Spring? Written April 1, 2013
Hey Mom and Dad!
Well it's been another fun week here in the Rockaways! I think it's
been an especially cool week because of Easter. It was nice to focus
more on the Savior this year instead of on the Easter Bunny and coloring
eggs and such. Although that stuff is always fun.
We had exchanges with the Zone Leaders last week. I went with Elder
Lebaron and had one of the most fun days of my mission. We started with
an awesome lesson that helped me learn more about just how important a
testimony of the Book of Mormon is. Once you have that, everything else
falls into place. The Book of Mormon is key to a testimony of Jesus
Christ, to a testimony of the restored church of Christ, and along with
that, the restored authority of the Priesthood. The rest of the day
wasn't really very successful, but we had a good time just talking to
everybody that we met. It didn't matter whether they spoke Spanish or
English, we just talked to everybody we could. Even though we didn't
specifically teach very much, I felt like a successful missionary
because I came into contact with so many people.
We're still teaching English classes twice a week and still having
some good success from them. We've met up with Osiris again a couple of
times and she seems to really like the church. The only problem now is
that she has to work on Sundays. We just need to get her to church and
everything else will fall into place. We're also working with another
guy named Carlos. He has only been here for like three months, but he's
picking up English really fast. He finally came to church for the first
time yesterday, it was great. He enjoyed it, although he had to leave a
little early to go celebrate Easter with his family.
Kaleb in Colombus Circle NY City
I think probably my favorite part of the week was yesterday.
There's a city not too far away from Far Rockaway called Freeport. It's
part of our zone and the missionaries there were putting together an
Easter Concert to help get investigators to their church building. They
asked me to play a few numbers. I was a little sad that we didn't get to
go out and work on Easter evening, but once we got there, it was a
really nice concert. I really enjoyed playing and hearing the other
numbers and hearing the testimonies about Jesus Christ. I was supposed
to play an arrangement of Christ the Lord is Risen Today, so I went
online to try to find a cool arrangement or something. There was nothing
very good, so I just decided to use the hymnbook and make up my own.
That was a lot of fun. It wasn't very long, but I thought it sounded
pretty good. Afterwards, one of the members came up to me and started
analyzing all of the classical influences he heard in my arrangement. I
had no idea that I was being influenced by Bach, I usually just give
credit to listening to my Dad play hymns for prelude. So thanks for
teaching me how to arrange a solid hymn, Dad!
Most interesting part of the week was also yesterday. We had Easter
dinner at a member's house before the concert. All eight of the elders
in our district were invited to come, it was a solid group. It's a super
nice woman from El Salvador who loves to feed the missionaries. She
always cooks well, so we're never worried about what we're going to get
over there. The meal yesterday was quite the adventure. She fed us taco
de lengua de vaca. Or in English, cow tongue tacos. They were actually
really tasty. If she hadn't told us what it was, we would never have
known what it was. We kept joking about how we all had the gift of
tongues now that we had eaten these tacos. It was a fun Easter dinner.
The weather is warming up; here comes Spring! It's exciting because
it means that more people will be outside and there will be more
opportunities to meet and talk with new people. Thanks for everything,
love you guys!
Love,
Elder Erickson
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