Movin' On written December 9, 2013
Well this is it. After 7 1/2 months of Midwood, I'm finally moving on. Transfers are on Tuesday and I will be sent to a brand new area to start anew. It will be fun. I'm looking forward to taking the things I've learned and applying them in my new area.
In the meantime, I had one last week in Midwood. Monday evening we were called by our ward mission leader. He told us about a family in the ward who had a sick daughter and he asked if we would go give her a blessing. So we headed on over. He met us there and we went in to give the blessing. Apparently the little girl had been sick for some 4 days and wasn't getting any better. So we gave her a blessing. She's only 2, but she sat still for the whole thing. I was most impressed. Then the mother asked if we were hungry and wanted some dinner. Hispanics love it when you eat their food, so I told her we would love to have something to eat, but nothing too big because we were going to go visit people with the ward mission leader as soon as we were done. She said okay, then comes back with two bowls of soup. It looked like chicken soup with large chunks. I was excited about it. I scooped up a large spoonful of chicken and vegetables, only to discover that it was not chicken at all. It was fish. With all of the bones still in it. I asked what kind of fish it was, she told me she didn't know the name in English, but in Spanish it's called Sierra. Which as far as I understand is a mountain range. I've looked it up. I still have no idea what kind of fish we ate. But there was a lot of picking out bones. Ugh. I do not like fish. But I was proud of myself, I ate the whole bowl of soup. She also pulled out some chicken alfredo concoction too. It was an interesting meal. Regardless, we finished and finally got out the door with the ward mission leader. At which point we looked up several people to no avail. It was disappointing. But at least we had the fish soup. And we found out a few days later that the little girl had recovered almost completely by the next morning. So that was pretty cool. I love giving blessings to people.
Wednesday I had my last day of service in Prospect Park. It has been fun serving there every Wednesday. I love that park. This week was a cool experience. We got to go rake leaves in a Quaker cemetery in the park. It's normally closed off to the public, but we got to go in to rake leaves. It was a beautiful area. Apparently it even outdates the park itself. There were definitely some old graves there, so that doesn't surprise me too much. Later that evening, we headed over to visit the Luna family. I'm pretty sure I have talked about them before. I love that family so much. They are awesome. We went over for one more visit before I left. She cooked us the usual rice and meat and we had a hilarious discussion about the movie The Road to El Dorado. Then we started talking about conquistadors and how they took over so much of South and Central America. I'm still not entirely sure how we ended up on that topic, but I'm not even mad about it. We taught a nice lesson with them about enduring to the end and how we can't become complacent in this life. We have to keep trying to improve and keep trying it better ourselves every day. And even if we only make a tiny bit of progress every day, it will add up over time and be large progress. I really hope that Brother Luna starts coming back to church so they can get sealed in the temple. That will be such a great day.
In the meantime, Thursday was my last day to teach English classes. And I had a fun last day of it. We had some new people there, which is always fun. We broke into smaller groups and I worked with these two sisters who both have been in the United States for roughly a month. And for only being here a month, they actually speak pretty good English. At he end of the class, I taught other spiritual thought and invited everyone to stake conference. One guy was actually interested in it. I talked with him after class and he wasn't super keen on getting to this place in downtown Brooklyn (he doesn't have a metro card), but he could make it to church in our regular building. So I set up an appointment with him (he said he wanted to learn more about our church) and he said he wanted to come to church next week. Awesome, I love it. I'm sorry I won't be here for it, but I really hope things work out with him.
Friday we went to do more last visits for me. We went one more time to see the Castro family. I love them too. Rosie and Eddie are both recent converts and are struggling to make it through. Eddie still has work every Sunday and Rosie has been struggling with some other issues lately. But they're both trying. And I love visiting with them. It was a nice last lesson with them. Their son, Jeremiah, came out of his room afterwards. He has been working through some issues recently too. He asked me if I would give him a blessing to help him with learning to control his anger. This kid is only 10, but he is probably the most mature 10 year old I have ever met. It's ridiculous. So we gave him a blessing. He thanked me and told me that he already felt a little better from it. He's a good kid, I hope he turns out alright. Before we left, Eddie hooked us up with some bagels and cream cheese. He shared some of his favorite chive cream cheese. He layered it pretty heavily on there. I wasn't quite prepared for the amount of breath-altering foods I was about to consume. I think I can still taste some chive in my mouth every once and a while.
After the Castro's, we went to visit my dear friend Gabriel. He's the less active guy we found back in July, courtesy of a referral from his daughter in Mexico. I have visited him almost every week since then. This guy has gone through some trials recently too. But he always kept his faith. He always kept trying to get Sundays off and do everything he could to make it to church. And it seems like he's doing a lot better now. I saw him at stake conference, he was an usher, it welcome people in. And he had he biggest smile on his face. It was great. His daughter recently had to have surgery on something, so she had to go home from her mission for a stint. She's going to return as soon as she has recovered. But right now, she's just chilling at home. So Gabriel decided to call her because he wanted her to talk with one of the missionaries that found him. He put her on the phone with me. We chatted for a moment, and she thanked me for being a good missionary and for doing so much for her dad. I told her that I really didn't do that much except for visit him every week. She told me that it still meant a lot to her and she really appreciated it all. It was really nice to be hear that. To know that I had done some good here. That I had helped out this girl by helping her dad make it back to church every Sunday. That was really cool.
Saturday was a very busy day. I had been asked to play at another concert in Jamaica, Queens. It was a Christmas concert this time. I was going to play again for Elder Goates and Sister Franklin. I played two songs for Elder Goates and one for Sister Franklin. The concert started some 45 minutes late, but we still got through it all and it was really a lot of fun. People were loving it. There's nothing like some fun Christmas songs to get people excited about life. Elder Goates got recordings of all of our songs, so hopefully he puts those up on Facebook soon. After the concert, we headed over to downtown Brooklyn for the adult session of Stake Conference. It was all focused on hastening the work of salvation and working better as wards and with missionaries to bring people to a knowledge of the Gospel.
Sunday was the main session of Stake Conference and it was held in the Marriot Hotel in Brooklyn. My goodness. What a fancy building. It was something else. There was a solid turnout; all of the wards and branches in Brooklyn and Staten Island, translated into three languages. That was a cool meeting. Not too much to report there. Afterward, I was asked to help a Chinese branch with their choir practice. They have a choir that is going to sing on the Sunday before Christmas, but they don't have a piano player. They'd like me to play for the concert, but since we don't know where I'll be, they were willing to settle with just practice for now. So I get there, and they tell me that there's only one song. Okay, fair enough. Then they showed me the song. It's an epic, 31 page Christmas Cantada. My goodness. Complete with piano interludes and intermittent narration too. In Cantonese, nonetheless. Incredible. So I sightread this 31 page party, and I had so much fun. It was awesome. And I was surprised, the Chinos actually sang pretty well. The song gives an estimated running time of 24 minutes. When I played it, we managed to get through it in 20 minutes. I guess I play a little fast. Not the first time I've heard that. It was still a lot of fun though. The rest of the day was spent visiting members and saying goodbye.
So that's about it for Midwood. I've got some more people to say goodbye to this evening. It has been a good run here. I've learned a lot of things and now it's time to take all of those things and move on to a new place. And there will be more lessons to learn and more good things to do. It will be fun.
Love, Elder Erickson
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