NYC Week 8

January 1, 2013

Dearest Family,

We have had a great week! We challenged one of our investigators, Manuel from Mexico, to baptism and he is getting baptized on Jan. 19. Please pray for him in his progression, he is super legit! We taught him about the law of Chastity and right now he is living with his girlfriend so he says he is going to move. He has a lot of faith and is willing to do whatever it takes to get baptized.

On New Years Eve we had to be in by 6:00 because I guess for some reason the streets of Harlem aren't that safe on new years eve. ;) We went back to our apartment and worked on a birthday presents for one of our zone leaders, Elder Hulme. He just got called as zone leader for this transfer and he is so fun and awesome.

Yesterday (New Years Day) we were walking and Sister Aguirre said "Let's talk to that guy" so I walked up to the guy that she pointed to and started talking to him. His name is Ricardo. We asked him how his New Years was going and he said that the night before he lost 5-6 hours of his life because of how drunk he was. He said he woke up somewhere and didn't even know how he got there! Sad! We told him we were missionaries and he said he wasn't interested...but Sister Aguirre didn't give up so we kept talking to him about his life (he is from Chicago, he was just visiting friends here) and he kept going on about how he wanted to change his life (I was smiling inside) and how he hates having regrets and then at the end of our conversation he started talking about death and said "I don't know if you guys ever think about what comes after death..." and saying how scary death seemed (I smiled even bigger inside) and so we left him with a pamphlet and bore our testimonies about the gospel and the plan of salvation. I loved this experience because I was SO HAPPY to share my testimony with him! He is one of the ones who is "looking for the truth but knows not where to find it". It was legit! This is what being a missionary is all about and what makes all the hard days worth it.

Another experience we had a few days ago was when we were walking to an appointment and I saw a girl on the side of the street waiting for someone so we went to go talk to her. Her name is Lis. At first she said she wasn't interested but we kept talking to her and she told us that she "doesn't do the whole religion thing"  and that she is looking into "Satanism" (It's basically a religion about being your own creator) so we bore our testimonies and told her a little bit about what we believed. By the end she was really excited to learn more about what we believe so we took down her information and gave it to the english speaking sisters. I was happy I followed the prompting of the Spirit to go talk to her because I know she was searching for something, she just didn't know it was us!! :D

The other day we were meeting an investigator for lunch and this guy walked by, stumbling all over the sidewalk. He turned around for a second and I saw his face and saw nothing...it was so sad. He was drunk/high/everything else and I felt so bad for him. 

Yesterday we were tracting in the projects and we came across a family who are very religious and they let us in so we taught them the Restoration. The spirit was so strong and the mom (Jasmine) was really into our lesson. At the end she said she really wanted to pray and read about the Book of Mormon because she has been to a lot of different churches but hasn't found one she liked. She lives out of our area so we are going to give away the referral to other missionaries. It seems like all the people we find to teach are out of our area, but oh well! The work is the work even if we don't get to teach the people we find.

Another exciting thing that is happening is that I am finally starting to be able to understand people when they speak in spanish to me! That means in lessons sister aguirre doesn't have to translate for me! I've been praying really hard to be able to understand and I know that Heavenly Father is answering my prayers.

Also, our whole mission is doing service with the South mission on Saturday! We are joining forces to finish the hurricane cleanup and help with all the last projects that people need help with. I'm excited!!!

I think that's about it for now, I love you all so much!! Have a great week!!!!

Hermana Richardson

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