94th Epistle from Elder Kaleb Erickson serving in Patchogue, New York

World Cup Adventures     written June 23, 2014

There's really not too much to report on this week. We had very little going on. Notable lessons were that we got to meet with our friend Stalin Lenin again. He seems to be doing well. He gave us a thorough update on the World Cup and how that's progressing. It's always interesting to talk with people about it because they know so much about it and they always have opinions on all of the big teams. It's funny because all the people here root for their home country and for the United States. Gotta cover all of your bases, I guess. It was a sad tie against Portugal last night. I thought we had it for sure. We happened to be at a member's house for the last bit of the game and saw the goal in the last thirty seconds. It was heartbreaking. I don't even care that much about soccer and I was disappointed. I've been hanging out with too many Hispanics lately, I think.

Aside from the World Cup, we also read with him in the Book of Mormon. He always has lots of questions, I love talking with him. He's not meeting with us out of obligation, he actually wants to learn these things. He asked a lot about Adam and Eve and about Cain and Abel and about evolution and science. Then we got into questions about the afterlife. We gave him a brief rundown of the Plan of Salvation, but we had very little time, so we're going to redo the entire thing this week. He was loving it though, he wants to know more.

We also met with our friends Nancy and Augustin again. They had a friend over when we showed up, so we all chatted about the World Cup. Good times there. Then we shared a message with them all about service. They're interesting because they enjoy listening to us, but aren't very excited about actually doing anything we ask them to. We'll have to keep working with them.

We looked up lots of people and knocked a number of doors, but to no avail. Saturday was the summer solstice, so I organized a trip to 7-Eleven to buy Slurpees to celebrate the start of summer. We got four other missionaries to come, so I consider that a successful summer solstice party.

The main event of the week was on Sunday when Taylor received the gift of the Holy Ghost. We couldn't meet with him during the week, so we met with him before church and taught him about the difference between the presence of the Holy Ghost and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Then, in sacrament meeting, Presidente Mejia confirmed him a member of the church. It was a sweet moment. The rest of church was largely uneventful, though we did get sucked into teaching primary again. We were told to teach about the children of Israel receiving mana and dew every morning. We were supposed to fill 45 minutes. I managed to draw that out for 20 by some miracle, then Elder Mendez just played hangman with them for the rest of the time. It worked out. Then, after church,
our branch mission leader, Julio, threw a barbecue at his house for the missionaries. Julio is so great, he made us a bunch of burgers and hotdogs.

And now we're back to searching for more people to teach. The weather has finally calmed down a bit. Now it's just humid and hot all the time, wonderful. Better than the bitter cold and snow though, I can't complain.

Love,
Elder Erickson