75th Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Patchogue, New York

My Super Bowl Party              written Feb 3, 2014

This was a good week. Elder Mason and I have been companions for eight weeks now. We were given two less active families to work with. And this week, we managed to get both of them to church. That is what I call a good week. Here's the tale.

Monday night we had a tentative appointment with the Briceno family. We had kind of set it up, but it wasn't super set in stone. We just drove over in hopes that they would be there. And lo and behold, we were in luck. I had never met with the Bricenos before. Elder Mason had only been over there once. So we sat down with the father and got to know him a bit. Then his wife came in and we got it know her too. He is a firefighter in Manhattan from the Dominican Republic. She is from El Salvador and is apparently related to people I worked with back in Midwood and in Far Rockaway. So that was kind of funny. They have two kids, a five year old boy and an right month old daughter. Super cute kids. Really cool family. She is a return missionary, she served in San Bernardino back in 1994. We chatted with them for a while and taught a lesson. They told us they want to be more active in the church, but it's difficult with work and the kids. They said they wanted to bless their baby in church this Sunday though and that her father was going to come from a neighboring ward to do the blessing. Well fair enough, it's a start of getting hyphen regularly back to church. Hopefully we'll be able to meet with them more and keep working with them.

The next day we were in charge of teaching English classes again. I took our friend Antonio aside for the advanced class again. He wanted to work on reading and comprehending English better. I don't really have any English books for him to read, so I pulled out the simplified Book of Mormon. It worked out because it was pretty much at his level of comprehension, but there were still words he didn't know. Afterwards, I asked him to stay for about ten minutes and we taught him about the Book of Mormon and gave him a copy in Spanish. He said that he would be willing to read it and pray about it. We met with him again the next day and he had actually read what we asked him to. That was awesome. We taught him about the restoration, but he had two of his kids with him and they were tired, so we didn't get all the way through. I told them we would set a timer for ten minutes so they could get home soon. They were sweet kids.

Thursday I was on exchanges with the district leader, Elder Richardson. We had to drive into the mission office to take care of some things, so that filled up most of our afternoon. In the evening, we knocked some doors and then we visited less active number two for the week. This time it was the Ventura family. He is a member of some twenty years and his wife is not a member. They also have two young kids, a nine year old daughter and three year old son. The mother wasn't home when we went over, but we met with Brother Ventura. He is a super nice dude. We talked about baptism and about enduring the end. Based on his responses, he knows all of this is true and he knows what he should be doing, he just kind of lost sight of it for a bit. He asked us to start teaching the lessons to his wife because he wants her to get baptized too. And he said that he was going to start coming to church every week. So I would consider that a successful night as well. We also finally found out what time is good for him so we can start visiting him more regularly.

We organized a fun family home evening activity for the branch on Friday evening. Elder Mason and I taught the spiritual thought on the Brother of Jared and do the sisters organized a bunch of games for everyone to play. It was a ton of fun, everybody had a good time. Nobody really new came, but it was one of our first times doing an activity like this. As we get more consistent, people will start bringing their friends.

Saturday was kind of a bummer because I woke up sick. The seminary teacher here asked for our help in setting up an activity that evening, so we went just to help her out. Thankfully, there were other missionaries around too to help out because I was pretty useless. The activity went well, though I'm not exactly sure what it was for. It was just kind of a random seminary appreciation night. Never a bad thing, I guess.

The whole week was worth it on Sunday though. We were supposed to go teach Brother Ventura's wife in he morning, but I was not feeling well at all. So we called the other missionaries and Elder Mason went with one of them while the other stayed with me. The lesson went okay, they said. But most importantly, when we got to church that day, both of the families were there. It was so great. The Venturas with both kids and the Bricenos with both kids and extended family for the blessing. It all went well and we had a lovely testimony meeting. I was still feeling sick, so we went home after sacrament meeting so I could rest. But hey, it was still a good day.

So that's the first step. Now it's just keeping them coming to church and getting them to the temple. The work is just getting started.

Love,
Elder Erickson