When Our Hearts Were Depressed

October 16th, 2017

I bring glad tidings of great joy! Members in Richmond Hill cook very well. Period. Our dinner appointments consisted of several arroz con pollos. It was delicious.❤️ The sad thing is that I may have to watch my weight a little bit more in Richmond Hill because we don't necessarily eat very well at home, either. This week we ate: 4 Mac 'n Cheese dinners, two containers of spaghetti, a brownie box, and a full loaf of bread. Not counting Día de Hispanidad. Día de Hispanidad was... wow! The Mexicans killed it. The performances were top of the line and the food was most delightful to the stomach. Tamales, buñuelos, tostones, and pupusas? Yes. Please.

Hard to find a picture with my eyes open... I know.

Spanish old wives tale: If you have curly hair and want it to stay curly don't let a straight-haired person cut it. Or it will become straight. Same goes with straight hair - if a curly-haired person cuts it you automatically get curly hair. Heard it from a Honduranian, so it's probably true.

I finished the Book of Mormon in Spanish this week! It took a long time, because I was only reading it out loud. So I had to speak every word of the BOM in Spanish. Difficult, but evidently do-able. :)

Also, Cristian, a man we found last Saturday, came to church! But first he came to both English classes, and Día de Hispanidad. Church was a bit overwhelming (they talked about tithing, fasting, and paying fast offerings- CLASSIC for a first-time sacrament meeting) so he left after the first hour, but he has intentions to come next Sunday and stay. He really likes the people.

Find, find, find? More like grind, grind, grind!

It is definitely quite trying to not have a pool. It means that we are out finding all day, every day. This last week we had five or six member visits but they were all from Monday to Thursday. That meant that on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday all of the finding was "through our own efforts" which means knocking and street contacting (including bus and train contacting). It was quite the grind. 7-8+ hours daily just knocking and talking. And sadly we were just not finding success. Friday passed and we were tired but we knew we would find someone the next day. Saturday we were totally pumped but after hearing "I'm Catholic and good" and "you're knocking way too loudly to be doing what you're doing" and rejection after rejection it gets a bit discouraging. Especially when you don't really have anyone in your pool to begin with, so each "no" means we still have no one to teach.

Eyepiece of my purpose? :-)

Looking for investigators...

Sunday we really wanted to meet our weekly goals, so we were excited in the morning, but church was still a bit overwhelming for Sister Gillespie (it's so hard when you can barely understand what's going on and you don't hear English for hours for a new missionary) so it was already a grind getting into the finding for the rest of the day. And we knock, and knock, and knock. And at 8:00pm Sister Gillespie (rather reasonably) says, "maybe we should go to the church and get some more English cards." It was true, we had run out and were meeting many English-speaking friends.

¡Viva México!

These were the ones that made us amazing food last Sunday.<3 Long live Mexico indeed! 

Honduras Hotties

Mexico: Live action

I thought for a second and said, "maybe we can just finish this street." In my mind, however, my thoughts were actually, 'just this next house. One more house. Just one more.'

The Lord works in mysterious ways. Because the odds began to be in our favor.

1. A Dominican man came to the door. I started off the usual spiel and his dad came up and said, "wouldn't you be more comfortable in the house?" We agreed and proceeded to show the video to the entire family inside from the couch. We talked to them for about twenty minutes, the mom gave us juice, and they accepted a copy of the Book of Mormon.

2. Directly afterwards as we waited for the bus a cop came up to us and said, "you ladies good? Just wanna make sure." Sweet, right?

3. And then we had a lovely conversation with the bus operator in an empty bus. (Note: apparently to not work on weekends you need to have over 10+ years as a NYC bus driver)

4. Moreover, as we waited for the next bus required to get home a boy leaned out of a car and asked, "hey, Norma? are you Norma?" We informed him we were not but had a lovely shout-conversation about how we were the Mormons.

5. Indeed not seconds later a car pulled up next to the stop blasting music and about four men looked over at us seductively. We must have looked something terribly awkward because their faces cracked and they burst out laughing rather good-naturedly as they sped away.

The District

Alma 26:27 "Now when our hearts were depressed, and we were about to turn back, behold, the Lord comforted us, and said: Go amongst thy brethren, the Lamanites [citizens of New York City], and bear with patience thine afflictions, and I will give unto you success."

The Lord loves us, and tries us to prove our faithfulness. I love you all!

Kindest regards,

Hermana Ally Voss

Richmond Hill makes me weep

October 9th, 2017

Richmond Hill? Yeah, so it is crazy. Definitely in many ways the most ghetto and the nicest of areas I have served in. We live really close to a lot of Jews, which basically means we live in a really nice area. The only downside is that a lot of people have money in this area, and due to that the food is outrageously expensive. Last week and this week alone I have spent over $100 on groceries! For not too much, either!

Cool graffiti calls for a picture!

The upside is that we have many member appointments this week so we won't be feeding ourselves much. :)

Should I do this in bullet points?

- Sister Gillespie is precious and lovely and a ballerina and violinist.❤️ I love her so much.

- The Carlins (the senior couple down the hall) are wonderful and we ate a pot pie together for dinner this week and it was fabulous.

- Last night I had a Mexican feast with plátanos, jerky beef, limón agua, frijol, y arroz y era una de mis comidas favoritas en mi misión.

- Also Peruvian food is amazing. If I'm not equivocado (wrong) the amazing rice I tried is called chaufa.

- We were walking around on our first day in Richmond Hill in the Brooklyn slice of our area and we were talking to this girl named Aly about the hope Christ can bring and she began to cry and said she really needed that.

- Yesterday, an investigator of the Elders in Rego Park was baptized. It was weird because on Saturday I had a dream about him getting baptized and then it happened. I was so happy! What a miracle for him to be baptized after he went through so much to get to that point.

- The members here talk to all of their friends about missionary work! It is such a missionary-focused Ward.

- We have street contacted and knocked A LOT this week. And we have to keep doing it until we find solid people!

- Did I mention that Josh in Brooklyn was baptized who I worked with over a year ago? And Elder Menden baptized him, with Elder Creager was there, too!:) How awesome is that? I think I mentioned that already though. It just makes me really happy.

- Also Sister Chung is a Sister Training Leader. And Sister McAllister is training, so my generation picture is included.

 Hermana Gillespie (my new companion) and I

Four generations! Me, Sister Chung, Sister McAllister, and Sister Robison respectively.

Generations + Sister Gillespie ( all photo creds to Elder Rogers whom I dearly appreciate)

- Sister Reeve and I were nosy sticking around at the church for weekly Planning last last week on Thursday and transfer planning was the same day (and they were hiding Elder Asplund so that no one knew he was the new Assistant). Sooo Elder Asplund confronted us at transfers and said, "because you two were 'eating lunch' in the church, President wouldn't let me go to the bathroom so I had to wait forty-five minutes until you sisters left and I had to go SO bad." But the good thing is that we are bros with Elder Asplund now.

- Elder Brown helped us figure out Richmond Hill a bit as well and led us towards Brooklyn for finding.

Cheesy pick-up lines used on my companion and I this week:

"Hey! You dropped something!" *we look back* "my heart." *wink*

"I just wanna let you know that redheads make me weep. I love you! I love both of you!"

Spiritual thought:

"Looking back, I learned some of the best lessons during the hardest times - whether as a youth, on a mission, starting a new career, striving to magnify my callings, raising a large family, or struggling to be self-reliant. It seems clear that hard is good!"

Rooftop fun in Richmond Hill :-)

I know that the challenges in our lives help purify us and allow us to become more Christ-like. Opening up Richmond Hill is difficult, but it is an adventure for which we are more than a match!

I love each of you, have a blessed week!

Hermana Ally Voss

Perfection Still Pending

October 2nd, 2017

Hello most devoted, loyal fan base,

To summarize my week in three words: sick, surprising, inspiring.

I am greatly saddened to hear of the passing of our dear Elder Hales. He has been an inspiration to us all, and it was precious to me how Elder Andersen read a few of the words that he wished us to hear. My heart goes out to him and his family.

The Reynolds Pamphlet. 1782. Okay jk just exchanges with one of the most perfect women in the world aka Sister Reynolds. "Were you surprised when your husband was called to be a mission president?" "Well... no. I mean, he's always been amazing. People always told me he would be one."

This week I encountered some mission-changing news! President called me on a Friday and made me aware that the Lord has decided I am to train a new missionary blinded in to Richmond Hill (Mission Lingo: Blinded in. Definition: thrown carelessly into a different area, of the which you know nothing. No foresight included). Granted, I can't say I did not ask for it. I may or may not have mentioned that I would be more than happy to train, and I perhaps mentioned that Richmond Hill was a successful area, and why not put in Sisters? So, I definitely put myself knowingly into this situation.... Be careful for what you wish for!

For the first time, I had an opportunity to go on exchanges with Sister Reynolds! It was so pleasant and after visiting a new mom in our ward we went to the Cheesecake Factory for a magnificent lunch. The Cobb salad was possibly the largest salad that I have ever laid eyes on and was very filling and extraordinarily delicious. The time that we had to speak with Sister Reynolds was like gold, so precious and rare. I am so grateful and know that she does all she can to help us missionaries.

Why am I always the shortest?

Sister McDowell leaves tomorrow and takes part of my heart with her❤️

I also caught the plague this week. And we found out that Sister Reeve has been living with a bug-infested head for the last five months. The lice shampoo smelled pleasantly of evergreens.

In the words of my dearest companion:

"ok this is a good one. So nearly 5 months ago, back when i was with Hma Vaughn in Brentwood, my head started itching SO BAD like ALL THE TIME. And I was convinced I had lice so I had the mission nurse check it out and she said that I was clean and lice-free and that I should change my shampoo and the itching would go away. Well fast forward until last week when after 5 months of itching, I finally gave up hope that it was ever gonna go away by itself and caved in and called the doctor. We went in and it took her about 0.2 seconds to figure out that i had LICE! FOR REALS! So gross! So basically i got this crazy shampoo that is basically just like putting straight up pesticides in your hair and left it in for 12 hours and then Hma Voss and I combed out all the dead bugs from my hair. It was awesome. Highlight of my week for sure."

Marcia ❤️❤️

I scream, you scream, we all scream for papusas!

My cold medicine, however, tasted like fake cherry poison. Moreover, my cough sounds like I'm choking on a rag. But, all is well.

Conference was wonderful the other day. To quote a few powerful words (please take these as more like approximate quotes):

"Salvation is an individual matter; exaltation is a family matter." -someone quoted by Elder Oaks

"We must internalize the Character of Christ.... we can not be content with remaining where we are." -D. Todd Christofferson

"Here in mortality perfection is still pending," quoted by Jeffrey R. Holland.

"He loves to be with us." -Elder Rasband.

"Make time and take time to come and know your Savior." -Jean B. Bingham

"Remember to put Jesus Christ at the center of your life today." -W. Craig Zwick

"It is clear that hard is good." -Stanley G. Ellis ('For evil to prevail all that is necessary is that good men do nothing.')

Take care and I will tell you how lost I get this week on the next episode of: Adventures in Queens, New York. ;)

Love,

Hermana Ally Voss

¿Cuando son los bautizos de Octubre?

September 25th, 2017

We visited LaGuardia for Preparation Day last week! They were even handing out little souvenirs. :) I have a stress-reliever model plane now.

Laguardia Airport has some "fly" attractions. ;-)

An amazing day in the life of Sister Voss:

The next day was interviews with President Reynolds. I am so grateful for him and all he does. His calling isn't an easy one and he is so amazing in his fulfillment of it. Talk about magnifying your calling! I love President and Sister Reynolds with all my heart. After interviews they started asking us who we wanted to be the new Assistants. So... naturally we mentioned our picks (though they are probably like 100% wrong). We shall see!

During interviews a text came into our phone:

"Hola H. Reeve y H. Voss. Espero estén bien. Gracias como siempre por su tiempo y dedicacion. Solo queria preguntar cuando son los bautizos de octubre? Y también decirles que estuve leyendo Nefi capitulo 31 el cual habla practicamente sobre el bautismo y sus beneficios y responsabilidades. También les informo que el proximo martes cambiaré mi calendario de trabajo para poder asistir a la reunion de las 7 y 30 p.m. gracias y les deseo feliz dia."

Our investigator decided to be baptized! And guess what? He and our other golden investigator even came to church for their first time on Sunday! The Ward is so excited for them. Granted, members bring friends every week so it isn't like investigators aren't coming, but two new prospects are always quite exciting. Especially when us as missionaries put so much effort and work into getting them there. :)

And to make that day EVEN BETTER as we were strolling along the busy New York sidewalks and justo about to enter into our apartment complex Dustin a local English-speaking Mormon member asked us what we were doing. We explained how we were going to eat dinner and he asked what sort of dinner. We explained that maybe some cold cereal or rice would be involved and he told us to go down the street and ring his apartment and his wife would let us in and feed us dinner. We followed the instructions and partook of glorious chile, fritos, and cornbread. With Magnum salted caramel chocolate bars to conclude. It was quite magical.

Lil investigator with a big heart.

Where was Elder Lammi for this picture?

#squadatthezoo

#prayer

However, sadly several high magnitude earthquakes shook Mexico that day which was sobering because of the many members of our ward with family there. However all seem to be fine, which is a blessing.

What to NOT say to your almost-30-year-old bishop in Ward council:

*talking about an investigator*

Bishop: "¿Él es joven?"

Me: "No - tiene como su edad."

*room erupts into laughter* *it dawns on me what I just said*

Bishop: "Nunca he escuchado esto! Entonces tiene como pica de treinta años y es viejo como yo!"

But what they didn't realize is that I thought he meant 'joven' as in youth (like church youth group age so like 12-18) not as in just plain young! Eep. Haha but it makes for a good story. And Obispo doesn't seem to have any hard feelings.

 I'm a midget and she is a giant. Tall companions are the worst ;-)

Valentina is precious❤️

Random things that happened:

We went on exchanges with the amazing Sisters Stubbs and Amaro.

We coerced Sister Reynolds into coming on exchanges with us next week!

I ate an amazing S'mores Honey Bread at Caffe Bene. It was dripping in chocolate and whipped cream. 1,000 calories never tasted so good!

Honey bread: S'mores addition. <3

We ate apple pie at Women's Conference. It was delicioso.

We saw a drunk fight break out yesterday and also there was another awesome Hispanic parade on 37th Avenue yesterday! Much loud music and crazy skirts.

My 30-Day unlimited MetroCard expired and we had to walk to the church to get a new one.

Spiritual Thought (courtesy of Women's Conference):

"When we sin, we are less worthy. But we are never worth less." -Joy D. Jon?

I know that God sees us each with unimaginable individual worth and on my mission I have been able to see if even a bit of what he feels for each of his children. I know he loves each of you and I love each of you as well.

Love

Hermana Ally Voss

Not to Over-milk the Cow, but...

Hello all! Welcome to my weekly. It is the prime source to find all the interesting, boring, and gross things that happen in my life in Queens, New York.

Apparently this used to say 'Jesus Saves' but then the world got too secular.

 Olympic Book of Mormon box lifting:

Wait, you haven't heard of this Olympic sport? It's a thing. We carried a huge box of copies of the Book of Mormon from the mission office to our home and upon setting it down I felt my arms become literal noodles. The next morning my arms had swollen a bit and in the words of Nephi, "great was the soreness thereof." (1 Nephi 18:15)

Also, I definitely would not win the gold metal. I had to switch off an exeedingly many times with Hermana Reeve. But it should be noted that we probably walked for 20 minutes with that box.

Aren't Sister Reeve and I precious? Also, her clothes are great.

A Sign from Heaven?

A mini-miracle is that one day we were just having a really tough time finding and the whole day was filled with meetings and we went out to find with a goal of finding a curly-haired woman, and a few minutes in we saw a lady signing. Like, American Sign Language. And in this mission we keep our eyes absolutely peeled for ASL people because our ASL missionaries literally find NO ONE. It is almost impossible to find people signing. There are like around probably 60,000ish ASL-speakers in over 9 million people, so their pool is quite limited (these numbers are somewhat made up, so take this with a grain of salt). So, we freaked out and went up to her with our limited ASL abilities and I frantically face-timed the ASL sisters and we showed her the sisters so that they could communicate for us. And apparently she is interested in learning more about Jesus Christ! So that was a major victory. :) We felt quite accomplished. And we got her VP number, which is apparently a huge thing in the deaf community.

My companion wrote this about Weekly Planning:

"We were weekly planning and discussing if we should teach the restoration AGAIN (we've taught it like 4 times already but it's still not clicking) to our investigator and the conversation went like this:

Me: should we teach her the restoration again?

Hna voss: no... I think that would be overmilking the cow

Me: *sits there in silence trying to process what she just said*

Me: .....do you mean beating a dead horse....?

Hna voss: yep, that one, definitely that one 😂😂😂"

Lessons Learned:

We Skyped in Sister Steninger, an RM, into our lesson this week. It was very successful - definitely recommended.

Also, we had an amazing member present lesson in which we had watermelon and pet a cat. Lesson learned? There are many cats in New York City. They strays are abundant.

Enchiladas made with pork roast are delicious.

People don't change if they don't have a desire to change. "If nothing changes, nothing changes." -President Reynolds.

Avoid getting dripped on by the AC units. It's kinda gross.

Much fun on exchanges.

Sisters Kim&Adams are lovely.

Well, I'll never say no to strawberry ice cream.

The Book of Mormon:

“Just as the arch crumbles if the keystone is removed, so does all the Church stand or fall with the truthfulness of the Book of Mormon. The enemies of the Church understand this clearly. This is why they go to such great lengths to try to disprove the Book of Mormon, for if it can be discredited, the Prophet Joseph Smith goes with it. So does our claim to priesthood keys, and revelation, and the restored Church. But in like manner, if the Book of Mormon be true--and millions have now testified that they have the witness of the Spirit that it is indeed true--then one must accept the claims of the Restoration and all that accompanies it”

I pray that each and every single one of you will read from the Book of Mormon and pray about its veracity. I promise that if one does so with a soft heart open to divine inspiration, that they will receive an answer. I so testify in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Love,

Hermana Ally Voss

Isn't New York great? I didn't take this picture but I like it an awful lot.

Buried in Babylon or Exalted in Enoch?

Hello all,

I want to start off by saying that I honor those lives lost in the terrorist attack of 9/11/01. My heart and sympathies are with the families of those who lost a loved one. ❤️

Exchanges:

New development! This was my first 9pm-9pm exchange. Normally we do them 3pm-3pm and switch off a bunch, but I stayed with Sister Sorenson all day from 9pm to the next night and it was excellent. Sister Sorensen is awesome. Also, I 100% highly recommend the Oreo milkshakes at Carvel's.

Hitting the Stage!

Mission Leadership Council:

-We are already planning for Christmas which is horrible. How dare they? Really. It's quite rude to talk about Christmas this early in the year.

-We ate some good New York pizza.

-Elder Rogers and Elder Ramos-Ortega gave an electrifying workshop on technology. It made me think of the abundant ways we can use it. Videos, messages, scheduled texts, scheduled calendar events, texts, iMessage, fb messenger, Facebook, quotes, videoconferencing, member presents Skype in, showing a pamphlet, sending church links, WhatsApp, Mormon.org questions resources, etc. There are just so many righteous uses for technology!

Sister Training Leaders with Sister Reynolds at Mission Leadership Council

Mormons? On Broadway? I had no idea we were so talented! 

-Elder Weisler gave a Weekly Planning workshop focused on companionship inventory. As we humble ourselves and strive for improvement and to better serve our companion, we will find ourselves growing closer to the Lord. When will I be the best Sister Voss I will ever be? Right now? No. At the end of my mission? No. When I get married in the temple? No. I want to be the best Sister Voss I will ever be on the last day of my life. Whether this mortal life or the next I know not. Only that life is an opportunity to constantly grow to be better and do better. "Try a little harder, to be a little better." Gordon B. Hinckley. I will try to be the best Sister Voss every day and continue on forever. "We must never cease to learn. We believe in eternal progression and that this life is a part of eternity to be profitably lived until the very end." -Gordon B. Hinckley.

-"You can't be in Babylon all day and go home to take a shower and preach in the city of Enoch." -President Reynolds

I think many of us could take this in a a more literal sense. We can't be doing things like being lazy, wasting our lives on drugs or sex or entertainment, having foul language, and being rude to others and then just show up at the house of the Lord on Sunday or at the temple to perform ordinances. It can not and should not be done (unless of course one is taking the steps necessary to change and come back).

As a missionary, though, this takes on many different meanings. As a missionary one can not be disobeying mission rules, even ones that may seem minor and go and teach a spirit-filled lesson the next minute. It is making a mock of the sacred trust that the Lord has given us. As a missionary one can not be talking trash about other missionaries, judging Ward members, and laughing at mission leaders and then turn around, pray, and expect to keep the spirit of the Lord.

Exchanges with Sister Sorenson and the Carvel adventure. 

Feliz Cumpleaños a Hermana Sarmiento! 

"To come to Zion, it is not enough for you or me to be somewhat less wicked than others. We are to become not only good but holy men and women." -D. Todd Christofferson.

I know that staying worthy of the Holy Ghost is what is going to bring us true happiness in our lives, and that as we seek to be in the city of Enoch all day long we will find true happiness and an eternal rewards. I bear my testimony of this in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Love,

Hermana Ally Voss