...Do The Hand Thing

Hey everyone!! So it's been another wonderful week over here in the
Bronx!! So mom mentioned that it was surprising how quickly I get
comfortable in an area. To be honest, it actually takes me a while to
adjust to the work in each area. I feel comfortable with the people
and my apartment and the ward after about a week when I'm able to
clean and organize the apartment and then have my first Sunday in the
ward. The first Sunday is always super awkward, but by the next
Sunday, you've at least remembered a few people's names and you've
gotten to know a few people. As far as working with investigators and
doing finding, though, it takes me a while to feel comfortable.
Missionary work is just so drastically different in this mission by
just taking a subway up two or three stops! It's insane!

So this week was pretty dang awesome though. Thursday was a pretty
normal weekly planning day. I like to take a long time to weekly plan
so that I can feel organized and we have plans for like every minute
of the day. It doesn't usually take very long if you have a large
teaching pool, but I've kind of come to accept that teaching pools
just don't get very large here...at least in the areas I've served in.
But anyways, so Friday was our missions Christmas Party!!!! Oh my word
it was amazing!! So once a year during Christmas, the whole mission
(all 250 of us) gets together and we have a wonderful devotional
filled with tons of musical numbers and talks and Christmas stories.
We have so much musical talent in our mission it's crazy. Then after
the devotional, we all sit down and have a Christmas meal together put
on by the wards in the area and the senior couples. It was so much
fun! We all send in pictures from the past year and put them together
into a ginormous slideshow and we watch it while we eat....so much fun
:)

Then on Saturday we had the ward Christmas party. I couldn't tell you
how that one was because I hardly got to go haha. So while everyone
was putting the finishing touches on decorations and everyone is
starting to get there, Chris, one of the zone leaders investigators
walks up and I shake his hand and am like, "hey man, how's it going?
How was your day?" And he says, "oh it was...okay. Kind of...strange."
And I go, "oh yeah? Why's that? What happened today?" And he just
looks at me in the eyes and his eyes just tear up and he just starts
bawling. :( it was so sad! So I pull him in and he rests his head on
my should and I pat him on the back. I grab one of the zone leaders,
Elder Delehunty, and whisk him out into the hall for some privacy. He
cries for a couple minutes while we try and comfort him and pat him on
the back and stuff. Then he asks if we can go into a room and talk. So
we do and we end up talking for like 2 hours and 15 minutes!!! He's
kind of a weird guy, so we hardly could understand what all the crying
was about, but we eventually got to talking about baptism and the
gospel. It was one of the more spiritual moments of my mission when I
was able to testify of how we can feel completely clean after baptism,
and then later after taking the sacrament. He was really interested in
that.

Then on Sunday we had a few laughs. So the high counselor for our ward
came to do some stake business, then Brother Johnson, the second
counselor, came up to do some ward business. He's only a convert of
like 3 years, and I mean...he's only been to church in the Bronx, so
he hardly knows what he's doing haha. It's kind of a bad joke in the
mission that the church is slightly less true in the Bronx hahaha. In
the Spanish ward last year, there was a then 15 year old teacher that
had been blessing the sacrament.......for a year. Hahahaha oh wow...
But anyway! So he gets up to do the sustainings, and he didn't really
know how to say "those in favor, please manifest", so was like,
"uh....those who are in favor...um...do the hand thing" hahaha and
then to try and switch it up he said, "aight...an any opposed....just
raise ya hand" haha it was pretty dang funny.

Haha oh and also during church, the lady that said the closing prayer
said the Lords Prayer haha. Only in the Bronx!!

So yeah, that was about my week! So much fun!! I love you all so much.
I hope you have a great week. :) peace yo!

-Elder Stafford


Hey mom!! So we have one more P-day before Christmas, but we'd better
figure the whole skyping thing out! So I was just thinking about doing
it like 2 o'clock my time which is like noon over there. Is that
alright? My schedule is pretty darn open so really whenever works for
you, I'll be able to do it. Well, have an awesome week!! Love you to
death!! Well...and further than that of course... :)