Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Lighthouses, man eating fish, demons, and successes!

Hello friends and family :) another week is over?! I thought I just emailed you all. But it's like they say, "the days feel like weeks, but the weeks feel like days." True Biz. I couldn't agree with that more. 
Monday: Pday! So of course we did all our normal Pday shenanigans but once those were all done we got together with the other sister and drove to fire island. When we were there we went to see Americas first lighthouse. Yep, you heard that right. Fancy stuff right there. It was super pretty but the wind was not so fun. #newyorkproblems the climb up the lighthouse was a workout though. I do not recommend climbing up a lighthouse in skirts though haha it was so windy even in the lighthouse. Funny story, as we were climbing down sister Deuel started climbing down and a huge gust of wind came and her skirt comes flying up right when there's a Spanish family right below her. We couldn't stop laughing oh my word. Good times. So I tried to take pictures there but at least one person looks weird but I'll send them anyways. Afterwards we just went to the mall because they were having a sale on winter clothes and considering I was mission shopping in st. George, Utah in June I didn't find any winter clothes haha. Once Pday was over we had some family home evening appointments but they all canceled so we tried to look up some people. We found this one lady and we has a pond full of koi fish. They are HUGE!!! I can't even begin to describe how big they are. They could eat a man. 
 
Tuesday: Two words to describe today, mission tour. Mission tour happens every couple years and it is when a general authority comes and speaks to the entire mission. We had elder Bennett from the quorum of the 70. The meeting went from 10 am to 5 pm, pretty much the longest meeting of my life. However, it was really cool because he didn't prepare at all he just relied on the spirit on what we needed to hear. Needless to say we heard a lot of stuff we needed to hear. For the first three hours we only talked obedience. Our mission has been stressing that we all need to be exactly obedient. For example, one reason we should all want to be out of bed and praying at 6:30 is so that every missionary in our mission is praying at the same time and we are all united in our hearts and desires as we pray. Deep stuff. We also discussed how our investigators are our best referrals because almost everyone they know isn't a member. I hope you know this was a continuous meeting, we didn't stop once. He had us stand up every two hours or so to stretch and then we would sit right back down. Overall it was a great meeting although after the meeting we saw we had a lot of missed calls from the deaf branch in Manhattan and when we called back we found out that sister Deuel and sister Layton's old investigator had a heart attack and died. That was depressing I just felt bad for them, they were so close with her. So because of that president wanted to talk to them and see if it would be possible for them to go to the funeral. Afterwards we had to go and get our new phone, set it up and all that stuff. Something that really sucked about that was that none of the first names in our phone transferred over and so now we have to go through all 800 contacts and fix them all. Hooray. We had a lesson with one of our ward members that night and we just talked about how the gospel has blessed her life and how she can try to invite one of her friends to watch conference with her. Then she gave us sparklers because I guess that's one of the ways she gets through a hard day is lighting a sparkler haha. 
 
Wednesday: District meeting! Always a good time. Nothing much happened we just discussed ideas on what to do during the dark hours at night. Then we went to finish going over all the membership records in the ward, I am so glad that is finished. Once we finished up we went back to the pad to do our training and we had to watch a ton of videos. We also tried to fix all of the contacts in our phone but we just ended up contacting all of the wrong people, it's just a confusing mess right now. We had a dinner appointment with a less active family and oh my gosh it was the best dinner I've ever had. Two words, pesto salmon. I was in heaven. Okay I just really love seafood. They have a one year old daughter and she was all over me haha she kept taking my tag, it's so difficult not to hold babies! It's the toddlers that terrify me. True story. Before we went to our dinner appointment we arrived early so we decided to knock on their neighbors doors and we found some kids! The kids told us their step dad has a Book of Mormon and when they showed it to us it was marked all the way through and all the notes were written basically to prove it wrong. They also showed us "Mormon" books but they were all anti-mormon literature. But they told us to come back and talk to him...pray for our souls! We had a lesson after our dinner appointment to teach a less active member and her daughters. Her daughters are nine and they both want to be baptized the only problem is that her husband is Jewish and doesn't want them to be baptized. So she wants to baptize them without him knowing so we had to explain why he needs to know and that they can't be baptized without both parents permission. Interesting day. 
 
Thursday: Thursday.... The day of finding. Today we dedicated our day to looking up potential investigators and giving out bible referrals. We started on one random street and we met an Italian! He wanted us to come to see the pope with him haha (the pope is coming to New York soon) so he wasn't interested but oddly enough we ran into his neighbor and she was! Miracles everybody, miracles. Although she speaks mostly Spanish (she's from El Salvador) so we had to refer her to the Spanish sisters but hey if they can help her we don't mind. Then we went to do a bible referral and when we got there they invited us in and we talked to them for awhile. Turns out she is Pentecostal. Super creepy religion, they like crawl on the ground and they yell and honestly it looks like some sort of satanic ritual. The way she was describing how she "received the Holy Ghost" gave me the creeps. There honestly might be a demon or something in her. Her sister was there and she was like "I honestly think that's worshiping satan" lady we are right there with you!! We will have to go back... But they accepted a Book of Mormon and we taught the entire restoration lesson so we will defiantly have to follow up on them. We tried looking up another referral but she wasn't home but it's okay because we found a new investigator! While we were talking to him we discovered he's Pentecostal as well...what is Heavenly Father trying to tell us? We were so busy today we didn't even have time for dinner because had to run to our ASL class. After class we tried to go knocking but we had no success no one would answer. At one house we left and crossed the street and then we heard a man yell "DONT COME TO MY HOUSE!" Sorry we are trying to save your salvation. 
Friday: we had a lesson with one of our investigators and her boyfriend, we reviewed the word of wisdom and taught about keeping the sabbath day holy. Turns out she is still drinking tea and we tried to get her to stop and she said we could take it from her. But when it came down to it she backed out last second. Afterwards we went to our deaf couples house to do some service and we helped them clean their house for their nephews wedding. Funny story though, while we were folding clothes we noticed Pana started dusting the book shelf by us, but then we noticed she was cleaning with a pair of underwear. We died laughing. I love deaf people. As a district we finished knocking one of our members neighborhood, not much luck but oh well! Seed planting  is always good too! We went and helped one of the young women with her family history so she could take a family name with her to the temple tomorrow and it's her first time and she's 16! We're so stoked!! 
Saturday: So we had originally planned on going to the temple today but since everyone canceled last second on the temple trip we were no longer allowed to go. Sad day right? Although of course we always have back up plans! I'm actually kind of glad we didn't go because we looked up a referral that our zone leader gave us and we ended up having a lesson with him! He was even deaf! Whoop whoop. Although he was strange and was like telling us how he might go to jail soon and how his ex wife is crazy haha only the most interesting of people here in the great state of New York. We just finished the day trying to find some new people to teach, so in other words lots of knocking. No one was interested but everyone was so nice! We were surprised actually. Then we had correlation meeting with our ward mission leader and it went pretty well. Yep that was pretty much it! 
Sunday: JENNY IS BACK!!!!! So Jenny is our actual interpreter and she's finally home from her vacation, so now we don't have to interpret anymore. I'm so glad I hate interpreting haha okay just in this ward because everyone has such heavy accents and I can't even understand them in English.....so that's a problem. In deaf Sunday school we had a lesson on faith and our deaf couple who's investigating have such hard hearts. They also told us they got a new interpreter for their old church. We think we're going to have to drop them soon...it's just hard because they keep all the commitments and go to church every week but they aren't progressing. Hopefully one day they will have a softened heart. So you know how in the movie the RM how all the women in relief society just start bawling? And have cute little hand outs that are all organic and super fancy? Yep. Our relief society to a tee. Haha it's like I'm in the movie. We had three deaf lessons today and they all went really well except our last one. He's been meeting with the Jehovah's witnesses and when we started talking about Joseph smith he already knew who he was and said the Jehovah's witnesses taught about him....oh no. Thankfully he didn't remember what they taught him but he didn't seem to sure about what we were teaching. Dang Jdubs....always stealing our thunder. We had call ins this week and we doubled our goals, and we set them high before haha. *high fives myself* we had a great week. We're pretty happy about it, we've been working our tails off. 
 
Info for mom: companions are great. Nothing new to report we get along just fine, although sister Layton is getting really trunky (mission term for homesick) she's just ready to go home in three weeks. My apartment is not my top priority to write about sorry mom! haha it's fine, but our neighbors are moving so we don't know what will happen because if someone moves in that we can't be around we'll have to move. Not sure how you don't know about my area, my investigators are my area haha. It just gets cold in the mornings and early evening and it's humid beyond belief but I'm finally getting used to it. Success! 
 
Well everyone have a fabulous week! Just know I miss and love you all dearly! Ps shout out to one of my favorite uncles uncle Bruce for being called a stake president. That's pretty nifty.  Talk to you all next week!! 
 
Love, Sister Seay 

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