72nd Epistle From Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Patchogue, New York

Warming Up!           written January 13, 2014

The week actually got started on Monday for a change. Usually Monday evenings after p-day aren't too productive. There are family home evenings going on and nobody else seems to have much interest in meeting with us for whatever reason. But we were going around looking up some potentials and we decided to knock on another entrance to a house where one of our potentials lives. This guy answers and we asked if he would be interested in listening and he invited us in. He told us he needed to talk to his wife first, so we waited for him. He came back and said she was busy, but he had a few minutes. So we sat down and taught him the restoration. He wasn't super intrigued by it, but he listened and said we could come back to talk more. That's always a plus. Hopefully we'll be able to get back over there this week and talk more with him and his family.

So that got the week started off. That was the first new investigator we've found since I got here. Things are moving along. Tuesday we had dinner with a less active family in our branch, the Ibarra family. They live in a house with a bunch of other Hispanics too. They brought one young man to the Christmas party last month named Hermán. He is 16 years old and just moved here from Guatemala. We talked with him and asked if he wanted to learn more. He said that he would be willing to listen to our message. So after dinner with the Ibarras, we sat down with Hermán and explain the restoration. I'm not sure if he quite understood the significance of it, but he enjoyed listening and is willing to listen to more. We talked with his mom too and she is going to meet with us next time. That would be sweet if we could teach them both together.

The other fun day of the week was on Friday. I was I an exchange with my district leader, Elder Richardson. He is a way cool guy, so that already made it a good day. But that night we had an appointment with someone, so we called a member to come with us. When we got to the appointment, the guy we were going to meet with wasn't home. But some other Hispanic guy answered the door. We asked if he was interested. He was willing to give us five minutes and walked out the door. So we said a prayer right there and taught the first lesson. He wasn't super interested, but I just liked that we taught the whole lesson on his doorstep. He said that we could come back, we'll see if that ever happens. After that, we headed over to look up another potential. They were home and let us in. We sat down with this guy and started teaching. Things were kind of crazy in the house, people were walking around, kids were yelling; it was distracting. But when we started talking about the apostasy, everything suddenly calmed down. And then his friend randomly came over and sat down to listen. Apparently he had met with missionaries before and had even been to church a few times. So that was a sweet night.

On Sundays, I usually play the piano for sacrament meeting. It's not a very big room, and I like the piano, so I usually ignore the organ. But this week, one of the notes on the piano was really out of tune. Painfully out of tune. And it was the G, so it gets played a lot. I couldn't handle that, so I switched over to the organ. I forgot how fun it is to play the organ. I'm out of practice and I need organ shoes to really play the pedals efficiently, but it was still a fun change. I'd still really like to get that note fixed on the piano though. I can do way more with the piano than the organ.

And that's the tale for this week. Looking forward to meeting with Hermán again and we have a family home evening activity this Friday that should be a lot of fun. And on top of that, the weather has been warming up! It doesn't get much better than this!

Love,
Elder Erickson