48th Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Brooklyn, New York

City Life...   written July 29, 2013

So life continues here in Brooklyn. Really not very much happened this week. We had probably three events that were notable during the week.

The first was on Wednesday evening. We had another lesson with Efrain. We have been working with him to try to help him understand the importance of praying about the Book of Mormon, but for some reason he's afraid to do it. So we explained why it's important to know this, why his past baptism and spiritual experiences were important and how he needs to act if he ever wants to receive new knowledge. It took a lot of discussion, but by the end of it, he finally seemed to understand the fact that he needs to act. That he needs to do something if he wants to get any answers. He agreed to go home and pray about the Book of Mormon. We were going to meet with him after church yesterday, but he didn't come. So we need to get back in touch with him to follow up on it. Hopefully this Wednesday we can finally sit down with him and progress some more.

Friday was the next adventure. There's a member in our ward named Hermano Corzo who invited us over to have dinner. His wife is not a member and he wanted us to meet her. So we went over to find his house. And this woman answers the door. She's white and is speaking to us in English. Not super weird, because Hermano Corzo speaks some English too. She tells us how sorry she is because Corzo isn't home right now and she doesn't know when he'll be back. We told her that was fine that we could just wait for a bit. So she decides to start talking with us while we wait. It turns out this is Hermano Corzo's wife. And she doesn't speak a lick of Spanish. Which is weird, because Hermano Corzo really doesn't speak English that well. And this woman is crazy. She is telling us about how her house is haunted and there's all these demons living in the house and they try to impersonate people she knows. She liked to compare her house to the horror house in Amityville. She was going off on this stuff. Then Hermano Corzo came home. He joined us as she continued telling us about how their house is haunted and how she really wants to move. Elder Rodgers and I weren't quite sure what to do. We just sat and listened. She also kept telling us how she really wants a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup because the chocolate and the peanut butter combination is really healthy for you. She is insistent on that fact. It was unreal. It was like a scene from a movie. This woman must have talked for a half an hour. We didn't know what to do, so we just kept listening. Eventually Hermano Corzo was like, hey we're going to go have dinner, so I'll see you in a half an hour. Then he left, so we followed. We went to a Mexican restaurant and had a nice dinner with Hermano Corzo. It was quite the adventure. We're not really sure what to think about it all.

The last of the good times was on Saturday with the baptism of Sheyla Luna. We have been working with the Luna family for a while. They are a less active family in the ward. Sheyla just turned 8 last month and didn't know what baptism was until we came and explained it one day. The cool part about it all was that the family started coming back to church and the father was able to baptize his daughter and confirm her. I was worried about the ward not supporting the baptism, but it turned out that quite a few people came. It was a really nice event. I gave the talk about the Holy Ghost and it was so cool to see this father confirm his daughter a member of the church and give her this wonderful gift. It wasn't a convert baptism or anything, but I'm simply happy for the fact that I helped this family progress in the Gospel together. We're now working with them to help the family get sealed in the temple within the next couple of months. I love the Luna family, they are great.

Anyways, that's more or less what's going on in the world over here. Things are progressing slowly with our bishopric, but hopefully we'll get our new bishop in the next week or so. Then things will really get going. It will be a party.

Love,
Elder Erickson