Monday, February 4, 2013

23rd Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Far Rockaway, New York

All About People Skillz.          Writing Feb 4, 2013

Far Rockaway is always an adventure. I feel like I say that all the time. But that's because it really is an adventure. Nothing really major happened this week, but hopefully this week, we're going to do some solid work out there. I'm feeling really good about it. 

So we have a list of all the people that received help from the Mormon Helping Hands after the hurricane. We have split up the names as a district and our job is to visit every single person on the list for three reasons. One, to ask how they're doing and make sure they're okay. Two, to see if they need anymore help that we can viably do. Three, to ask if they would like to have us return to share a special message about Jesus Christ. The list is huge and we've only scratched the surface of it, but people are always so happy to see us still in the area. And everyone is always very willing to listen to the message. We haven't returned to teach anyone yet, but we've got a couple appointments set up for this week. It's going to be a really cool week with all these new people to meet. It's always a tricky approach when you knock one of the doors on this list. My companion and I are pretty big guys. Wearing suits, we can be kind of intimidating. People are always super apprehensive at first, but you just have to keep the conversation going and people very quickly warm up to us. It's all about people skills out here. 

In other news, we have put together a baller Restoration Concert. I did all the music, with the help of my companion Elder Pearce. We just have to call missionaries now, to make sure they're good to perform it. I think it's going to be really good. Some people are going to think it's boring, but I also think that a lot of people are going to be touched by the message and be more willing to listen to us. I'm really excited to get things moving on that. 

Our investigator, Scott Madden, was supposed to get baptized yesterday, but unfortunately he came down with a cold, so we had to move it back to next week. Not too big a deal though, he'll still get baptized next week. He seems pretty excited about it, so we're happy that he's making this covenant with God. I just pray every day that he doesn't relapse with his pipe smoking and that he'll continue progressing and make it to the temple someday after his baptism. 

I forgot to mention last week, but we started teaching English classes. We put up a ton of flyers all over Far Rockaway that we're teaching English to Spanish speaking people. We hold them at the church, so that way people are comfortable with coming to the church and know where it is. We also share a spiritual message at the end of every class to get people comfortable with missionaries sharing spiritual messages. It's a really fun experience to teach English to all these Hispanic people. I find that I get better at Spanish when I teach the classes because we have to explain things in Spanish and answer questions, so that's always helpful. The most incredible part about the classes was that we had 31 people on the second day of the classes. That's unbelievable. The other missionaries here who have taught English classes in the past, had to do the classes for 4 or 5 weeks before they got even close to that many. And we pulled it off on the second day. Far Rockaway is doing pretty solid work. 

That's about it for the time being. Though I do have kind of a funny story about Spanish. Last week, I translated for a woman in the branch who had a meeting with the branch president. Our branch president only speaks English and this woman is from Guatemala, so I went in to translate. She actually speaks pretty good English, but brought me in, I think just in case she needed help and probably to help boost my confidence in Spanish. It all went pretty well until near the end. The president said, "You need to do your part, and I'll do my part." I don't really know the word for "part" in Spanish, so I guessed. I told her "Usted necesita hacer su parto." It seemed like a good guess to me. She looked shocked and really confused, then realized what I meant and told me the word is "parte." It doesn't seem like too big of a difference, I figured it just wasn't a real word in Spanish. A few days later, we were visiting her at her house and she informed me what parto means in Spanish. Apparently, the translation of what I said is "You need to go into labor." Hence the initial shock and confusion. We all had a good laugh at it though. And now I know for the future. I figure we all need a couple good Spanish mis-translation stories in our lives. And I think that one is hilarious. 

But we're still working hard out here. There are so many people to meet and just not enough time in the transfer. There's only two weeks left in the transfer and oh what I wouldn't give to stay here for another transfer. I won't know for another two weeks, but I'm really hoping they leave me here again. I've come to love this place too much for my own good. Well I hope everyone is doing well in Simi. I love you and miss you a lot! Hope you have a great week!

Love,
Elder Erickson

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