Do you want to build a snowman?

Hello everybody this has been one interesting week for sure and the time here in New York seems to just get more and more interesting as it flies by haha.

Monday: Preparation Day and we didn't do much but we did go to our less active family and oh my her kids were so crazy tonight. I'm sure I have bruises all over my back from them jumping on me haha. But we did talk to their mom about online missionary work and how she can share things on her Facebook page and got her to like some of the churches Facebook pages! 

Tuesday: So we had district meeting and then we went to Brentwood to teach all our deaf kids and had some really great lessons with them although our deaf member is going to the Dominican republic soon till MAY and we are so sad! :( hopefully we see her again but at least we have her till February. Then we taught our recent convert and he just amazes me every time we go over there, I'm just left speechless. We also saw our investigator and he said the closing prayer and thanked Heavenly Father for us teaching him and helping him learn more so he can be baptized... I seriously almost cried it was the sweetest thing. So special. But now we just need to get him to church...  So difficult when all the deaf people live in different towns!

Wednesday: This day was a JOKE! Haha so I woke up and I felt like someone stabbed me in the eye but didn't think too much about it because I was thinking it was just allergies. So we went and had correlation finally with our new ward mission leader at a diner and it actually went really really well and he got us pumped to get to work. He is also going to help us get really involved with the members because I guess some missionaries from past years really ruined the work here in our ward so he wants us to help develop that relationship again with the members. Makes so much more sense now. But then after the meeting my eye just got worse so Sister Deuel called the mission nurse because she said "Your eye was freaking me out!" So I had to go to urgent care.... Again. Turns out I got pink eye... Awesome. Why do all these sicknesses happen to me L.O.L at my life. Sister Peterson (the mission nurse) said we couldn't go out so we stayed in all day. Felt like such a waste of time! But we cleared out our entire area book so that was really nice and time consuming and was something that really needed to be done, BUT we also went and taught our less active (I know I'm bad but it was because we hardly ever get to see her!) so we went and had an amazing lesson. :) 

Thursday: Mission Leadership Conference!! Oh my it was sooooo good! But it was really awkward because there was an accident on the freeway so we were 20 minutes late..oops. There were so many amazing things discussed and there was maybe two other companionships there without leadership callings so that was really weird. But we talked about how our purpose IS the doctrine of Christ and how a lot of missionaries tend to focus on numbers instead of focusing on what our investigators need. So the missionary department changed the entire way we weekly plan, we now have to go through a process where we take one investigator at a time and completely focus on them and how to help them. It will be a lot more time consuming but I feel this will really help us and the people we teach so much. They also changed the way we do exchanges with leaders but that's super confusing to explain especially to you all so.... Sorry... But we also got approved to use a new app called ooVoo which is like Skype except you can call multiple people so that awesome so we can now use Skype, FaceTime, and ooVoo. Still no Facebook but they said February. Whoop whoop. They also gave us new ways to use our technology and sister Deuel and I are stoked to use it more because we're both really new so we don't tend to use our devices that often so it was good to get some actual training on these iPads haha. Also funny story so sister Deuel was trying to parallel park in the city and I have to back her up and she misses it like 5 times and this couple from across the street was just staring at us probably thinking how pathetic we are and then they came over and had to help sister Deuel park. I was dying, I was bending over laughing so hard. So embarrassing.

Friday: Boy oh boy did I think weekly planning took forever before, we planned pretty much all day and we didn't even get through half of our people. But it already has helped so much and it was really eye opening to see that a lot of the reasons why they weren't progressing was because of us! We are changing that really quick. Learn and improve right? We finally saw our old woman investigator and she was in the hospital for two and a half weeks because our a kidney stone and three broken vertebrate! Ouch. We also had ASL class tonight which is always a blast and we had to use classifiers (pretty much charades) to tell a story about our lives. But it was crazy we had a tender mercy and one of our investigators we were talking about dropping called US and set up an appointment, literally as we were talking about dropping her. Okay we hear you Heavenly Father haha we won't lose her.

Saturday: We went to our less active families birthday party at Chuck E. cheese and I never knew a four year old could be so sad at Chuck E. Cheese on her birthday haha (see picture below) but we were able to meet a lot of their moms friends so that was really cool. Then we went knocking for forever, but hey planting those seeds is always doing good work! Then we called a few people and started doing scripture study with them over the phone and called our new deaf investigator and had an amazing lesson about the restoration and she accepted a baptism date and is keeping all the commitments we give her. A progressing deaf investigator? What? That hasn't happened is awhile. Miracles!! Ever since we went to MLC we've been using technology so much more and just the past few days we've already seen so many blessings from it. I have no idea why we haven't been using these tools earlier!!! We've been using it wrong this entire time, so glad we can finally use these tools to help hasten the work! 

Sunday: Church was good today and our deaf member gave a talk to that was really cool to watch. We tried seeing a few people but they all weren't home so that stuck but IT SNOWED!!! Yes it finally snowed here in New York so I finally experienced my first New York snow.  I'm not sure if I'm excited or terrified yet because it's only going to get worse from here haha. We also went and had a lesson with a woman we knocked into a few weeks ago and we didn't think much of her and actually thought we would drop her but we ended up having an amazing discussion with her and she was even crying in the lesson and she really opened up to us and even said we could come back when we were thinking she wouldn't even let us teach her again. That just goes to show we never know what the lord has in plan for the people we teach and talk to! The lord knows best and we need to remember that constantly.

Well everybody that's all from a weird freezing sister missionary! Hope you're all doing well and staying warm :) Love and miss  you all!!

Love, Sister Seay