Tuesday, November 19, 2013

64th Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Brooklyn, New York

The Adventures Continue written November 18, 2013

The adventures never end out here in Midwood. There's not as much to report because I emailed so late last week, but there are always tales to tell.

The afternoons are very interesting now since we're supposed to spend our afternoons inputting teaching record information into our iPads and trying to teach people on Facebook. You show up at the church at about 2 and you'll find 6 to 10 other missionaries there too, all using the wifi to do things on their iPads. It's hilarious. Never thought I'd see this day.

Friday was a really fun day. I had an exchange with Elder Fine. He's from the island of Tonga and grew up in Watts, Los Angeles. He has an incredible story. That guy is a hero. He is set to take over as district leader once I leave this area. We discussed it so that we can work together and try to make the leader transition a fluid one. It should go over well. A lot of our day was taken up because we had to travel to a different area in our zone for a big zone meeting. It was a good meeting though, they had some iPad training and talks by the zone leaders. I quite enjoyed it. After that, we headed back to Midwood and had a lesson with Elder Fine's investigator Alberto. I've taught him before, on my exchange last transfer with Elder Hellewell. He had a baptismal date at one point, but was unsure about it all, so our goal in this lesson was to help solidify a date. We met at a member's house and the member made us a wonderful dinner of rice, chicken, and beans. It was great. We all ate and discussed life, then we had a lesson on the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It went pretty well, though Alberto is still pretty hesitant. He likes everything, he's just afraid of committing too soon. I think he will get baptized eventually, it will just take some time. I'm not too worried. I asked him if he had ever prayed about baptism like I asked him to. He told me that he still hadn't. So I told him that maybe this was what he needed to do before he would know if he should get baptized. Then I told him about how I got my answer about the church. He liked it and told me that he was willing to do it this time. He is a good guy, I really like Alberto. I hope things work out for him.

Saturday was another really fun day. Elder Durkin is one of my zone leaders here now. He was in the MTC with me, then he was my district leader for one transfer in Far Rockaway, and now he is my zone leader here. But he needed to go back to Far Rockaway to help advertize for some activity they are doing out there. And his companion had something that they needed to do in Midwood, so he asked if I wanted to come back with him to Far Rock and help out. Of course I was down. So we headed out there on Saturday afternoon. We dropped by the chapel out there, which was fun to see. The weird thing was to find 10 missionaries there, all on their iPads. Odd. But we headed out to Belle Harbor pretty quickly after that. Elder Durkin had a list of some eight families that he wanted to get to that evening. Apparently these were the main families that he worked with in his time there. We didn't have a car or anything, so we just walked around and visited with these people. They are all very nice people. I had met some of them before and saw some people around that I knew from my time there. It was a lot of fun to see some old friends again and meet some new people.

The person that he was most excited for me to meet was a man named Steve Plunket. He was a very interesting person. When I first met him, I didn't know anything about him. And he was just a big, excited, fun loving dude. He gave me a nickname within two minutes of meeting me. He called me Big-E. I thought that was pretty cool. We went into his house to chat for a moment and he told us that he was going to be early tonight so he was headed out for steak right now and invited us to come. It was only like 5:30 at the time, so we agreed to go with him. He took us to the Belle Harbor Steak House. My goodness. We had driven by it before, but never considered stopping there because of prices. Steve knows the owner, so he was able to get us right in without a problem. Then we sat down and he told us not to even look at the numbers on the page, just get whatever we want. I wasn't quite sure what to do. He told me that I should get a good, New York steak. So I told him that I'd get whatever he recommended. Boy howdy. I ended up with a $36 t-bone steak in front of me with Portobello mushrooms to the side and steamed vegetables as well. Wow. It was arguably the most incredible thing I've eaten all year. Steve was loud and talkative the whole time. But you could tell that it was a strained thing. We had a good time and he took us back to his house afterwards and we said thanks and goodbye. Durkin later explains to me all of Steve's struggles in life. And he has quite a few. Then all his behavior made sense. He seemed so sad the whole time, even though he was doing his best to make it a good time for us all. I just feel so bad for this man. If ever there was someone who needed the Gospel in his life to bring him some joy, it is Steve Plunket. I really hope things work out for him. He deserves it.

It was a grand night. And it was fun to talk with Elder Durkin. He is a good friend of mine. And that brings us to Sunday. In the evening, we went to go look up a less active name that I've been seeing for some seven months now. Miguel Isidro Villalobos. I've looked him up before a number of times and never gotten in. I decided we should give it one more shot last night. It was interesting even getting in the apartment building, then we knocked on the door and nobody answered. But we could hear people inside, so we knocked again. After a bit, a frustrated woman came to the door and told us to leave because she wasn't interested. I told her that was fine because we were just looking Miguel. She did not see that coming. She apologized and went and got him for us. And out walks this tall white dude who spoke English. What? Where did this come from? That was him. Our man Miguel. From Costa Rica. He just happens to look white and speak perfect English and Spanish. Fair enough. He asked who sent us, we told him we had just seen his name and wanted to get to know him. He figured that was okay, but he was busy right now. So we set up an appointment for Tuesday to come back. He told us a bit about himself, he actually served a mission in Honduras and Guatemala. He said that he had only been to church about 4 times when he moved to Midwood and it has been about 4 years since then. I am really excited to start working with him. I want to find out his story and I want to see what he decides to do from here. Whether he will come back or decide to stay where he is. We will surely find out.

Life is grand here with Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up. It is hopefully going to be a busy and fun holiday season. The church is true, I love you guys!

Elder Erickson

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