Laziness strikes again

Hello everyone! Well this week was another quick one but we were super
busy still. Had a lot of lessons and yesterday we were literally the
answers to someone's prayers yesterday and that was super cool. That
was probably the highlight of this week. I'd write more but even as a
missionary I'm still prone to be lazy every now and again. Please
don't hate me! But here's a picture to kind of show how much it rained
in about 20 or 30 minutes :) Love you all!

I was not happy with this short little post...Luckily Ty emailed me a little more detail so I will share that here:
we definitely had a ton of lessons again this week. 13!! The two yesterday were my
favorite though. Yesterday I just had a weird feeling of trying to go
visit two member families who we haven't had much success with and man
did that work out. We were literally the answer to one sister's
prayers and that was the first time we got inside her house. Then we
went to the Mendoza family after about 6 or 7 weeks of not being there,
and we talked about families. I was on splits with a husband and wife
who don't speak any English in this lesson too, so I was stressing
super hard but they talked for the most part and it was just
absolutely amazing. And someone finally guessed I'm not Hispanic this
week!!! I was happy. As for exercise, we ran once, went to the church
to play basketball once but have done a sit up to turn off the alarm
then fell back to sleep more than I can count 😂 We still have a lot of
investigators and we even got a new one this week! His name is José, he called 
me out on not knowing much Spanish so that hurt a little but it's all good. Our
return appointment is this Wednesday so I'll let you know how that goes for sure!

Is it Monday again??

 Wasn't it Monday like just the other day? Anyways, I'm back! So
this week didnt feel as busy as last week but somehow we got the same
amount of lessons. Well okay not the exact same. We had 10. But close
enough! Oh and happy late dia del padre! So Monday we had an
interesting experience...we were at a less active's home just barely
getting ready to start teaching something when all of a sudden we hear
a knock at the door with a panicking mother saying her daughter needs
to go to the hospital and I guess she needed the member to drive. I
didn't find out why but that's besides the point. Apparently what
happened was this little girl fell on something and completely tore up
her leg to the point that her skin flopped over. It was still attached
but you could see inside her leg...we didn't see it but he told us
about it when we went back on Saturday. So yeah that was bad. Then
Tuesday we had another fun one.  But I won't go into that one.
     Anyways, let's talk about the good stuff! We only had one lesson
with an investigator this week but that lesson was still really
powerful. We also had a lesson with another member family who's been
going through some tough times and I was able to share a pretty long
story from my life (all in Spanish) and that went really well. We're
just trying to work more and more with members, strengthen the ward,
find out how we can help the families but more than anything we want
their trust. And that's something that definitely has happened the
past week. We're slowly learning more and more about each family and
individual and we're hoping to get to each member's home which is hard
because of how spread out everyone is and how many members there are.
But it's also really good there's a lot of members!
     This past week I found a quote that will probably get me through
most if not all my mission. I'll include a picture of the full quote
afterwards but the gist of it is that the secret to missionary work is
work. The more we work the less we think about home. And that's why
I've been trying harder and harder to work from 11 in the morning
until 9 at night (with those meal breaks of course) because I know
great things will come from this work and as I start to think less and
less about home, the more I'll really start enjoying my mission. It's
not easy and it's an ongoing struggle right now but I'm still
adjusting and as I have patience with myself, I will get there. (Boys
II Men may start singing now) Not sure if anyone will understand that
reference but that's about it for my week! Thank you to everyone out
there! And to you father's that this letter gets to, happy Father's
Day!!

Elder Rossi

The last picture of President Calderwood and I

The quote

Pretty much what my area looks like

 
how did those get in there??

What A Week!

So this was by far the most exhausting week of my mission thus
far. And it gave me a little taste of how many good things are in
store for this transfer. So Tuesday was my last time seeing my trainer
Elder Pincock for a little while and that was fun. Transfer meeting
was pretty good. It was president Calderwood's last one so obviously
he left with a bang because of how powerful both his and his wife's
talks were. Then after that was the leader's meeting and because my
companion (who is still Elder Peña) had to stay for that and I got to
hang around for a while after the meeting because of that.
    Then Wednesday was more of a housekeeping kind of day. I started
cleaning up my Facebook page to make it look more professional which,
for those of you who have seen some of the things I've posted, shared
or liked then you might understand how long it's been taking me to
clean that :) The main purpose of Facebook is to not only reach out
and continue talking to investigators and members out here but also
friends, family or anyone else who might be interested in talking with
us about the gospel through this online proselyting method.
    Thursday was the day that really killed me though. We had a solid
weekly planning session saying exactly which people and families we
want to focus on, getting our plans straight since our teaching pools
are now combined so we have so much work on our hands. But right after
that we had lesson after lesson. We just would show up to a house,
they'd be home, share a message and continue on with our day and it
was actually a really good day. Even though at first I wasn't too
excited since we had so much planned and I'm lazy. But since that day
we've had 11+ lessons and it's been a blast.
    One thing I would invite all to do is the same activity we had
one family do last night and we were all able to feel the spirit so
strongly. It's super simple. We had the family put on Yo sé que vive
mi señor which is I know my redeemer lives in English and just had
them write any thoughts or feelings they had down on a piece of paper.
Elder Peña and I decided to join in too and one thing I wrote was
"Podemos sentir el espíritu bien fuerte cuando pensamos solamente de
nuestro salvador Jesucristo" which would translate to "We're able to
feel the spirit so strong when we think solely of our savior, Jesus
Christ." And it's so very true and it's something I've really been
working on. Like I said before I've been on Facebook so shout out to
some of my loving family members for remembering me during the Warrior
games :) Trust me...it's been a struggle. But as I think of what I'm
doing here, all the good that I'm doing, it makes it a little bit
easier. It truly does.
    Thanks to everyone out there who may or may not be reading these!
Even if not everyone does, that's okay because sometimes I just type
to pass time in the laundromat. Anyways, summer is here so I hope
everyone has an awesome one! Thanks again!

Have some pictures too!

1) Last picture of the Ty's
2) Good ol' New York traffic

Just another week in Paradise

So to start this one off I'm just going to go ahead and say that I'm
staying in my first area! I was really happy about that for two
reasons: I'll be able to continue teaching the investigators I started
out with and hopefully see a baptism happen or at least set one up.
The other reason is that my mom sent me a ton of food and I have been
able to finish any of it so I'll have another transfer to stuff my
face with all that goodness. Now for the week!

Tuesday was a taste at what these next 6 weeks are going to be like
because my trainer took his 4th and final temple trip so elder Peña
and I spent the whole day together and it turns out he is now my
companion! Should be some fun stuff. And Tuesday went pretty well too.
First we taught this one investigator who, to quote Nacho Libre,
basically said, "I believe in science"  so we will be playing Jack
Black and sneaking up behind him to baptize him...which should be
interesting! I think the weirdest thing though is to think that my
companion is going home now. Like we may not have gotten along all the
time but he was still a super chill guy and I learned a lot from him.
He also shaped me into the missionary I am today which is either a
good or bad thing.

We also had a couple lessons with this other investigator who may or
may not be investigating the church just for his girlfriend. He's been
pretty difficult and actually had a baptism date but because he
doesn't seem to have a real strong desire to be baptized we are
wanting to push that back a little. But hopefully with time we will
help him to really have that desire because we don't want to baptize
someone just to say we baptized someone because then they're not doing
it for the right reasons.

One thing that was pretty interesting from this past week was that
this guy who is a usual at chili's decided to pay for our whole
district on Friday for no reason! He came over and talked with us and
I didn't really pay attention because I was too busy watching
highlights from game 1 from the finals (obviously the better
highlights since last nights game sounded saddening) and he just got
to know us then decided to pay for us! So that was really cool. And
our waiter agreed that Rapunzel is way better than Elsa so that was
legit.

Something else that's pretty legit is that we will be getting Facebook
and Skype this week so that means our means of teaching are now going
to be a little different but hopefully more effective! I'm not sure
exactly how it's going to work yet so please no questions about it to
those few who enjoy talking to me.

So the pictures I'm including today are probably pictures I should
have included last week except for our district photo. That was from
this past week. And because some of you may have heard that I color in
order to relieve stress you can see my amazing artwork. So here ya go!
1: Ninja power
2: this amazingly terrible game where some jelly beans are normal and
others are those disgusting flavors...1 out of the 6 I had was good
and 3 or 4 of them was skunk spray. The taste wasn't bad but man did
that stink. Oh and I had barf too and almost barfed be caused of it.
3: the district
4: The tremendous trio

Great Things come in 3's

So guess what! I'm in a trio now! The district leader was needed
elsewhere so he left this past week and his companion is now in our
pool. It's definitely not staying like this though. Especially since
my trainer will be going home this next transfer. Also, to everyone
who has ever played words with friends with me and knew I cheated I'd
just like to point out that I played scrabble last night and won fair
and square so I am able to play I'm just lazy! Anyways, this week was
insanely busy because we now technically have two teaching pools so
things have been pretty fun. One thing that's also for sure is that we
got fed so much this week. And I loved it. We had 2 investigator
lessons this week (both from the other pool) which went really well
but teaching as a trio is so different. You really gotta find your
part in all of it. We also haven't heard anything from our
investigator Yefry this week. But this is usually around the time when
work for a lot of people pick up and that's exactly what he's been
saying it is. We mainly had member lessons though. Both active and
less active. We also worked a ton doing service Friday and Saturday.
Friday we helped our mama negra move which took pretty much the whole
day and that was a good time and then Saturday we went to this other
member's house to help him clean out his shed so we got even more sun
this week after recovering from the mets game. So yeah I've got a nice
missionary tan line going already. So yeah! That's pretty much the
gist of everything out here! This is the last week of the transfers so
by next week I'll know whether I'll be staying here in the promised
land of Brentwood (which I'm hoping) or be moving on to other things
in New York. Stay tuned!!

Elder Rossi