Stevenson.

So this week has been pretty good! We've gotten some good hard work
in! I'm really seeing, within myself, an urge to want to always be
working hard. I'm not going to lie, it's been a big temptation for me
before to just want to hang around or stay somewhere that's fun for a
long time, but now I can tell that I am much more happy when I am
working hard and staying busy. It's a hard balance to make, because
you also don't want to stress yourself out silly...but I think I'm
getting the hang of it.

But back to what I was saying, we did some good hard work this week.
We don't have a lot of investigators, and so we did a lot of tracting
and less active lookups. We haven't had much success with the less
active lookups, but with tracting we've found a few people.......that
all don't speak English haha. We found like two people that speak
Mandarin Chinese that we were able to give to the Chinese Sisters, and
then I was able to contact someone in Spanish (in very...VERY broken
Spanish), that we gave to the Spanish Sisters! For some reason,
foreign women just love us hahaha. We were able to talk to a lady with
some kids that said that we could come back! We set up an appointment
for Saturday so hopefully that works out! I've been dying to teach an
actual family!!! I haven't taught a family since the Cardona's in
Monticello. Who, by the way, are still ROCKING!!! I write them every
once in awhile and it sounds like they are doing so good!! Danial, the
boyfriend, is finally getting the divorce with his previous wife, and
they have plans to be married this upcoming June, and then baptized
soon after!!! I'm so excited! I really hope that I'm able to go to
their wedding/baptism and then hopefully their sealing in a year or so
from that!! :) :)

So something else that was cool this week was that Elder Perry from
the Quorum of Twelve Apostles came to the Manhattan temple chapel to
give a fireside!! It was really dumb because missionaries were only
able to go to that chapel if you brought someone with you, but Greg or
anyone else wasn't able to go :( so we couldn't go to the actual
fireside, but we were able to go to the East Side chapel, which is the
one that we go to, to see a broadcast of it. Unfortunately...and I
hope this isn't to much info for anyone...I had to miss the first half
of it because I was feeling really sick after dinner for some reason
and spent a lot of the time in the bathroom. It was pretty horrible.
Sorry again for anyone that didn't wanna hear that haha. But it was
good! He spoke a lot about religious freedom and how we as Christians
need to be more involved in uniting with other faiths to bring
religion back into a greater light of our country. Religion is dying
in the United States, unfortunately, and the Brethren want us to do
everything we can to HEALTHFULLY bring it back. I can't imagine them
suggesting that we just be super religion crazy and riot in the
streets or anything, but just have more teamwork with other faiths. In
fact he highly, HIGHLY encouraged, in fact he pretty much told
everyone, to go and be involved in a website called "faithcounts.net"
I think. It's a website that links all different faiths somehow. I
missed a lot of it, so I don't know exactly what it does, but I'd
encourage you all to get on and see what it's all about!

But yeah, I'm doing really good now. Our apartment is a lot different
because we have Elder Stevenson who isn't much of a talker, and we
also got a brand new missionary, Elder Richards, who is also a very
quiet person. Needless to say, there isn't a whole lot of talking at
home, but it's good because I've been able to be very productive with
my time! Our apartment (at least any of the places that I have to
spend any time in like our room, the kitchen, and the bathroom, are
absolutely spotless! Mother, you would be extremely proud haha. I've
pretty much turned into a clean freak on my mission with the place
that I live. I'm not weird or anything where germs scare me or I freak
out if something is dirty, but I really really like to have everything
of mine in a very orderly, clean, de cluttered condition. Haha it's
kind of funny, because in literally every apartment I've ever come
into, I'm that one elder that picks up after and throws away all of
the junk that missionaries leave in their apartments. Whenever I come
into an apartment, the only thing I do for like 2-3 days of free time,
is clean. I go out and buy whatever cleaning supplies we don't have
(and generally, with an Elders apartment...there's not a whole lot of
cleaning supplies) and then just go crazy scrubbing and mopping and
dusting and sanitizing and de-clogging. It's great!! Cleaning is
actually very relaxing for me. Whenever I get really stressed or
upset, I just go and clean a room or whatever completely and I feel
much better!

Well...I better get going, but I hope you all have a wonderful week!
Keep me updated with everything that's going on with all of you. I
love getting your emails, and even if I'm not able to respond right
away, I do appreciate them all. Keep getting closer to Heavenly
Father. He really is there, and He really does want to have a
relationship with you. I've learned that a lot of the times, we can't
just wait around for Him to come and say, "HEY! I'm here and I love
you!!". Father will show you that He is there when you do things that
invite His Spirit to be with you. As you actually do the things that
we talk about in church like pray, read your scriptures, go to church,
go to seminary...He will always bless you with His Spirit. That's a
PROMISE!! And as we know, "I the Lord am bound when ye do what I say,
but when ye do not what I say, ye have no promise." Just do what
you're supposed to do!! There's no super confusing strategy for being
happy in life. It's literally that simple. And with that, I bid you
all adieu until next week!! Adios amigos! Man I'm multilingual today
;) see ya!

-Elder Stafford