...To The BRONX!!!!

Heyyyyyy!

Alright so this week is transfers already!!! The 7 week cycle is over!
As a surprise to me and everyone else....I've been transferred already
:( at the most exciting time of the year!! What the hay!! I guess I'm
excited but also really sad. I love the area that I was in so
much.....so much. Like THAT was what I thought of when I got my
mission call to NYC. But it's all okay! I'm so excited to work
wherever the Lord sees fit to put me haha :)

So this email is actually going to be pretty short because we don't
have a whole lot of time to email, as are most transfer days, but also
because this week was pretty uneventful. The most exciting thing that
happened is that our Ward had a baptism!!! Wooooo! The sisters
investigator, Luz Santos, was baptized in Saturday. It was SUCH a cool
baptism...probably my favorite one on my mission. The Spirit was just
overwhelming as soon as that woman came out of the water. Me and Elder
Stevenson were witnesses, so it was really cool to be so
close...reminded me of the primary days when you press your face up
against the glass during baptisms to watch haha.

The rest of the week was really just walkin around trying to find all
of our invisible less active members haha. We were finally able to
meet with John for the last time, though! Well, I wasn't haha. We were
on a split and I was in the other Elders area. Im actually not the
biggest fan of splits. I mean they're fun sometimes, and it's always
fun to have a change of scenery, but I'd rather just stay in my own
area.

So I guess people have been hearing about a lot of protests and riots
in my area of Manhattan, but I just want everyone to know that it's
really not a big deal and they've been very peaceful. There aren't any
worries, so none of us have been instructed to stay away from
anywhere. We'll be totally fine! Plus...we've got name tags and the
protection of the Lord! What else do you need? :)

So about the thing that happened with John last Sunday haha. Sorry I
totally left you hanging. So what happened was he went up to Sister
McClure, a sister in our Ward, and asked for her number hahaha. It was
so awkward. We were actually pretty worried because it was the first
time that he actually put forth the effort to wake up early and go to
our Ward, so we were scared that the only reason he did it was because
he wanted to see Sister McClure. But he came again this last week so
it was good! We aren't worried anymore.

Well....so I'm sure you are all dying to know WHERE I'm being
transferred..........IM GOING TO THE BRONX!!!! Haha the one place I
haven't really been yet! I've generally been everywhere that the
mission has to offer except the Bronx!! I live right next to Yankee
Stadium!! I'm pretty excited. My new companion is Elder Sorenson who
is...weird haha. But I'm sure it'll be fun. I'll let you know more
about it next week!!

Well, I gotta get going, but I hope you all know how much I love you
and that I pray for you daily. Have an awesome week everyone!! Peace
yo!

-Elder Stafford :)

 Me and Sister Hoyos

Times Square 

Book of Mormon The Musical...I was pretty upset we couldn't 

get a good quality picture because of the lighting :/

Christmas lights by our apartment 

My first pair of shoes from the beginning of my mission.  I've already gone through

another one and am on my third pair haha

I Still Haven't Outgrown a Birthday Party!!

Hey hey!!

So I just wanted to say thank you SO much for my birthday package!!
Haha my roommates and I are excited to have a party on Sunday! :) as
much as I want to think I've outgrown stuff like that, I still
secretly like having a party with cake and balloons and stuff ;)

So THANK YOU!! Haha one question, though. What was with the glasses
theme haha? :) both my gifts were different kinds of glasses and it
was so funny!! I'll send you pictures of me using my silly straw and
Spy glasses.

Well, you are the best and I hope you have an awesome day! Love you!!

-Elder Stafford :)

Sunday was...MY BIRTHDAY!!

Hey hey hey!!

So yes I did indeed break out the winter clothes for good this week.
It got pretty stinkin cold. No snow!! But it was cold. And windy.
Yuck.

So this week has been pretty eventful actually!! I'm just gonna break
down each day so that I make sure and get it all!

So Thursday was weekly planning day! I'm not gonna lie when I say that
weekly planning takes up the majority of Thursday's. It's pretty
fueling, but I like it! It's just really hard to fill our week out
with productive things for us to do that isn't just tracting and less
active lookups, which we could very well be doing all week long. We
also taught John! He's the guy that we've been teaching that is pretty
sure that he got baptized when he was 14, but we have no records of
him. We are just reteaching him and are probably going to do it again
so that we make sure he actually was baptized haha :) He finally
stopped being a bum and got back to us! We taught him about the Word
of Wisdom which is the church's law of health. It's the thing that
makes it so we can't drink coffee or tea haha. It was good, he's only
got one more lesson to go before he'll be ready to be baptized again.
He's pretty cool! Fun story with him, though, when I get to Sunday.
Haha

Friday was fun! We've been helping this lady in our Ward out that
lives in a project building. We've been deep cleaning her apartment
and painting a couple rooms for her. It looks 1000X better. Afterwards
we went to our Ward mission leaders apartment for dinner!! He's so
great! He's very involved with us and the work we do. We've been
putting together a Ward mission plan which is kind of like our wards
blueprint for the missionary work here.

Saturday we did an activity with all of the missionaries in the area!!
We went to Washington Square Park and had a white board and free hot
cocoa and a picture of a bald turkey. Yes, I'm not kidding. We went
around to everyone that we could see and had them write down something
that they were grateful for. It was actually pretty cool how receptive
the people were! Usually everyone sees us and just puts their head
down, but this time we talked to a lot of people! After the activity
we had a PIE NIGHT!!! Our Ward has it every year. Literally, everyone
just makes a pie, brings it, and we eat it. It's great. There's also a
pie contest that some people got pretty crazy about haha. People take
a lot of pride in their pie.

Sunday was MY BIRTHDAY,!! It was great! Not super exciting! Just went
to church, looked up some former investigators, then went to a members
home for dinner. The members we had dinner with are SO funny!!! I was
literally laughing the entire time. They are this couple that are just
best friends. They just seem like two buddies from high school. It was
cool. They set up a little party from a kit that my mom sent me
(THANKS MOM!!!) and we just partied hard. Not really, but it was still
good.

Monday was district meeting! A district is a smaller group of
missionaries that are in he same area. I'm the district leader....so I
lead the district...go figure. Woo! It's actually a lot of fun. I'm in
communication with the missionaries in my district a lot, so I get
really close with everyone. After district meeting, we walked around
for days in the freezing cold rain trying to find some former
investigators again. Then we had dinner with Brother McQuade. He's a
SUPER cool member that just moved into the Ward. He and his wife are
pretty adorable.

Tuesday we walked around and looked more people up...on the coldest
day of the week. We are geniuses. Then we had dinner with the
Weitzmans. It was delicious! She pretty much made us a thanksgiving
dinner!

And here I am today! Today we went around shopping for some essential
clothing items and such. I'm looking for a new pair of shoes, too. My
second pair of shoes are toast...I'll send ha pictures next week!!
Then we just went to the church and played basketball for a little
bit. Shopping took a lot longer than expected.

So yeah that was my week!

Well, I gotta get going! I hope you all have a fantastic week. Let me
know what's been going on with you! For everyone that I didn't have a
chance to email, I will get to you next week I promise!! Love you all!
I'm praying for you!

-your favorite New Yorker
Elder Stafford :)

 After our Thanksgiving APF

My Hood milk haha! 

I don't know... 

Every gangsta in Manhattan takes pictures like this...thug life.

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

About my Mission...

Hello!!

So this week has been pretty good! For all of you that might not know,
I'm serving in Manhattan right now. My area is the Upper East side
which is the streets to the right of Central Park. Our area covers a
big diversity of people. At the top of our area, it's considered
Harlem and so there are a lot....a LOT...of black and Hispanic people.
This area is very poor. Well, they are definitely poor...but they
don't think they are haha. Most everyone lives in projects which are
government owed and ran apartment buildings. These buildings are
disgusting. No one cares about having a clean living space, and so the
halls are absolutely nasty and smelly. There is more often than not
urine in all of the elevators from someone who couldn't wait to use
the restroom...yes I'm being serious. It's ridiculous, though because
everyone that walks out of these buildings are sporting three things:
a pair of Beats by Dr. Dre, a $150 pair of Timberland boots or the
newest Jordan shoes, and the newest iPhone. Haha and then you look in
the parking lot of these places and there are like brand new cars and
motorcycles. People and their priorities...
But then you go lower and lower until you hit the REAL "Upper East
Side". This is where the money is. When you think of a super expensive
penthouse or townhouse in the heart of New York, this is it. Here,
people actually DO have money. almost everyone is white, rich, hd way
too busy or stuck up for us haha. So yeah, my area is so awesome. I
absolutely love it and I'm having the time of my life sharing
(well...trying to share) the Gospel of Jesus Christ with the people of
New York.

My companions name is Elder Stevenson. He is...interesting. He is an
awesome guy and has the biggest heart in the world. I say that a lot
in my emails, but he really does. He's very genuine and sincere. He's
just really...slow. He moves really slowly, walks really slowly, and
yes, he thinks a little slowly. It takes him a while for thinks to
process and click in his brain, and so it's been rough for me to help
him do everything that he needs to. I could be leaving the area in a
few weeks, and so I need to help him be ready to take it over for his
companion. During a mission, you get moved around pretty frequently.
Every 6 weeks or so, you could be moved to a new area, get a new
companion, or anything else. It's all up to the Mission President (he
is in charge of my mission and all of the missionaries in it) and what
he feels is best. For example, I started out in Monticello, NY, went
to Harlem, got moved to Newtown, CT, and am now here in The Upper East
Side.

Right now the main guy we are teaching is a man named Greg Aggewala.
He is an Indian (as in from India) that has been taking lessons with
missionaries for like 8 months now. He has really gained a testimony
of the Book of Mormon and knows that this is what he wants to do. He
is so awesome and really just wants to get closer to Christ. He is
planning on being baptized on Dec. 6th. We're excited!
We also have a man named John that we are teaching. He swears up and
down that he has been baptized but we haven't been able to find the
records of it, so we will probably end up baptizing him again just to
make sure he actually was.

Other than that, we really don't have a whole lot of people to teach.
We are still in the process of finding people right now.

So it has been getting flipping cold here. Well, the last couple days
it wasn't so bad, but it was bitter cold like 3-4 days ago. It finally
started to feel like November haha. Can you believe that it's the
holidays already?! What in the world!!

Well, I just want you all to know that I love you and pray for you.
Keep being awesome and keep moving forward. Let me know how everyone
is doing!! Have a great week!!

-your favorite missionary
Elder Stafford :)