Hey Mom and Dad!
This has been arguably one of the
craziest weeks of my life. The only good rival with it is the week of
the hurricane. But things have been ridiculous this last week.
The first part of the crazy week is all of the practices for the
Christmas concert. I am playing for three numbers consisting of two
singers and a cello player. Two of them are only a 20 minute drive away,
but the cello player is in the heart of Brooklyn, so that's kind of a
trek to go practice with her. And I had two practices at each place this
last week. There was a lot of driving and a lot of piano playing that
went down. All the songs are sounding pretty good though. The people of
New York are in for a treat this week.
So that began on Tuesday. Wednesday we had to drive
out to Brooklyn to practice with the cello player and we may have gotten
a bit lost along the way. Driving in New York is a whole new adventure
compared to driving anywhere else. There are very few rules, as far as I
can tell, other than you honk at the person in front of you if they
aren't driving as fast as they can. And I'm pretty sure that bus drivers
here are some of the most talented drivers in the world. It's
absolutely incredible.
Thursday was really the craziest day of the week. It
began at 3:30 in the morning when we woke up to the sound of a man
outside our apartment yelling at everyone to evacuate because there's a
fire. I was super confused and thought it was part of my dream at the
time. Luckily my companion was already awake to use the bathroom at the
time, so he woke up the other two missionaries in our apartment and we
all threw on shoes and got out of there. It was crazy outside. People
were freaking out and the fire department had showed up and was starting
to get the hose upstairs. We could see smoke coming out of the roof.
One of the firefighters told us to help them with the hose, so we were
volunteer firefighters for about a minute. We decided to head over to
the zone leaders' apartment since it was close by. They were really
confused to see the four of us at their door at 3:45 in the morning.
They let us stay the night and we went back to our apartment in the
morning.
Everything was fine, it was like nothing had
happened from what we could see. If you look on the other side of the
building though, you could see a whole apartment had burned out on the
top floor. We're glad that we were safe and that nobody got hurt, but
that was a crazy night for everyone involved.
So we were already disoriented from the fire, when
we got a call from the AP's that we needed to move into a new apartment
that day. It wasn't because of the fire, I guess the mission only wants
two missionaries to an apartment from now on. So Elder Wolfe and I began
packing up our stuff to move over. The problem is that we had to go to a
practice with two of the singers midway through our process of moving
apartments. When we had to leave, we didn't exactly have all of our
stuff. So I threw on the suit that I left out, but I only had white
socks. And Elder Wolfe didn't have his suit with him, so he just wore
regular clothes. We were a rag-tag looking crew that day. He was looking
like he had just done a bunch of service because all he had on were his
service clothes, and I was looking like I was part of Michael Jackson's
entourage with my white socks. People looked at us funny most of the
day, but that's really nothing new to us. We finished moving in later
that day.
And that pretty much brings us to where I am now.
We're finally moved into our new apartment. We haven't had too many
chances to go out teaching, but I have played a lot of piano. The
primary program was yesterday, so they had me come to an extra practice
on Saturday and play for the program on Sunday. It's a good thing I like
playing the piano.
I wish I could say that this week will calm down,
but it probably won't. We have four concerts and two more practices to
go to. We are planning a few events for the elliptical though. We're
going to set up hot chocolate booths for people near the areas that were
hit the worst and sing Christmas carols as a district. Hopefully that
will help people see us and recognize us as people who want to help. I
think the work is going to be slow out here for a while as people
attempt to get back to normal. But we're laying a groundwork for the
church out here so that hopefully in five or ten years, the Mormon
church in Rockaway will be stronger than ever. I know that this church
is true and that the Lord's hand is working through us to help lay the
foundation for His church here. Thank you for all your love and prayers
and have a very merry Christmas!
Love,
Elder Erickson
To send packages and letters please use the mission address:
New York New York South Mission
8569 60th Drive
Elmhurst, NY 11373-5547
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