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. :)