Miracles are Coming!
Hey Mom and Dad! Written April 22, 2013
This was a very exciting week. On Tuesday, we decided to dedicate
our area. Pretty much what this entails is all the missionaries in our
area get together and we say a special prayer and set apart our areas
for furthering the work of the Lord and we ask for a special blessing on
the work. Elder Hart and I scouted out a cool spot to do the
dedication. It was on this little grassy island where you can see almost
all of our areas. The dilemma with finding a good spot is that our area
is so spread out, it's like 15 miles across. But it was a really cool
spot and we could pretty much see everything. There are 8 elders in our
district and we had fasted all day to prepare for the dedication. Elder
Durkin, our district leader, asked me to say the prayer for it. So I
studied the Book of Mormon to try to find ideas from prayers said by
Alma and the sons of Mosiah and stuff. I took their ideas, then changed
their words so that it applied better to our situation and got some good
ideas for the prayer. It was a really cool experience. Eight
missionaries kneeling on this grassy island, dedicating these areas for
furthering the work of the Lord. I was sure an angel was going to come
visit us or something. Unfortunately we didn't have a grand visitation,
but it was a really cool spiritual experience nonetheless.
We've already seen three miracles come from the dedication of our
areas. First happened on Saturday afternoon. Elder Hart and I were at
the church setting up for English classes when an older woman and a
young girl walked in. She was Hispanic and spoke Spanish, so I assumed
she was here for the English classes. But instead, she asked us about
when church started. We gladly told her the schedule and asked how she
found out about our church. She told us that a friend in Florida
recommended us and so she looked us up online and that led her here.
She's from the Dominican Republic and the girl with her was her 11 year
old granddaughter. She told us she would be there the next day and she
was. She really enjoyed the services and by the time we got to talk to
her after sacrament meeting, another member had already set up a family
home evening with her. Elder Hart and I are so excited. If this isn't
the Lord's hand at work, then I don't know what is.
Second miracle also happened Saturday afternoon. There's an
investigator here who has been looking into the church for almost 2
years now. He likes it all and seemingly wants to get baptized, but he
needs to move to a new apartment because he's living with a woman that
he's not married to. We haven't been able to get in touch with him for
almost 10 weeks now. We've tried calling, going over there at different
times; nothing ever works. Elder Hart had the phone in his pocket and
managed to accidentally call this guy somehow. We had no idea until he
called us later in the day to ask why we called. Elder Hart was on top
of his game and said that we called so we could see if we could come
visit him. He said sure and we went over that night. He's doing well and
is working to find a new place to move. It was a miracle to me because I
had tried everything I knew for 10 weeks to get ahold of this guy and
we finally meet with him because of a pocket dial. Incredible.
Miracle number three was at church on Sunday. Not only did we have
the woman from Saturday at church with her granddaughter, but we had
three less active families come that haven't been to church in months.
Like they haven't been to church since before I got here in October. And
when I asked them why they came, they said that they just felt like
they needed to get back to church. Oh my goodness. Again, the Lord is
performing miracles here every day. Yesterday was an unprecedented day
in the Far Rockaway Branch.
Aside from the three miracles of the dedication, we also marched in
another parade on Saturday. Not anything even close to the one from
March, but a parade nonetheless. It was one of the areas where we did a
lot of service, it's called Broad Channel. Pretty small, tight knit
community again. It's in our area to proselyte in, the only problem is
that there's a toll bridge between us and Broad Channel. And we're not
super excited to pay the one way $3.75 toll to get across. Either that,
or a 30 minute drive around Queens to get to it. So we're working to get
over there more often. It wasn't really so much a big parade, as it was
the opening of t-ball season and so they had a parade for all the teams
and for some reason invited us to come along. We only brought our zone
this time, instead of the whole mission. That was good because we would
have tripled the number of people in the parade with that many
missionaries. But whatever, it was nice to get to Broad Channel to show
them that we're still in the area and that we still care about them. The
best part was the free hotdogs at the end. Can't go wrong there.
But anyways, life is grand here. The weather is warming up, the
Lord is performing miracles, and we're happy to be serving here. Love
you guys!
Elder Erickson
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