Halloween!
Here's an excerpt from Presidents letter... "Let’s see, in the last four months we’ve had (1) a heat wave with the highest recorded temperature in Newark ever recorded (107 degrees), (2) an earthquake, (3) a hurricane, (4) record rainfall causing the worst flooding on record, and now (5) a 50-year event snowstorm. You gotta love it!"
So yeah, it's definitely been an interesting mission experience. But this week actually went pretty great. One of the better weeks we have had in awhile. Last Monday I had the opportunity to go on an exchange with Elder Williams which went really well. We were able to teach Sylvia, and she is just amazing. We reviewed the baptismal questions with her, and she was pretty solid with all of them. She is still excited to be baptized next week, and even came to church yesterday. She wants to be baptized, because of the peace she feels from the gospel, as well as the changes that have happened in her life ever since she has been meeting with us. She had some family problems, and didn't have the best relationships with her kids, but since she's been taught, those relationships have changed dramatically, and that is sort of an answer to her that these things are true. We are so excited for her, and I'm glad Elder Jarrett will hopefully have one more baptism before he goes home next week.
Wednesday turned out pretty great as well. We started teaching this cool lady named Perla, who we actually contacted back in the end of August. She has some desires to find out about our church, and hopefully we can keep helping her grow in faith.
Thursday was a pretty miraculous. It was walking day, meaning no car usage, and it was the one day of the week that was rainy all day. But I guess with the rain, comes miracles. We went and taught a Recent-Convert, and we were able to teach her son as well who isn't a member. We shared the plan of salvation, and they found it to be pretty interesting. Then we headed over to a members house, where they were to have some friends come over. We ate some Willy Bello burgers (That's the members name) which included 2 quarter pound burgers put together with cheese in the middle. They were super good! Jennifer Bello (17 years old) invited some friends to church last week. We set up a time to come and teach them on Thursday. The 3 friends came (all brothers) Guillermo, Gernardo, and Oscar, and we taught them about the Gospel of Jesus Christ. We taught them how to pray as well, and we asked them if they would be baptized when they came to know this message is true. They said yes! We are super excited to work with them a little more.
Friday was a pretty great day as well. We got to go to zone leader council, and discuss Goal Setting, as well as helping investigators keeps commitments. We went to the mission office to get a new phone (again, because we just got new phones, but they don't work very well), and then we went to our appointment with the Garcia Family (RC's) and taught their friend Meri again. We asked her what she wanted to learn, or if she had any questions, and she was curious about what kind of rules she would have to live if baptized. We originally went in planning to teach about the restoration, but we ended up teaching the Word of Wisdom and the Law of Chastity, which she agreed to live. She's super cool, and has a date set for November 20th. Later we got to teach the Gonzalez Family (LA) that we have been trying to get to church. We discovered that they don't feel too comfortable at our church, and that they are going to another church, so now we know we really need to help them gain a testimony of the restoration.
Saturday came, we headed to district leader council, discussed the new zone goal and monthly focus, and then left the church only to find the surprise of Snow!
The snow was pretty heavy stuff, and it was super dangerous because all the tree's still had their leaves, and so the snow just weighed down and broke a ton of trees, which in turn brought down power lines, and made a lot of people have to live without power. In Paramus, they are not going to have power for another few days. It's pretty nuts. We received a text around 7:15 to go home because of a snow night...
Sunday came around, and a lot of churches cancelled their meetings because of the snow, but luckily ours didn't get cancelled. Sylvia came to church, Manuel came, and so did Guillermo which was super great. We only had the first two hours of church, but the second hour was really great for Manuel and Sylvia. They talked about the Book of Mormon, and the branch president told Sylvia to tell us how she came to know the Book of Mormon was true. She hadn't really prayed about it, but she said that she feels that it is true. She's going to be such an awesome member of the church. We were able to go and see Manuel that day, and we watched The Restoration with him. We set another date with him for November 20th to be baptized. He's had a lot of dates, but he is getting really close, and he is so ready! We invited him to specifically pray about Joseph Smith, and we will have to give him a call to see how it was. We had to go home around 6 because of the infamous Mischief Night here in New Jersey.
Now it's Halloween, and pretty soon we are going to a zone activity in Paterson to carve pumpkins, eat, and play games. It should be pretty fun. We don't get to do any missionary work today, because again we have to be home at 6 o'clock tonight.
Things are going super great though, and this week should be exciting. On Wednesday I get to go work in Union City while Elder Jarrett is at the temple. I'm super excited to go back and see Hector and other people I have met there. Thanks so much for the Halloween Package, my companion is pretty grateful too.
The chances of Elder Jarrett and I getting doubled out is very unlikely. It wouldn't be to good to double out of a zone leader area, so I'm pretty positive I'll be here in Passaic for at least one more transfer. I really do love Passaic though. The members are amazing! I'm so grateful that I was able to come to Passaic!
Thanks again for Everything!
Love you all so much!
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