Hello Mom and Dad!
This was the last week of mission-wide service in New York. It has been an unbelievable adventure that still isn't quite over yet for me and my companion. I don't even remember what it's like to live in normalcy. First I had to figure out the MTC, then when I got used to that they sent me to New York. I had six days of trying to figure out regular missionary work when a giant hurricane hit us and then I had to figure out balancing being a missionary with doing service for six hours a day. And now I'm supposed to go back to being a regular missionary. It's all a whirlwind of adventure for me.
Well anyways, last week we continued the daily service we've been doing for five weeks now. We've recently moved our work farther in the peninsula. And we found that a lot of people there haven't even started cleaning up yet. There's still a lot of work to do out there. We worked at one house for three days this week and we still haven't finished yet. We're just about done, but that has been a huge project.
What I think is interesting is that the Mormon Helping Hands was one of the first teams out there helping to clean up the hurricane, and now that most organizations are closing up shop, we are one of the last to leave as well. There's another group called Team Rubicon that has been working out there to provide service, food, and medical help. They were leaving, but still had more work orders, so they sent them to us. That meant that on Friday evening, my companion and I had to call fifty people to see what work they needed done and when would be the best time to send help to them. That took forever. But on Saturday and Sunday we had another 600 or so volunteers, so we were able to get help to all those people and they were very grateful for the assistance.
On Saturday evening, we had another mission conference. This one was exciting though because we had Elder Hallstrom, a president of the Quorum of the 70, came to speak to us. That was really cool. President Calderwood also spoke, as well as the area 70 who lives nearby. All of them talked about how incredible this whole hurricane cleanup experience has been and how the Lord is pleased with the work we have done. Then they warned us that we are now in a very delicate balance and that we need to be evermore careful of how we conduct ourselves from now on. People have seen the Mormons out there helping every day and we need to make sure that we don't ruin the goodwill that we have created. I think that's especially important in my area since there's so much destruction still there.
Speaking of my area, we got the call on Saturday night that my companion and I are staying in Far Rockaway. I'm really glad that they aren't moving us out. We have just started working with some people again from before Hurricane Sandy and I don't want to miss out on the opportunity to teach them. Elder Wolfe and I plan to keep on doing service in the mornings and afternoons and try to do as much proselyting as we can in the evenings. There's only so much we can do, but we want to keep on visiting the members and less actives and see if we can set up appointments to visit with people in the evenings. We're not really sure how things will turn out, but it will be exciting to see how things work.
There's not too much else to report at the moment. The last big push for service will be this Saturday. We're getting one more big group of volunteers and we're going to finish up whatever we can. Then any other service will be from us and and other Far Rockaway Elders. The rest of the mission is supposed to go back to full-time proselyting. That will be a big change for a lot of people, I think. But it will be good to get back into the regular swing of things. All this service has been a great way to start my mission though. I have grown closer to my Savior by helping serve His children in their time of need. I have come to better understand my role as a missionary and feel like this will affect the rest of my mission as well. It has changed the way I view talking to people about the Gospel. Which may seem odd, but now I am better able to see people as fellow children of God. And when you look at everybody like that, you have a greater desire to help them feel the Spirit and bring them closer to Christ. So I'm excited to get back to teaching and start to put this new knowledge into action. Next week I'll let you know how things are working out with the service/teaching combo. It should be a great adventure!
Love,
Elder Erickson
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