So on Monday we actually had to let the elders borrow the car but we needed it the next morning so we actually got to spend our preparation day in Brooklyn with the park slope elders. We helped them with their girl problems and watched them dominate at basketball on the Brooklyn bridge. It was actually super fun, and we didn't just sit around our apartment all day haha. We started a new thing by reading the Book of Mormon with our investigator and we've come to a conclusion as to why she won't read, and it's simply because she's never read the scriptures before so she doesn't understand it. We started reading with her a few verses and explaining them. She loves it and gets sad when we stop reading with her. She has the cutest family, I love them all so much. The people are seriously the best part of New York. I mean the city is cool and all but the people is what steals my heart. Yes, even the crazy ones. Those people just make my day. Service is always a good time and we were able to accomplish so much for both parks. The events director was amazed at how fast we set up a fence
for their event and came up to all of us with tears in her eyes. That's what makes service all worth it. :) plus wearing shorts. Gosh I miss pants so much! On Wednesday we found out that one of our beloved ASL missionaries from the north mission was going home early and that he would be flying out the next morning We were all shocked and heartbroken. Losing an ASL missionary is so hard because ASL is not called very often and you just become so close because you serve together for such a long time. Hope all goes well with him but hopefully he keeps in touch. We had exchanges with the sister training leaders Friday-Saturday and I was with the lovely sister Robinson again from when I was out on Long Island. We just did some recent convert lookups and had a lesson with their recent convert. It's a girl who is 12 and they decided to bring her friend to go get ice cream. Now let me tell you how awkward this lesson was.... So we're asking basic get to know you questions and all the responses we get are "I don't know" and "I guess so". Okay... I guess I will just continue the conversation I was already having with myself haha. We tried so hard! They just wouldn't talk at all! We also went and did service for a family who I adore with all my heart! I've seen them on every exchange here in the city. They're moving to Arizona for six months so we helped them pack up their stuff :( I won't see them again till I'm a month away from coming home! That's weird.....
On Friday we had zone training meeting and our zone leaders know how to run a meeting! It was so good, we had four workshops and they were all so touching. Elder hunt gave a workshop on charity and one thing that really stuck out to me was "If charity requires sacrifice; then if Heavenly Father loves us with his full heart, might, mind and strength, what did He sacrifice to have charity towards us? It was His son Jesus Christ." Elder Paterson (my district leader) gave an awesome workshop on humility. Then elder Garcia (our newest zone leader) gave an amazing workshop on being a successful missionary. He's from Hawaii and he was so pumped for his workshop, I felt like I was on a football team getting ready to go out and tear up the field. He was breaking chalk and everything, it was awesome. There was a quote he said from his rugby coach that said, "the shortest distance between success and failure is six inches; the distance between your mind and your heart." It is so true, our time here as missionaries is so short and the way we can make ourselves successful is the effort we put into it. It starts with our mind and hearts. Elder Garcia's main catch phrase was "How bad do you want it?" How bad do we really want to help people. We make goals as missionaries all the time but how bad do we really want it? It was a really nice checkpoint for me to look at how I've spent my time up till now doing my work and how I want to spend the next 7 months. It was a reality check for me and what things I want to try do not only for myself for the the deaf work here in NYC. Elder Voorhees ran out of time for his workshop so he simple bore his testimony and sent out his workshop to everyone so we could read it later. It was about being happy. Seems like an odd thing to discuss about but overall as missionaries we tend to bring ourselves down a lot or even being homesick. There's a few quotes I liked from what he sent.
•Thomas S Monson:"When You pile up enough tomorrows, and you’ll find you’ve collected a lot of empty yesterdays. My brothers and sisters, there is no tomorrow to remember if we don’t do something today."
•President Calderwood: (Mission president before president Reynolds) "If you are not happy today, you will never be happy tomorrow"
•Ray Lewis: "What you do today, will determine who you are tomorrow"
I thought all the topics flowed really well together because if we have humility we will have the ability to strengthen ourselves and become the disciples of Christ that He plans on us becoming. Also if we have charity we will have the natural happiness that comes from love. And lastly being a successful missionary is founded on these three simple principles. But not everyday we are successful, sometimes we have really hard days but if we can do it with a smile on our face there's nothing that can bring us down. For we love what we do and we will show that we love doing it.
Anyways... This was a lot longer than I thought it would be.... Hope you all enjoyed it, please excuse my experimentation. Just know I love and miss you all! Thanks for being my biggest cheerleaders from 1,000s of miles away ❤️ you're all the best. I couldn't be here without you all. Also congrats to Tara and Brandon for getting married this Saturday!!!! I hope you both have the best day ever :) Until next week!
Love, Sister Seay
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