Changes in the World written Nov 13, 2013 (pday delayed for I-pod training)
Oh my goodness. The world is changing around me so quickly, I don't even know what to do. First an age change, then Facebook, and now I have a mini iPad. What? I don't know what happened. And we're supposed to get iPhones in a few weeks. What is the world coming to?
Well so anyways. Life continues more or less the same in Midwood. We finally made contact again with an old less-active friend of ours, Julio Quispe. We had met with him and his wife before, but nothing really consistent. They told us that they were for sure coming to church one week and we told them we were going to come by and walk with them. They were all cool with that. Then when we came by, they weren't home and their phone was suddenly disconnected. So that was awesome. But we have since found Julio back at home, albeit without his wife.
We sat down with him and chatted for a bit. He is from Peru and he speaks so fast. It's crazy. I get most of it, but sometimes I'm pretty sure he's just muttering. I don't think he's actually speaking words. We had a small lesson prepared, so I asked him if he would give us the opening prayer. He told me that he wasn't really sure how to pray so it would be better if I said the prayer. I told him that I would be more than happy to teach him how to pray because I'm sure that Heavenly Father would love to hear him say a prayer. He thought that would be okay. So we taught Julio how to say a prayer. He was willing to say the prayer after that. Granted, he was very nervous about it and he mumbled most of it under his breath. But from what I heard, he said a fine prayer. After that, I decided that we should switch up the focus of our lesson here. We were originally going to discuss the Restoration, but I called an audible and we discussed prayer instead. I asked Julio if he prays very often. He told me that he prays every day. I kind of didn't believe him based on the response when I first asked him to pray. But whatever. We talked about why prayer is important and how prayer can help us. He was eating it up the whole time. He loved it. This is the most involved I've ever seen him in a lesson. At the end, I committed him to pray every night with his wife and that we were going to come back next Monday to make sure that he did it. He seemed very genuine about it, it was cool.
Following up with him the next week, he didn't quite make it to church, or to pray every night, but he told me that he and his wife did pray a number of times that week. We're going back next week to hold a family home evening with them. I'm very excited about it.
In other news, English classes continue with success. One of the people that is being taught from the classes is still progressing with the other elders. It looks like he is set to be baptized within the next three weeks or so. So that is very exciting as well. We also had some newcomers last week. I love when new people come. We met a very nice man from Venezuela who spoke really good English and a 19 year old girl from Mexico who had only been here for one week. Needless to say, she still has a long way to go in learning this language, but I'd say she's already better than some of the guys in there who have been in New York for like 10 years. I'm talking about you, Jose. You got a looong way to go buddy.
This wasn't a lesson or anything, but just a nice experience I had last Saturday. We had traveled out to a neighboring area in our zone to help out with a singing street sweep. It was a cold night and we were out there from 7 until 8. An odd choice, in my opinion, because it's dark and cold and people aren't exactly keen on stopping to chat in this weather, but hey, I'm not in charge. But we were out there singing and this woman stopped and looked at us. Nobody else moved, so I went over to chat with her. She was so impressed with so many young people all dressed up so nicely. I thanked her and asked her name. Her name is Karina. She told me that she was just on her way to a sober party and apologized for sounding boring. I told her that wasn't boring at all and that a sober party sounds like my kind of party. I explained a bit about our standards and she was very impressed. She told me that there needs to be more young people like us in the world. I asked where she was from and she told me that she used to live in Queens in a very Irish-Catholic area and moved to Brooklyn after Hurricane Sandy and that she couldn't be happier. I guessed that she lived in Belle Harbor and she told me I was correct. We had a nice little connection to the Rockaways there. She thanked us for all the service we did out there. We chatted for a bit more about religion and then she said goodbye and headed out to her party. Nothing may come of it, but at least I made a new friend.
Things are good out here. I am happy and trying to adjust to all this new technology. Hope you guys are doing well. Love you!
Elder Erickson
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