More progress

Hello everyone! This week was pretty solid and I'm going to try and
explain it all decently quick! It all started with a pretty solid
miracle because I met this one Dominican lady and I was really happy
because I've been trying to find her since last transfer and we
finally found her! We went to go look her up but she wasn't home so we
started leaving and as we got to the lobby there was a lady walking in
and I said hi just to be nice and it turned out that was Dilcia! The
Dominican lady! And she's super sweet and is so ready to learn about
the gospel. So that was definitely a highlight. We also got 2 new
investigators who are a couple and they first met with the
missionaries about a year ago and now they want to meet again! Last
week we found this new investigator and taught him the plan of
salvation but yesterday we taught him the restoration and extended him
the baptism invitation! He said he will think about it but first he
wants to come to church so we are hoping that he will come through! We
also met with Joaquin yesterday and he is definitely a lot happier
than when we first taught him. He still hasn't been to church but he's
getting so close. Slowly but surely we are seeing some good progress
out here. Sorry that I'm keeping this so short but that's pretty much
the gist of my week! Hopefully that sums everything up okay!
1 and 2) The squad
3) Comp Picture
4) Serious city picture
5) White girl pic.

Hawaiian roller coaster ride

The subject title has nothing to do with this week. I just really like
the song. Okay here we go!

What...a...week. But so much good stuff!! So let's start with Monday.
Around 5:30 our Mexicano member Joaquin (the one we found last
transfer then lost track of him) called us! And he was so excited to
talk to us again! So we went to go see him at his house and I think
one thing I never mentioned was how for about a week and a half Elder
Oaks and I went to his house and tried to get in but couldn't. Oh and
his phone was turned off too so that didn't make things any easier.
But we wanted to let him know we were still thinking of him because I
thought he'd like that. So what did we do? We left a pass along card
in his door pretty much every day until he finally called us and we
get inside his house and he has a pretty good stack just chilling next
to his bed. So of course I make a joke saying he has a lot of cards
and he laughed. We met with him twice this week and then he also met
up with the bishop on Saturday. He's really trying...but still didn't
come to church on Sunday when I really thought he was. He also
wouldn't answer his phone so That happened too.

Also, I gave birth! Okay I gotta stop those jokes 😂 anyways, his name
is Elder Wagley, he's from Houston Texas and is super hard working and
just an all around awesome guy! He's struggling with the language
since you know, no one really learns it in the MTC so I'll be helping
him as much as I can! It's hard but a super awesome experience and I'm
so grateful to have it!

As for some of the craziness this week, I almost got hit by some kind
of fruit as we were walking the streets trying to contact people. I
guess some lady got really mad at a worker and threw some fruit from
his fruit stand at him so he tried throwing it back. Except his aim
was a little off so it came towards me and I had to matrix to make
sure it didn't hit me. So that was cool! And then the day before when
we were doing street contacting I ran all over the place just trying
to go and talk to the Hispanics and I'm pretty sure Elder Wagley
thought I was crazy. That's okay though. And I was talking to one guy
named Julio and he said, "I thought you were actually Hispanic until
you started talking. Good Spanish though!" So that was bitter sweet 😂

Yesterday was definitely the best day of the week though. I mean 4
lessons in one day. How can that not feel good?? I was afraid that we
weren't going to be able to go see everyone we planned for or someone
wasn't going to be home but pretty much everything went as planned!
And we got in with a really less active family and now will be doing
weekly family home evenings with them so I was happy about that as
well. We have some good stuff set up already so I'm hoping everything
goes as planned! The cold is also coming quick so I'm hoping I don't
die just yet...but wish me luck! Hope all of you are doing absolutely
perfect and stay that way too! Until next time! (Yes I added Mexican
flags at the bottom because why not)

Pictures!
1) picture from a while back. Elder oaks was out
2) I saw my future car 😍 #sti
3) The new district (The only picture I have of Elder Wagley)
4) We had a whole train to ourselves
5) Oh the things I do
6) #mcm shout out to my boys! Love and miss you guys!

Tyler forgot to add this to his mass email but had emailed it to me, so I'm adding it in for him.

Training is hard especially when my companion is like the total opposite of me. He's a
lot like Elder Oaks except that he can decently talk about sports and really enjoys cars. 
But other than that, he doesn't talk much. But I'm really trying to give him an awesome 
transfer and so far we have seen a couple good miracles happen and I think his 
confidence with the language is building slowly but surely. He's from Houston, His name 
is Elder Wagley, he enjoys anything chocolate (nothing in particular) and the coolest moment 
came when I decided to say hi to this Mexican guy (I could tell he was from Mexico and I love 
my Mexicans) and he said hi with a giant smile on his face so I decided to give him a pass
along card and in return he gave me his name, address and 2 phone numbers and told us 
to come by Sunday at 1:30 and I was like what just happened?? Then two days later we 
saw him again and he was like I'll still be waiting for you two! Then Sunday comes around and 
he had a recent death in his family so we decided to teach him the plan of salvation and he 
seems solid but I'm not too sure about his friend. But we still got two new investigators out of it!

I got a baby child!

Hello everyone! Well I could talk about my week entirely but to sum it
up, we had 3 lessons. It was rough but we still had a miracle lesson!
We were out trying to talk to people on the streets and possibly get
in an apartment building to knock on some doors (that's mainly what we
did this week) when I thought of an investigator. We have tried
visiting this guy a bunch of times but he's never home. I went on a
mini exchange with the zone leaders last week and we actually had
contact with him and he expressed a lot of interest. Then elder oaks
and I tried calling him but it seemed like he hung up half way through
the call so we dropped him. But because I randomly thought of him
again we decided to go to his house and he was home! He said he has a
lot of things in his life that he wants to change and that he wants
our help. His name is Rayomond and he's so solid. I even extended the
baptism invitation which was my first time doing that and it was in
the first lesson too! He said he wants to meet up again tonight at the
church but the only thing is that we kind of lost his phone number so
I'm just hoping and praying he does come through tonight. But he's
still so awesome. Oh and the quote of the week came from Elder Peña.
He said, "Elder Rossi I hate that you were called Spanish Speaking
because now I have to deal with you in two languages" 😂😂 It's
because I always make fun of him and annoy him in both English and
Spanish. But don't worry. He really does love me.

The other highlight came Friday night...bum bum bum...IM GOING TO BE A
DAD!!!! Well sort of. I'm going to be training! I'm both excited and
nervous but more than anything I just hope I can train him to work
hard and have fun. I mean just imagine...another Elder Rossi is going
to be running around New York! 😂😄 I personally love the idea! In all
seriousness though, I really am excited for this calling. What our old
mission president said was that the parents of these incoming
missionaries are Hopi and praying that they're kids are going to get a
good first companion and I'm just hoping I can be the trainer at least
their parents need to be. So that's kind of what I'm thinking a lot
about as I'm getting ready to do this. Oh and Elder Oaks got a
training call too! He'll be leaving and I'm staying here which I'm
really excited about because there's a lot of good work here and all
the other elders who I've gotten close with are staying as well! And
I'll be here for my birthday!! So yeah tomorrow we will find out who
we are training and I'm pretty excited for that. So that's pretty much
what I have for you all this week! Hope you all have and had an
awesome week and happy Columbus Day!

Pictures!

1) I translated I'll make a man out of you
2) My baby announcement picture
3) Yup I'm holding a tarantula (that one's for you mom)
4) You know you're out late when no one is on the bus
5) Windshield destroyed by a big rock

Just another update

So this week my highlight was...Conference!! It's funny because I've
never really enjoyed watching it until I got out here. There's just
something completely different about watching it as a missionary. Or
maybe it's just me maturing. One of the two. But the thing I enjoy
most about it is that we have an opportunity to hear from apostles the
things we may need to change about ourselves. And in preparation for
that, I decided to change something. Many of you may know that I may
not have the most "missionary-like" language so I've been trying to
change that. So anytime I say "flip" "crap" "dang" or anything like
that I have to do 5 push ups. I'm pretty sure it's still not working
because I've done about 400 now in the past 3 days but give it some
time and I'll either have better language or better arms...

As for during the week, we had some pretty good success though. We got
about 8 lessons (4 investigators, 4 members) and those all went well.
We tried to go see some less active members this week to talk about
general conference. There were some really good videos about preparing
for conference with questions and stuff like that on lds.org so I
wanted to share them. But when I went to the Spanish version of the
website, the videos aren't there...racism. But the lessons went on and
I just kind of explained the videos so it all worked out. We also had
our investigator Efrain who wants to be baptized come to the
priesthood session so that was good. Even though he fell asleep. We
also talked and he now isn't sure about baptism so we will now be
working extra hard with him. We also met with this guy named Moises
who knows a ton about the gospel and the Book of Mormon but just like
everyone else in New York, his job takes up all his time. That's
pretty much the he common theme with all the investigators right now.
Then there is the 10 year old kid who hasn't been to church but we
don't know why since his mom comes. So pretty much there's still lots
of work to do.

Well this week is definitely a little bit shorter but I now officially
have 8 whole months in my mission! Crazy how fast it's gone. Well I
hope you all have an awesome week! Talk to you all later!

Pictures!
1) My self portrait
2) Squad pics again...minus Elder Robinson
3) This little girl in our ward, Jasmine, enjoys taking pictures of us
like this a little too much
4) Elder Peña's stalker picture of me

Oh I've also failed to mention that we had a conference a while back
where Elder Bennett from the seventy (He gave the 2nd talk in the
priesthood session) and here is the picture from that. I'm sure you
won't be able to see me so I'm going to make a game out of it. If you
find me, you get an imaginary high five from me. (Hint: I'm farther to
the left)

Slow as a turtle

Okay I think slow as a turtle is a bit of an exaggeration but this
week was pretty slow. It revolved a lot around doing look ups and just
trying to clean out the area book. To quote Patrick Star, "We're on an
investigator hunt and don't think we don't know how to weeeed them
out!" See, we have about 80 potentials in our list but most of these
people haven't been talked to in well over a year so we have to go and
check if they still live there and if they're still interested. We've
dropped a good amount of people this week just from doing that. I also
think some missionaries like to mess with everyone and add people in
the potentials list who shouldn't be there. For example, a JW
(Jehovah's witness) lady who was really angry that we had her
information, said she has never spoken with the missionaries and
doesn't want us to come back. So that was interesting.

Tuesday was probably the slowest day though because I was pretty
sick...or so I thought. My stomach was hurting all day, I was drowsy
and after district meeting I just came back to the apartment and
crashed...which kind of sucked because we had a lesson at 6 and I
still wasn't feeling ready. So elder Peña came over and had his
trainee go over with Elder Oaks to the lesson which I wasn't too happy
about but I lived with it. After talking to Peña for a little while he
figured out it was because of stress. It sucks but it's true. I've had
to do more on my own this transfer than ever before so it's just taken
a toll on me. But I'm still going! I was out Tuesday then I came back
strong on Wednesday with lots and lots of look ups. I think it's a
good thing it's a good thing I don't gamble though because each time I
was like okay this one is the one I guarantee it! But I was wrong. So
yeah. Anyways, time for some big updates.

WE GOT A BAPTISM!!!! Or we will, anyways. I guess the lesson on
Tuesday went really smooth. The guy's name is Efrain and we had a
lesson with him last Tuesday and he pretty much told us he enjoys
coming to church but there's some things that bother him. So what
happens on Tuesday? I guess he pretty much came in and told them that
he believes and wants to be baptized! So elder oaks gave him the
invitation but we will be giving him a date tomorrow! Super cool
stuff! I'm excited. We also had to move Brian's (The 10 year old) back
a little farther because he still hasn't come to church and we have
another potential baptism with this guy named Orlando. He was
investigating a while ago and just recently he told a friend of his
who is a member that he wants to start talking with us again. I didn't
say this last week I don't think but Sunday after church we went to go
talk to him and get to know him a little and he's a super solid guy.
He works on Sunday's but he has his own business so it won't be hard
to change that at all. So yeah! Some exciting stuff is happening here!
Other than that it's just finding and trying to get by. And to explain
that a little, I have a picture of what we had to eat yesterday.

Well that's pretty much it for this week! I hope you're all doing
swell and living life to the fullest. Take care and have an awesome
week!!

1) I got bored so I did this
2) New haircut
3/4 Squad pics
5-10) Elder Peña and I went on an exchange on Thursday and decided to
do some look ups way out by Brooklyn Bridge park and ran into Elder
Sainteran and Elder Robinson so we just had to take some pictures
11) Last night's dinner: Rice, eggs and hot dogs. #poorpeoplefood