Hey Mom and Dad! Switching Gears written Jan 7, 2012
Well this week should hopefully be starting my first normal week as
a missionary. It sounds so crazy to say that after I've been in the
field for almost three months now. But the first week here was
interrupted by a hurricane. Then cleanup prevented us from doing normal
work for a while. Then when things were about to get back to normal, I
got signed on to perform at all these Christmas concerts. Then we had
two weeks with big holidays. Now, my 12th week here should finally be a
normal week for the first time since the MTC. I'm hoping so at least.
This last week was pretty good, although it was largely uneventful.
On New Year's Day, we visited some members in the branch. We saw the
remnants of some crazy parties out here. New York definitely knows how
to do a New Year's celebration. We finally found a family that we had
just started teaching before the hurricane hit. It was the chiropractor
we helped, who gave us all free adjustments. We had helped them out
after the storm and wanted to meet with them again, but they had a bunch
of work to be done on their home. They had to pull out all of their
floorboards and get a whole new first floor in their house. They moved
to a hotel while the work was being done and we lost contact with them
for about three weeks. We finally found them again on New Years. I guess
they had decided to go on vacation and they had just gotten back that
day. They're an awesome family and the mother seems really interested in
the Gospel. We just need to find a time to sit down and teach them the
rest of the lessons. We set something up for this Thursday and we're
really excited because her husband is going to come to the lesson too.
That should be an awesome lesson.
We met with a few other people during the week, but nothing really
extraordinary. On Friday, we hosted a free hot chocolate stand to help
spread the word about a neighborhood service day. We set up in the cold
right next to a few busy stores and a bus stop. We had a hundred fliers
and two gallons of hot chocolate. We had given out everything within an
hour and a half. It was a lot of fun.
The neighborhood service day was another mission-wide service day.
Our entire mission came out and the whole New York North mission came
down in busses to help us out too. We split up into teams of ten and
went back out, just like the days right after the storm. Good times. We
were back to shoveling sand, once again. This guy had about a foot deep
layer of sand covering his entire lawn. It was crazy that it had stayed
for so long. We probably shoveled sand for three or so hours and it
still wasn't all taken out. But the pile of sand we had created on the
curb was gigantic. We did some solid work. I don't think we'll be done
with giving service out here any time soon. We've already got two
appointments this week to help people out with their homes.
Sunday was a really cool day too. Our Branch President decided to
have a combined lesson with the Priesthood and Relief Society on
testimonies. What a testimony is, how to get one, how to strenghten it,
and most importantly, how to share it. He taught that in testimony
meeting, your testimony should only be one to three minutes long and
shouldn't be a long and rambling story. We've had some solid issues with
that in the past. We even had a woman bring in posters to use as props
for her testimony. It was awesome. Gotta love New York. But after the
lesson, the testimony meeting was noticeably different. Nobody rambled
on about insignificant things; they kept it short and to the point. It
was probably one of the best testimony meetings I've ever been to. It
was really amazing. And we had one of our investigators there on Sunday,
so I'm really glad he was able to be there for it.
So that's about it for the time being. We've got some plans in the
works to host a few Meet the Mormon nights. We're trying to help people
understand that we're all normal people and teach a bit about our
values. The first one isn't until the 16th, but we're planning some hot
chocolate stands to spread the word. It should be a lot of fun and it
should do a lot of good for the work out here. Next week is the end of
this transfer and I'm again hoping that I'll stay here another transfer.
But who knows what will happen? Things are changing fast in the mission
field. We're supposed to get 30 new missionaries in the next two
transfers, and 20 of them are sister missionaries. I'm sure by this
summer, there will be a whole new flood of 18 year old elders coming in
and we will get to do a lot of training. It will definitely be an
adventure.
That's all for now, but I love you and I know that I'm doing the Lord's work out here. Thanks for all your love and support!
Love,
Elder Erickson
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