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