NYC week 1

I flew to New York on election day!  Estoy aqui en HARLEM!!!! :)  Our area is right along the west side of Central Park and mi companera said we work there alot! yay!  Due to the recent hurricane, when we arrived at the mission home Tuesday night there was no power.  They haven't had power for 9-10 days now and it was an adventure! Let me just tell you my mission president, President Morgan is AWESOME!!!!!!  And Sister Morgan is so sweet! I had my first interview with President Morgan on Tuesday night and he reminds me SO MUCH of my Stake President at home, President John McCorquindale (way awesome!)  He is serious about the work and I am excited to do the work.

 I love New York City! As we walk the streets of Harlem mi companera y yo are the only white people I can see, pero it's great! My companion's name is Hermana Aguirre from Atlanta, but she was born in Mexico so she is a native Spanish speaker! What a blessing for me! She has a gift, and I won't say to much about it, but she is a m a z i n g. She literally can look at someone and sense their light  She's a very special daughter of God and I am blessed to be her companion! :)She keeps telling me how good my Spanish is and she told me this morning that there is an elder in our zone who has been out for 12 weeks and my Spanish is better than his! Wow! She is SO NICE :) And very patient which is another blessing. This morning we had weekly planning and we called a lot of people (investigators, potentials, etc) and I made some of the calls and left them messages in espanol! I had to write the message down but I still did it! Maravillosa! No puedo cree mas rapido mi espanol is coming!

As of now we are not involved in cleanup from the Hurricane.  The NY South mission was hit a lot harder than ours, so we are able to teach.  Once the gas rationing is over, we will be able to take some days to travel to the other mission and help out. Earlier today we had our weekly planning meeting and Hermana Aguirre spoke only in Spanish and my head hurt really bad trying to understand her, but I know it will come with time. The Lord is truly helping me and as I do my best I can feel Him helping me. There is so many new sights and smells (The area we are in right now actually smells way nasty in some places) Just imagine smelling cigarette smoke wherever you go plus garbage and who knows what else. PERO, I love it here!!!!

New York is beautiful and I can't wait to meet some of our investigators! We have the best zone leaders in the whole entire world. All the elders in the whole mission are so nice! It's amazing to see the difference between these elders who have been serving for several months and the elders in the MTC who are still so young (and have much to learn about being gentlemen ;)) 

Anyway, (I just took a short break) but now I'm back and guess what. Sister Aguirre and I just talked to two people about the gospel. Hermana Aguirre met an 18 year old boy named Rakim (Ra-KEEM, African American) last week and he just came to the church so we tried to answer some of his questions (atheist... :)) and then handed him off to some of the English speaking elders. As we were walking back down here to finish emailing (we're in the family history library) a young man named Jeff walked down the stairs. He is a journalism student at Columbia and is doing a report on the "Mormon church in Harlem." He is great! We talked to him about his project and a little about the Book of Mormon. We told him that everything about our religion is in that book. He says he has a copy of it at his apartment so hopefully he starts reading it. Talking to people about the gospel is so fun! I've never done this before and it's so different but I love it with all my heart! love love love love!!!! :D Later today we have a few appointments with some investigators/less actives so I am going to have to pull my Spanish out. Woot :D

I am excited to proclaim the gospel truths to the people of New York in the months to come and to help people change their lives so they can have the happiness and knowledge that we have. I hope you all realize how blessed we are to be members of this Church. Now go out and share it :)

Les quiero mucho!!!!!!!!!!!

Hermana Richardson

PS: Our apartment is tiny but nice, there are four apartments on our floor and two of them have people from Jamaica living in them and they smoke weed. It smells :(  There is a family that lives above us with little kids so we hear them all the time and it makes me miss my days as a nanny. :)

MTC week 8

November 1, 2012

HOLA !!

I fly out to NY on election day! If I could box up all my joy and send it to you in a package I would because I am so excited and I want to share all my excitement with you!!!!!!!! :) :)

We have heard lots of news of the hurricane on the East coast and anticipate lots of service opportunities when we get there! That also means lots of missionary opportunities! Woot! I can't believe I will be in the field in 5 days. My time here at the MTC has flowwwwwwwn! My comp Hermana Lancaster got an update from a sister in our mission last week and she said she is excited for the next transfer because there are a lot of new Spanish speaking sisters coming into the mission! That means US! :) :) She said they might have to open new areas because more sisters are coming in then there is areas for! Exciting!

This week was great! Here are a few of the highlights:

On Saturday we taught our new "investigator", Noemi. She is evangelical and in the first lesson had a hard time accepting the BOM because she didn't want her kids to be confused. She wouldn't take it from us so we were bummed. At the end of the lesson we asked if we could pray with her and she said yes but asked if we could pray her way. So we all stood in a circle, held hands, while she prayed. I had to bite my lip REALLY  hard to keep from laughing. It was interesting. We also  taught our other investigator Rodemil and he feels so guilty for his past sins because he says his family is suffering for them. We talked about the Atonement and read Alma 7:11-13 with him. (Read it!!!! :)) We could literally see his countenance change as he realized that he could repent and not feel guilty anymore. After we read the scripture he said "Como es posible?" (How is this possible?) so we explained that no one can fully understand the Atonement but just have faith in Jesus Christ that everything will be made right through the Atonement. It was a great lesson. Also today in our class with our teacher Hermana Wetzel we read Matthew 8 and 3 Ne 17:17. Go read them! They both talk about miracles that the Savior did for people and as we were reading them I realized that I AM LITERALLY a representative of Jesus Christ! I will be walking the streets of NY as if I was Christ and acting in his name for the next 16 months. It hit me and tears started to roll down my face as I realized the potential I have to change people's lives and help them come to know of the happiness of joy that can come from accepting Him as their Savior. Ahh I love it :) It also makes me sad how fast this experience is going! I want to soak in every minute!

Sunday we went to Relief Society and the musical number was sung by two sisters. It was a song about the Restoration and Joseph Smith and of course I started to cry as soon as they started singing. (Something about the MTC has turned me into a crybaby...hmmm maybe it's the Spirit :)) The speaker was the first counselor of the General Primary Presidency and she showed a clip of Christ coming to visit the people in the Americas. That did it, I started sobbing and my comp handed me her glove cuz it was all she had! haha! I am so grateful for this opportunity to bring people unto Christ! It was wonderful and I love feeling the Spirit of the MTC. I am going to miss it so much! The speaker at the devotional on Sunday night challenged us to serve our missions in a way that when we leave, we can look out over our mission  and hear the Lord whisper, "Well done my good and faithful servant." I am trying so hard and will continue to try hard to make Heavenly Father proud.

Monday was our last day in TRC! We taught a cute old couple, the Davis's (the wife didn't speak espanol so it was a little difficult) but they were so sweet! Sister Davis prayed for us at the end and started to cry. It was so sweet.

Tuesday our teachers boss, Hermana Zirkle, came in to evaluate us. It was SO intimidating! This guy was huge! Like Nephi or Ammon would have been! Not even kidding! He asked us a lot of questions in Spanish and of course I was super nervous but I answered them in the best Spanish I could muster under pressure! We learned a lot ( or at least I felt like I did!) Tuesday night we also sang "Called to serve" for our last time with the whole MTC at the devotional. That is definitely one thing I am going to miss. Singing called to Serve with all the missionaries is the bomb.com!! :) Tuesday I also felt like my Spanish was not there at all but then I prayed at dinner in Espanol and one of the new sisters in our district told me after that I am her idol and she hopes to be able to pray in Spanish like me one day! It was a great tender mercy!!! :)

Yesterday an Elder from my zone and I played "Oh Divine Redeemer" for the new missionary orientation. It was great! Elder Tuttle was on the cello and I played the piano. It was amazing!! Also yesterday we got to host the new missionaries that came in. I helped two sisters, one going to Argentina and one going to Germany. It was a great opportunity to focus on helping others instead of worrying about how much I feel like I haven't done in my short 9 weeks here at the MTC. Focusing on others truly is the only way to be happy, so I encourage each of you to pray for service opportunities every day like elder Ballard talked about in his conference talk!! Also today as I was waiting in line to host a sister another sister in front of me started speaking to me in Spanish and I had a conversation with her! In Spanish! It was great! Another tender mercy from the Lord to show me that I have learned SOMETHING here in the MTC ;)

Con mucho amor,

Hermana Richardson

PS please pray for my future investigators in NY that they will be prepared to meet me!!! And that I will be prepared to meet them! And that I will be able to recognize the opportunities Heavenly Father presents me to talk to people about the gospel! And that I will have missionary opportunities in the airport and on the airplane! MUCHAS GRACIAS :) :) :)