Most the time when I say the week went by really fast, sometimes I'm just exaggerating and trying to sound like every other missionary but this week went REALLY fast. I can't believe it's already been a week since I called home for Mother's Day... but at the same time it feels like it's been ages since I called home... what?
I got sick AGAIN this week. What kind of garbage is this? I swear my immune system takes too much vacation time. So I was down and out for about a day and a half, but did you know if you actually rest and take the right kind of medicine (s/o to Sister Bills, our mission nurse) you get better real quick! I feel like 98 bucks right now, and I'm sure in the next few days I'll get those other two dollars back! While illnesses seem to slow us down, they don't stop the work. The big news is, is that Antoinette got baptized! Elder Berry got to baptize her, what a good experience for a young missionary! She's great, and a few young women came up to her and took pictures with her because they were excited to get another young women in the group!!! Too bad she's 21 though hahaha
Other cool stuff, we taught a guy named Ebenezer and his sister, Love, this week. At the end of the lesson they said their uncle goes to our church. Their uncle happens to be the high priest group leader and is essentially the ringleader of little Africa. Said ringleader also gave us a referral for a family that we have a lesson setup with for this week! We also received an investigator who told us today he wants to join the church. We can help you with that buddy!
We had our interviews with President Randall again this week. This time in the chapel across from the temple, so I made the most of the trip and got Potbelly's for lunch at one of only two locations in the mission, the other being good ole Bethlehem. Interviews were great! We were poking fun at each other because I've hit my goal weight for our challenge and he's 1/4 of the way to his. I tried to encourage him by reminding him he had 2 weeks left! After some more joking around he laughed and said "sorry about all he joking, your always just fun to talk to!" Thanks President! That statement kinda describes my mission. It's been fun, and maybe I should be sorry about all the joking and playing around I do, but it's just too fun! After we left we found that some of my old Cherry Hill gang, including Elder Cristaldo, was hanging out in the chapel for some special Spanish meeting. So I got to laugh and joke about everything all the way to our train stations!
Speaking of fun, one of my favorite days of the year passed by and I was completely engaged in one of the most important events of the year, Bring Your Own Cup at 7-Eleven. I still reminisce about going with the guys back home to fill up some milk jugs with slurpee. This year I brought a big ole water jug I miraculously had in the fridge. Yes, 101 oz of slurpee is a lot. Thank you for all the support you give! Everything goes so quick and soon enough I won't even been a teenager anymore... but no worries, I'll still act like I'm one!! That's how it goes 'round here. Love you all!
1) straight outta Africa (The shirts smell like Africa too) 2) a wreck with a chocolate brownie cookie 3) cherry hill squad! 4) BYOC 5) Antoinette's baptism! 6) I happened upon this adorableness earlier this week and took roughly 5 videos and many pictures of them bonus: here's one of the said videos!
Dang this week was cool. We had tons of stuff going on! Last Monday for pday we climbed up to the roof of an apartment building in Philly and took some sick pictures. Tuesday we had zone conference which was pretty good, but by the time we got back to our area it was dinner time so we went with the Petersons for a cheesesteak at Falone's! It was mighty good, then finished our night at our ward mission correlation meeting. Antoinette had her baptismal interview, so she's all ready to go for her baptism, super stoked for that! We also had another good lesson with Solomon, he's such a good kid. What was way cool was when we headed over a few blocks to teach Clifford. He's the one we taught about a month ago with all his little cousins who wanted Books of Mormon. When we walked in he was on the phone talking to someone named Desire, so I asked what Desire's last name was and he said he couldn't remember but they lived across from the school. That's literally where we just came from!! Haha he knows Desire and Solomon and all the other kids we teach in that house. I forget these kids all go to school together, crazy! We had another lesson with Princess, who is coming along so well! We taught the plan of salvation and she loved it. Especially the parts in 2 Nephi 2 when it explains about Adam and Eve in a more positive way. The scriptures are incredible, so it's so nice when your investigators will actually read!
On Saturday I was on exchange with Elder Makuakane from the big island of Hawaii! He's the man and he was so impressed that I liked to listen to islander music and know a bunch about their culture. He told me I need to come to Hawaii with him one day, alright Elder Makuakane, you convinced me! We went to the zone leaders wedding for their African investigators. It was supposed to start at 1 and the bride and groom didn't show up until 3:30 hahaha we helped set up a bit and had to go. While on the exchange we got cheesesteaks at Carmen's which is a solid 10 on my scale. We also got to teach a Haitian family with 5 boys, they were all so funny. Saturday was a downpour of rain, but we did a pretty good job of staying dry.
Sunday morning we rode the trolley in with one of our investigators and had a wonderful service, but I was distracted most the day because I was so excited to skype home. It's crazy that it is my last time I'll call home on my mission. Me and Elder Makuakane were comparing our last call home to Elder Berry and Elder Yirena Tawiah's first calls home and it was so chill. I don't know about anyone else, but it was wonderful to talk with my family about what makes a good cheesesteak and talking about how much I'll miss Wawa, also trying to explain how to use the word "jawn"! It was such a good time. I'm very thankful for the blessing my family is and the support that they give me, I don't think i would have made it through the first 6 months without their support! I hope you enjoy the many pictures and have a wonderful week!
1&2) philly and the crew 2) cheesesteaks with the Peterson's 3) cheesesteaks with the Makuakane 4) 10/10 5) what a good view 6) the Peterson's are leaving us this week:/ see ya guys 7) the dogs are still okay, no worries everyone
I might let the pictures do the most talking this week... we had some super solid lessons though. Antoinette is gold, she came to church this week and starting today has Sundays completely off! So she can stay for all 3 hrs of church. Super pumped for her. I mentioned our non-African investigator Princess last week. She read 7 chapters between our first and second lesson! That never happens. As we were teaching she stopped us and said her mother was about to walk in the door. Her mother was not too happy to see us. She said there's something wrong with most religions and there's something wrong with ours, but she can't put a finger on it. Nice. After her trying to quiz us and me standing my ground she went outside. We finished the lesson with Princess and at the end we invited her to pray. Her mom came in right before she started. Princess's prayer was solid! Which caused her mom to tell us how she's been trying to get princess to pray like that her whole life? She told us to keep doing a good job helping out her daughter and she respected our dedication. A big shout out to the spirit for softening her heart! We also got to teach Solomon and Desire this week. They are a recent converts older siblings. They are in high school, but they are much more mature than their younger siblings. So we times it right to where they would be the only ones home and the lesson was so solid! Now we just need to get them to church!
This week I realized how easy it is to make friends no matter where you are! If anyone knows my mom, you know that she can go into a store to buy some bread and comes out chatting up a storm with other shopper. A few weeks ago we went to drop by a recent convert and some white lady next door noticed us knocking on her neighbors door and said she wasn't interested in Jehovah's Witness. I said we weren't Jehovah's Witness and we were just stopping by to see a member of our church! We keep seeing her all the time and earlier this week she asked us if we knew where a certain hospital is because she was having a grandbaby. We looked it up on her iPad and she was on her way. A few days later we saw her and I asked how the grandbaby was and we spent the next 15-20 minutes looking at pictures of him on her phone, her telling us not to eat GMO's and to watch what kind of soil we use. Thanks! On Sunday I was on the train and the guy in front of me had fishing poles. In the city? No way. I just simply asked him where they go fishing and it turns out they live by us so for the next hour him and his boys talked to me about fishing, sports, video games and whatever else 12 year old boys do. The fishing spot is right by our apartment so hopefully we will get over there soon because the boys told me I should come fishing with them hahaha! Maybe both of these experiences I planted a seed and one day it will harvest. A lot of people don't want to talk about religion at first, but most people love talking about things they love and it's a super easy way to make connections wherever you go!
I ate some solid cheesesteaks this week, and some interesting African food. It wasn't my first experience with a chicken foot... but all in all just another good week here. As time goes on I feel like missionary work is becoming so natural and it makes it harder to think of what to write, but I love it here! I might have to be dragged away from philly if they ever make me leave! Have a wonderful week everyone!
1) football in Philly 2) when you want some frozen yogurt, but your broke, so you freeze yogurt 3) what's up Gregory?? 4) saturdays lunch 5) west philly 6) dream car 7) Saturday's dinner... it's a game of guess what's in the soup... 8) the chestnut st. Missionaries
This week we were given our SEPTA passes for May and I thought it was strange because I didn't think May was very soon... looks like I'm wrong because I'll be swiping my May pass when we go play football today. Whoa. Super cool week though, we found some awesome people and had some fun times too! We taught this guy named Mohammed, who's a Muslim from Liberia. His aunt is a member and he was very willing to have us come by and he was super excited about the Book of Mormon. Mid lesson while reading from the Book of Mormon on my tablet he pulled out his phone and searched for the Book of Mormon app, downloaded it and accidentally hit play so it started reading the Book of Mormon to us and he couldn't figure out how to turn it off! So sick! We also picked up a couple from Liberia named James and Catherine, who were a bible referral and then we also taught a girl named Princess who's NOT African. That's a rarity around these parts. She was super cool!
We kinda had a breakthrough lesson with some of our investigators this week. We are teaching a recent convert's, Momo (14), sisters. Their names are Desire (17) and Moshell (12). We realized a few weeks ago these lessons were trash if their wasn't a solid member there, so we've been going the extra mile to get the YW presidency there for lessons. This week we had a solid lesson, but they always seem to want to be baptized later. A thought popped in my mind as we were teaching and I told the story from Elder Uchtdorf's talk "Your Potential, Your Privilege's". As I told the story they were so engaged and laughed about it. It was cool to see how their opinion on getting baptized changed after we connected the dots from the story. Hopefully it will be soon! Later in the week we dropped back by the home and we were just visiting for a moment, when I started talking to Momo's older brother Solomon (17) about soccer. Thank goodness I played FIFA on my Xbox so I knew enough to hold my own in the conversation! Anyways, we built that relationship then somehow related it to the gospel and we are going to teach him more this week!
I got to have Elder Fowers come to P1 with me for an exchange. He's been in Darby many times on his mission so it was extremely fun to run around with someone who knew the area AND has been my companion. It almost felt like we were just made companions again. We taught a few lessons, ate food, talked to tons of people, ate more food and talked to more people! One of my favorite parts was when we were walking around some row homes and we talked about how long we've been doing this and how we are almost "professional", not even a minute later we walk by a lady getting all this wedding stuff out of her car not too far from Mazino's, my less active baller friend from Nigeria that I mentioned a week or two ago. I put two and two together, went out on a limb and said "are you Mazino's fiancé?". We helped her carry in the stuff and got to know her a bit. She's going to be busy for the next month with the wedding but really wants us to come teach her afterwards because she likes the idea of being sealed for eternity and really wants to learn more! It's awesome because I know God puts us in the right place at the right time and gives us so many opportunities, but the real awesome part is when we are experienced and can seize those gold opportunities! Professional eh? I mean I do wear a name badge.
Last week I mentioned how a recent convert named Emmanuel hooked us up with all that food. This week we finished our lesson with him and he said "you guys can get in my car and I'll take you to get a cheesesteak." What? Get this, it was an 18 inch long cheesesteak!!! Elder Berry and I split it and it was one of the few times I've felt completely full after a cheesesteak. Emmanuel was babysitting a kid in the ward named Gregory, who's absolutely adorable, and I noticed that my cheesesteak compared to him in size. I handed him the cheesesteak and right as I took the picture he said "it's too heavy!". Pictures are to follow! We also dropped by a less active Sunday night and he was grilling. African BBQ's are the most lit thing I've been to in a long time!! Good food too! And we met another less active at the BBQ who really wants to come back to church, so sick! I love this place so much. Lil' Africa has a big place in my heart. I hope you all have a great week!
1) rain in Africa 2) Gregory!!! 3) "it's too heavy" 4) classic philly meal: cheesesteak and a birch beer 5) I promise cheesesteak tastes much better than it looks! 6) my mom wanted a picture of me wearing this new tie 7) more cheesesteaks with the squad 8) GO JAZZ!!!
