Hey everyone!
So as you might know, I've been transferred out of
Harlem and put into the Newtown, Connecticut ward. It's an awesome
place and I love it so far! It was a little weird to be taken out of
Harlem so soon, but I'm sure that I'll adjust to non-city living fast
enough. It's weird to be in a car again! Haha
My new companions name is Elder Nielson. He is from Hurricane, Utah
(and it's pronounced Hur-ri-kin for those of you not from
Hurricane...I guess people there are very picky about how you
pronounce their towns name haha). He's only been out on his mission
for 13 weeks so he's still pretty new.
Connecticut is a lot different from NYC! There are so many trees!
Almost every single person in the ward is super rich, as well. We've
had dinner with a member every day that I've been here and almost
every single house is super big, super fancy, and super expensive
haha. Everyone is really nice, though. The members just love the
missionaries. I guess there was a big argument a few weeks ago on who
was going to feed the missionaries that week, because everyone wanted
to have us over! It's pretty nice for us, though ;)
We've been doing a lot of less-active lookups because my new stake is
having a "month of rescue" where the stake has a goal of perfect home
teaching, perfect visiting teaching, and having everyone on the ward
list visited by a member or a missionary. It's really cool because
everyone is actually trying it and excited about it!
Right now the people that I remember the best that we are working with are:
Sister Tirrell, who is about 70 or so and is a less active that is
wanting to quit smoking. The couple lessons we've had with her have
been pretty good. Hopefully we'll be able to be a good influence on
her to stop.
Mary Buzak, who is an investigator of about two or three weeks. She
got interested in the church after she was invited by the missionaries
to an online discussion on Facebook. I guess she really like them and
she likes that our church is so open to talk about God outside of
church. She's Catholic and has expressed that she doesn't want to be
converted, but that she just likes when we come over...we'll see
though ;)
Brother Caserta, who is a less active...but only because he's very
home bound. He has a really bad hernia that keeps him in bed for the
most part. We go over and read scriptures with him.
Other than those...we aren't teaching many others. The sister
missionaries just opened a new area in our ward so they pretty much
took a lot of the people that the elders here were teaching because
they were females. Guess that just means we get to do some finding!
Yay!
I got to bare my testimony in sacrament meeting on Sunday! That's only
the third time I've had to get up and speak in a meeting!!
So yeah, besides just getting to know the ward and people we work
with, there hasn't been anything super exciting happening. It's been
kind of rough for me this week for some reason. I've been feeling
pretty down lately for some reason. I just gotta push through it,
though! I know The Lord will help me! Prayer's going to be pretty
important.
I hope you all have an awesome week and stay safe and warm! It's
finally starting to get a LITTLE warmer over here (even though it
still snowed a little yesterday...just a few flakes). I love you all!
You're my favorites!
-Elder Stafford :)
Lina...my favorite investigator!
