Pretty Intense Week!!!!

Hey everyone!!

So this week has actually been pretty intense!! As far as teaching
goes...it was by far not intense, though. It was so weird!! We totally
got juked or ignored by everyone this week!! For the first time, ever,
Greg just never texted us back to have a lesson. I mean he always
takes forever to respond, but he's never just not texted us back. We
even we're going to bring a member to the lesson and it was going to
be awesome! :( and then he never went to church the next day, either!
And then John, our investigator who potentially might already be a
member, never got back to us either...and then he never went to church
either! It was so weird...were hoping that it's because of the
Veterans Day weekend or something. Weird..
We have been able to see a lot more members lately, though. I'm just
starting to realize how cool our Ward is haha. There are just TONS of
newly married couples that are just hilarious! They are all best
friends (the husbands and wives I mean) and so dinner appointments
with them are just hysterical because they are laughing and joking and
teasing each other, and I mean they aren't that much older than us
(weird), so we just get along great with them! It's been really fun.
The members are always my favorite part of the areas I serve in.

So now to the intense stuff!! So I got to call NYPD for the first
time!!!! :D haha so let me explain..
So the superintendent of our building is absolutely insane. Like
seriously. At least every other day I've been in the area (and a good
amount of the time it is every day) he will take a hammer and bang
hard on the inside of his front door for like 5 seconds at like 4:00
in the morning. He has this idea in his head that we are these gay
college students (he thinks we are in a private school, which is his
explanation of why we are always in a shirt and tie...and there are
four of us living together so that's where the gay thing comes in
haha) that like to run and jump in our apartment in the middle of the
night. Yes, he really, truly believes that. So whenever he wakes up
and "hears" us running and jumping at like 2:00-6:00 in the morning,
he goes and bangs on his front door to tell us to "quiet down". He
lives right across from us, no his front door is right beside our
front door, so every morning it wakes us up and scares the heck out of
us!!
And this is just the beginning of the story. So remember, he is
absolutely insane. So apparently two weeks ago, he saw a random lady
on our front steps crying, so he let her into our building so that she
could stay with him. We suspect that he was illegally renting a room
in his apartment out to her. But I guess she was from Florida and was
only staying for two weeks, and then she was gone. So...last
Wednesday, me and Elder Stevenson came home to put our groceries away
and we heard this commotion outside. We look out our peephole and we
see like 6 cops outside our door going in and out of our super's
apartment. I guess this woman that he just let into our building to
stay with him was on hardcore drugs or alcohol, and just freaked out
hd called the cops on him. So they took her away to the hospital and
that was all we really heard.
Then later that night, we get a ring in our apartment from the box
that you press to let people into the front door. We ignored it
because we weren't expecting anyone. But I guess this person kept
ringing and ringing all the apartments in our building until someone
let her into the building. So it's about 10:25 and we are going to go
to bed, hd we get a knock on our door. (So, I am unofficially the
apartment "leader" because I pretty much run our apartment haha. I'm
the one that makes everyone clean and takes care of all the business
like calling the contractor if we need something fixed, etc.). So I go
and answer the door because they all look at me like I'm the only one
that can answer a door, and it's that same lady!! She proceeds to tell
me this huge long life-story, but basically she asks if she can stay
at our apartment for the night because she "doesn't feel safe". She is
totally still on drugs, so I just look blankly at her and tell her
that "I have no idea who you are, and it's making me nervous that you
are just walking around our building when you don't live here. You are
going to have to leave because you aren't supposed to be here. You can
do down to the police station and talk to them if you feel unsafe."
She just kinds of goes off again like she didn't understand what I was
saying, and then takes our superintendents doormat, lays it on our
staircase, and then just curls up in a ball and goes to sleep! Haha I
had no idea what to do! I wasn't really sure if it was enough to call
the police about, but we all talked about it and decided that we were
not just going to let this woman sleep in front of our apartment all
night! So I call the cops and they come, but she had left before they
could get here. It was so weird.
So then the next morning (yes, the story continues)...we hear more
commotion from outside our door, and we see the super and this same
lady arguing and yelling at each other. She goes off and calls the
police, they come, and then she tells them that our super hit her, so
they have to take both of them away...

So yeah, we had an interesting start to the week haha. So I've just
been sick of our superintendent because he is just so rude to us and
still bangs on his door and scares the heck out of us. He came right
back the same day from the police station, so he obviously didn't hit
her, but he still kept giving us trouble. So Sunday morning (and yes I
feel bad that I did this on a Sunday morning), he banged on his door
at 5:30 in the morning, and usually we've just ignored him, but this
time, I woke up scared half to death and I was just TICKED. I've only
been more mad one other time on my mission. I put some shorts on and
my sweatshirt and my slippers, and I stomp over to our front door and
I just clench my fist and banged on our door for like 10 seconds as
loudly as I could. Then I opened up our door, and banged on his door
and shouted "LOU!! (That's his name) GET OUT HERE!!" He didn't come
out, so I banged on his door again and shouted again. He never came
out so I went inside, tore the side off of a cereal box and wrote him
a note that basically said that we were absolutely done with his
stupid, insane tantrums. I said that we were going to call management
if he did it again and either he was going to leave, or we were. I was
so done. It would have been one thing if he just thought that we were
running and jumping every night, but we've told him in explicit detail
that we are asleep by 10:30 until 6:30 and that we don't even get up
at night for anything, so there's no way it could be us. We've told
him this like 10 times, but he just doesn't get it. So yeah...that was
actually quite relaxing for me haha. I just let all of the stress of
the past week out on his front door and my front door ;) I totally
bruised my knuckles I was hitting it so hard...but it was so worth it
haha.

But anyways...this week we also had zone conference!! It was SO good!!
We had a really long question and answer session where President
Morgan answered any questions we had on mission rules, church
doctrine, or just missionary work in general. He is so awesome!! We
also had a clothing exchange thing where we brought any clothes that
we don't wear anymore that someone else might want to use. I got
myself 5 new ties so that was cool :) I have so many ties.....haha.
It's crazy.

Well, so that was pretty much my week! I hope you all are doing good!
It's going to start getting super cold over here so hopefully I won't
come back a Popsicle! I love you all so much and pray for you every
day! Have a good one :)

-Elder Stafford