DEAR HOME!
What an exciting week we have had over here in NY!
First off, we had several investigators at church this past weekend- and one of them has a baptismal date for September 25th! He's great! The others are all are progressing wonderfully and are being so loved and welcomed by the ward. The whole ward is getting so excited for missionary work- traditionally, the area has been relatively rough- but lately with all the miracles that have been happening we've seen nothing but excitement and support from the whole ward! Carol came again to church this past week and loved it again. Elder McMullin and I taught the Gospel Doctrine class on Baptism. It went really really well. The whole class participated and shared their personal experiences about their own baptisms to the investigators that were there. I truly love and respect the members of the ward up here. They are all so solid.
On top of having a great Sunday and teaching week, we had an EARTHQUAKE!! haha! I'm sure you all know by now, but the earthquake was actually in Virginia (Look at the stars... look how they shine) but it shook up the whole East coast a little! haha! Funny story... WE actually didn't feel anything- we stayed the previous night up in Connecticut and were still in Stamford eating lunch when I got a text message from the Chinatown Zone Leader that said "FYI, we just had a big earthquake in Manhattan, and cell coverage is down, but texting still works." Of course my imagination went WILD- I pictured the catastrophe of the century as Manhattan just collapsed in on itself into all the hundreds of tunnels below... I quickly texted back "no way! r u serious? lots of damage?" We raced back to the Mission Office in Scarsdale and everything was perfectly fine- apparently the East coast isn't used to the ground shaking. Elder McMullin laughs- he's from California, so this was nothing new to him. We're having all sorts of exciting things happen- the quake, and now we are preparing for Hurricane Irene that's heading our way. We're all ready- we've all got our 72 hr kits and 3 gallons of water per Missionary. The hurricane will probably veer off into the ocean before reaching us clear up here in NY- and if it does get up to us it'll have lost most of it's strength anyway. Either way, we're probably going to get pretty WET!
These last few weeks have been great- Elder McMullin and i have been around every Monday and Tuesday to visit a bunch of District Meetings all over the Mission. We truly have AMAZING young men and women serving here in our Mission. It's so cool too see them change- even the new ones we brought in from the airport just 3 weeks ago have all settled in and are already doing awesome. I am SO grateful to be a Missionary in these exciting and wonderful times. It's such a BLESSING it has been to serve here in NY- I have truly come to love it here- the people, the culture- everything. Every once in a while I can't help but smile; I'll catch myself casually talking about things "in Manhattan" or "the city", or see the sunset on the Hudson, or give someone directions- just little things- and think "Yeah, I'm a Missionary in NEW YORK." I feel so blessed to be Called to Serve in such a great place and represent the Lord in whatever way I can- to try and help the people here to come closer to the Savior. I love every moment of it.
The Church is TRUE!
B safe! B prepared!
All my love!
-Elder Hellberg-
No comments:
Post a Comment