12-5-16

Another quick update:
This week was definitely better than last week lessons wise but still
pretty rough. I just came into a very dead teaching pool so we're
still trying to do what we can to fix that. And my comp has been here
for a while so at times I'm dragging him and because I hate finding at
times he definitely drags me haha. I'm pretty sure we're dropping
Nicole too. We've tried sending her messages and going by her house
and she's never home. We also taught these two youth (one is a less
active and the other is an investigator) and tried getting them to
mutual. Unfortunately the mom doesn't care enough to come back to
church and neither of those two seem to care about much. It's just
getting really hard to stay motivated here haha. But of course I'm
still pushing. We also got back in contact with this part member
family and it actually does seem that the 20 year old daughter has a
good amount of interest...but of course her boyfriend doesn't so we
will be working with that. And so far we have just been sharing the
Light The World Video and encouraging members to do the stuff everyday. 
That's pretty much it!

Happy Thanksgiving

Okay. So I really committed to finally getting an actual weekly update from yours truly out this week. So first things first...happy thanksgiving and sorry I've been so bad at this! I remember hearing that it gets a lot harder the longer you're out and boy is that the truth. So far since getting to queens, people have ended up just telling us they don't want to meet with us or we just feel that they don't really want to meet with us so we have to stop going. So we're doing a lot of finding! So unfortunately we aren't getting too many lessons. I'm officially in single digit weeks now so at times it's easy to think about home but I also want to finish strong. Last week we had president interviews and he told me how he's seen a lot of growth in me and, well, I don't want to stop there. I want to keep becoming better and I know that this gospel gives us the perfect path to become better every single day. A lot of the time we're progressing a lot more than we really think we are too! Just a little something I've learned out here.

Okay! So back to all that's happened! So one person we are still teaching who is also looking promising is this 18 year old named Nicole. We were heading to an appointment one morning and we ran into this woman who recognized us right away (so I figured she either wanted to bash or was a member as I usually do) and she was a member! Unfortunately she was here visiting from the DR but she gave us the address of her family who she was staying with. We went over the next night and met Nicole. I shared my own personal story of the gospel and last night we had our third lesson with her! 

Another huge highlight was a couple days before my birthday I saw my favorite person in New York...Joaquin! The less active I helped a ton and got close with in Brooklyn and he was in queens with his girlfriend and he looks super happy. So of course that made me really really happy. Then on my birthday I got tons of messages from everyone so thank you all for that! And sorry if I didn't get to respond to everyone!! The sisters from the district also made me a cake so that was cool too. 

Something we are doing now though is going to members and basically just reteaching the story of Jospeh Smith and the restoration and trying to see who they can share this message with during the holiday season. And if you all haven't seen it yet, there's a new Christmas video from the church that is super good! This year is all about serving the example of Christ and going out and serving others. It even gives you ideas on what to do in order to serve others so you should all check that out. But going back to the lessons with the members, so far we've had two and gotten two different names! So we're two for two and we're definitely hoping for more! 

Now for some highlights from the fun I had on Thursday! I went to this part of queens called Long Island city and it's kind of like Brooklyn bridge park but not as awesome. It's still on a really big pier right in front of Manhattan with a small little field and we played ultimate frisbee there. And I loved that of course. The only thing that stunk was that about a month ago I was playing basketball and this guy jumped up and landed right on my toe. So that caused the toenail to start dying and it's been close to falling off for a while but still didn't...then Thursday I barely kicked it on something by accident and the toenail detached from the front but stay attached at the back so it looked like it was facing straight up. It was crazy and hurt pretty bad to put it back to normal. So I just taped it up and hoped for the best because obviously I still wanted to play frisbee. Then halfway through the game my toe was hurt pretty bad so I decided to check it out...and the toe nail turned green. It kind of looked like a pond filled with algae. So I just wrapped it up again a little tired and finished the game because I still wanted to play. Then the next day I went to urgent care and the doctor that was there just took some tweezers and tore the nail from the skin...I obviously don't know what torture is but I'm pretty sure that's close to it. It was great. 

So hopefully I can slowly get better at these again but here ya go! That pretty much does it for how things have gone since I've gotten back to the city! Oh I also had bed bugs but those are finally gone luckily...didn't know how truly annoying they were until now! But yeah hope you all have a good week!! 

1) The group of us that volunteers at the soup kitchen

2) Elder Winters and I tried to look all majestic too like the sisters

3) Zone picture. I'm the one dabbing in the back

4) Another zone picture

5) District picture

6) Winning frisbee team

7) A picture from one of the three thanksgiving dinners we had

8) Everyone keep an eye out. I'm dropping an album soon 

11-22-16

Quick update to me from Tyler:
As for Thursday (Thanksgiving) we have 2 dinner appointments and then we are getting 
together to play some kind of sport. There was talk of a turkey bowl which would be tons 
of fun but the problem is that the sister's wouldn't wanna play...so we are hoping for frisbee 
maybe. Today I'm helping the sisters learn how to really play volleyball so we can play as
a district. As for the week, we had some people drop us again so we are trying to find yet 
again. I went on exchanges with Parkinson though since he's my zone leader now
and that was tons of fun! We talked with tons of people on the street too so that was great. 
Then yesterday we had the president interviews and he was just like Parkinson loves you 
as a brother. It's so cool to see. He also said I'm the kind of missionary who falls a lot but
instead of staying down I just put my boots on and climb up that hill. It was a 10 minute 
interview that turned into a 25 minute interview...it was actually really good haha. As for 
something terrible...we are still trying to get rid of the bed bugs. I think I've survived the past 
two nights but I'm still worried. The bites SUCK. But that's pretty much it.

11-14-16

Our pool is kind of dead so we're doing a lot of finding. Pretty much how it always 
is in the city though. We did find one girl though who seems pretty interested! Her 
name is Nicole and we had our second lesson with her last night. Then there's this 
other guy Darwin who we are hoping to meet with today and possibly his girlfriend 
as well! But here's to hoping haha. The ward is super solid too. I'm really excited to 
be here. We do FHE with this one family every Wednesday so I've already gotten 
close with them. As for today, the sisters made a really big cake but other than that 
I'm not really sure. I've been banished from playing basketball because I hurt my 
shoulder...so that's saddening. Oh here's another funny story for ya...this past week 
I kept noticing what looked like cuts on my face and I was like what the heck? It must
be from shaving. But then I got more and more only on my face and I was like what is 
this??? And, well, as much as I didn't want to admit it I had the feeling it was bed 
bugs...which it was. So Friday night we cleaned the whole house real thoroughly and 
I had to sleep on two recliners pushed together.(that sucked) Then Saturday I had to 
set off a gas bomb to get rid of all the bugs, wash my sheets and blankets and
then I bought a whole new pillow because I thought that could have been the problem 
since it was only on my face. And since then, no more bites. So happy birthday me, 
huh? Haha. BUT one super awesome thing that happened was I saw Joaquin!!!! 
He was in queens for some reason with his girlfriend and I was like JOAQUIN!!!! I 

The Sisters made a Birthday cake for Tyler, and homemade frosting! It says, Good Bye Get Well Soon. LOL!

The 3 layered cake!

Pictures celebrating Elder Honey's birthday!

was super happy about that. And that about does it for this week!

11-7-16

So my week has been super good! And I'm.....in Queens!!! I'm serving in Rego Park Queens. Oh and even crazier stuff....I'm with Elder Honey from my MTC group! And Elder Parkinson is my Zone Leader!!  But yeah it's been fun to talk about how things were when we got in the MTC versus how things are now. Although being here reminded me just how much I don't like working in the city...I love living here but the work is 10 times harder. I've met a couple members but yesterday was stake conference so I didn't really get to meet too many. We definitely get fed here though. I haven't had an area that feeds you this much since Brentwood. We even have someone that buys groceries for us! It's not a ton of stuff but I mean it's something haha. I've also been grilling a lot of meat because of that. Steak is my favorite. No pictures or videos this week to share. Tyler has 1 more transfer left and then he comes home! 

10-31-16

Tyler's update to me:
 This week we did have a good amount of lessons and I think I actually forgot to mention Paul last week but he's really solid. Really nice guy too. He says he hasn't been too much into religion but
now he feels it's time to change that. Super legit but I won't be working with him anymore. Because I'm being transferred!! Some more videos! All I can say is OUCH!!

And Why???

October 24, 2016

No mass email from Tyler again this week. Here is what he sent me about his week.
 As for the week, we ended up dropping our investigator Derek because he's not interested and I think we are done focusing on Jorge Ponte. He's the one with the son who we are trying to help get the priesthood for....Jorge basically said he doesn't care about religion whatsoever anymore so we were just like alrighty then. Dory still
wasn't able to come to church but Maycol got the gift of the Holy Ghost which is good! We provided some service this week, we were cutting down these trees for these goats to eat because they were basically in these people's
backyard and the trees aren't needed there. Here are the pictures and videos he sent this week. The pictures are of his District taken in a park. And he got a haircut and his new glasses arrived! Warning: One video is very graphic!!!

Very Graphic!!

The super secret meeting

Well this week was pretty slow up until the weekend. We were able to go and see Maycol (aka Michael. I just didn't realize that's how you spelled his name) and speaking of him, for those who didn't hear, he got baptized last Sunday! And because some drama has to happen with baptisms, we had quite a story. We started filling the baptismal font, came back about 45 minutes later to check it and it was flooded....and to make things even better the only way to pull the plug was to get in and pull it yourself. Doesn't sound too terrible. But then you realize that there was more cold water than warm and you have to get in about chest deep. I mean it could have been worse but I went in, pulled it quick and we had a little mess to clean up. It was all good though. Now we just have to keep getting members to bring him to church because yesterday was stake conference so this Sunday he's going to get confirmed. I'll get to what happened yesterday in a second though.

As for the rest of the week, it was just finding and teaching. Trying to figure out who is most likely the next closest candidate for baptism. As of right now it's Dory because her intentions are definitely the most pure but unfortunately she just hasn't been to church. So we are motivating her the best we can right now. We also talked to someone who, according to the definition, had a lot of psychopath qualities. That sounds worse than it really was but it was pretty interesting. The other thing that was kinda funny and sad at the same time was that on Saturday I lost my glasses...I stuck my head out the car window as we passed another mission car and next thing I knew there went my glasses. Then yesterday was a pretty cool experience. I mean no big deal but Jeffery R. Holland came to the mission to talk to us. Yeah it was kind of a big deal haha. We got to shake his hand and introduce ourselves and he talked to us about the Book of Mormon, the restoration and of course about working hard and not going less active after these two years. It was a super cool spiritual boost that is definitely going to help me for the remainder of my mission! That pretty much does it though! Take care!!

Macol- 10-10-16

Another week without a Mass update, so here is what Tyler sent to me:

Maycol was able to be baptized and everything was going really
smoothly too! Like too smooth. We taught him every day this past week
and with each lesson he was like yeah that totally makes sense. Except
for baptisms for the dead...he was a little confused at that but I
mean most people are haha. Then Saturday rolled around and he had the
interview and he passed with flying colors. The only thing we thought
would be in the way was work but he was just like if they make me work
Sunday I'm just not gonna go. Sadly he's fired now but just about
every member yesterday came up to him and told him about a bunch of
job opportunities they have for him so that was really Cool! So we
were just like man this is going too well...then the craziness starts.
The font filled up WAY faster than we thought it would and ended up
flooding the girls bathroom, leaked into the primary room and got the
carpet pretty wet near the entrance to the font and the changing area
was pretty wet too. And to make things better the only way to pull the
drain was to actually get in the font which was filled with mainly
cold water....and because I'm the district leader I just volunteered
as tribute. And man alive was that water cold. I just threw on a jump
suit and went for it. It was almost as if I was swimming again! But I
was also really really cold 😂 but now we have a really funny story to
go with our baptism!
We saw Dory but she's pretty much in the same
spot...so now it's back to grinding and trying to get people to
progress

They pranked the Sisters!

Them just being them!

10-3-16

Tyler didn't send a mass email, but he asked me to pass this info along!

So this past week if you remember correctly Michael said this church grabbed his attention. Well we didn't realize exactly how much but apparently a ton because he now wants to be baptized this Sunday! He came to conference and loved it, watched it at a members house and had a great time and has felt nothing but love and happiness from being a part of this already. And it's been amazing. It's really hard to see his living conditions because it's very very humble and sad but we are helping put as much as possible. We've made him food, we found a chair for him, a mirror and now we found a clothes rack he can use because his clothes are just in piles. But it's been so cool to see him so happy and feel so loved. It's awesome! And that pretty much describes my past week. It was revolved a lot around him so we can really prepare him for this Sunday. So please send some prayers because he needs it and so do we so we have enough time to get this all done!

God works in mysterious ways (9/26/16)

Hey everyone! Sorry it's taken me so long to get this one out. So I'm
still in westbury but I have a new companion. His name is elder
Caballero and I was super happy because we've literally been wanting
this to happen since my 2nd transfer and now he has two left and I've
got 3 so it looks like I might be killing him. I'm pretty happy about
that

As for the week, I could go into detail about it and I probably owe
you all that but I just want to talk about one experience I had this
week. So the past 2 or 3 weeks now we've been teaching these two
investigators named soña and Michael. Soña is a little older so we
were thinking Michael was related to her somehow but weren't exactly
sure. So Friday, elder caballero and I go and talk to them again, and
invite them both to church. As it turned out, soña wouldn't be able to
but Michael could. The only problem was that he didn't have a ride.
After a little bit of scrambling around 9:45 at night we finally got a
hold of someone and they were willing to take him. He seemed pretty
chill during sacrament meeting but after wards things kind of changed
a little. A member introduced himself and I was like oh okay cool but
I still wanted to keep a close ear just to see what was going on. All
of a sudden I see Michael starting to cry and I didn't hear the
conversation perfectly but I did hear something about his family. As
it turns out, he's here in America without his family just trying to
do what he can to get by and feels really alone. We had a little
lesson after everything and he really opened up and it was just cool
to see that we were able to give him a little more hope. We talked
about how the branch can really be a support and a second family to
him, explained eternal families and how he's able to obtain that. And
the funny thing was that our main focus was on soña. Now, Michael has
already read the first two chapters of 1 Nephi, we're meeting with him
tomorrow and he's willing to do whatever he needs to in order to draw
closer to God.

So! That's pretty much the big spiritual highlight of the week. In
other news, we went to service this week in suits because why not and
got attacked by bees. Well, some people did. But not me. Because
blessings. And I don't have any pictures from this week but since I
didn't do a weekly last week because laziness, here ya go! Hope you're
all doing great!

1. You know you're in a white neighborhood when...
2. A member's son who was really excited he built a tower taller than him

9/11/16

Hey there everyone! So this week was a pretty busy week. We had a good
amount of lessons and knocked doors a ton which was fun since we were
just walking in the sun and knocking doors. Plus we got in with a
couple people so we will see if that goes anywhere. So far nobody
super solid though. This past week we focused a lot on the
investigators that really listen to us and some less actives who we
can help. As for some highlights, we finally got a lesson again with
Victor! The guy who's been investigating the church for like 10 years.
We also have been talking to this other investigator who's son and
wife are members about how his son can get the aaronic priesthood and
what that could mean for the family so we are hoping that'll happen.
But they almost never come to church so it's gonna take work still. We
also went to Dory again this past week and she seemed like she was
struggling with something
pretty badly so we talked about tests and trials and invited her to
church again...but sadly she doesn't have a car so we have to get
members to take her and that's the most ridiculous chore. So she
didn't get to come. We also found someone who seemed pretty solid
Monday night and he told us to come back on Sunday so we went by again
last night and he wasn't home. Nor did he answer his phone. So that's
how second lessons usually go 😂 but it's all good! One pretty funny
thing that happened was on Saturday, when elder Parkinson and I were
knocking we saw these Hispanic guys doing some yard work thinking that
it was their house but apparently they were actually working...and so
the owner of the house came out and wasn't too happy. So we got yelled
at for do I service and I thought it was pretty funny...and then to
make things even better I even thought of just telling the guy I don't
speak English and putting it all on Parkinson. Shoulda, woulda, coulda
right?

So since yesterday was 9/11 and I'm in New York I thought I'd just
talk a little about that. I know I did last year too but I mean hey,
who really remembers that? I mean congrats to anyone who even made it
this far in reading. I appreciate it! Anyways, I'm not in the city
anymore but luckily I was still able to very faintly see the light thy
shoot up and that's always way cool to see. But how awesome is it that
we have the knowledge that this life isn't it. To the ones who passed
on that tragic day and everyone since, we will be with them again.
Elder Parkinson and I were even talking about how interesting it is
that those who don't believe in God tend to not be as optimistic at
times. At least that's what we have seen from the people we talk to.
But that's okay because God still loves them. And they're still our
brothers and sisters! So that about does it this week! Hope you're all
doing well!! And like I said, I'm not in the city so you can enjoy
this little throwback to last year! And some other pictures
1) 9/11 last year
2) cool sunset last night
3) Parkisnon and I
4) Parkinson threw pudding at me...
5) Crazy nice house we knocked...definitely white people
6) Another cool sunset

Hello again! (September 5, 2016)

Well here I am again! And this week was literally filled of pretty
awesome miracles. No lie. The first one happened Wednesday night when
elder Parkinson and I decided to do some look ups and knock in a white
neighborhood and just hope for the best. The thing is that on just
about any street you'll find some Spanish people. So we did those look
ups with no luck but then we did some knocking and at this point it
was about 7:45. The first person we knocked into was a Hispanic lady
and she let us in, we shared the message of the restoration with her
and now we have a return appointment tonight. Then it was roughly 8:15
and at that point out here on Long Island nobody likes to talk but
somehow we got to talk to two more people that night. And I had your
typical late night miracle lesson to top it off.
You know those stories you hear of missionaries getting spiritual
impressions the same time as their companion and they go knock that
house even though it probably was time to go home? Yup you can add
this story to that collection. Elder Parkinson and I were walking back
to the car because it was 8:45 and we were about 15 minutes from home
but we both looked at this house across the street and we both felt we
had to go knock it and it turned out the owner of the house had talked
to missionaries two other times and we basically told him that the
lord is preparing him to accept this message and it seemed like there
was a difference made in his life after talking to us this time. At
least I think so...I wasn't there those other times but it seemed like
he was touched by what we were saying!
Another miracle we had was the fact that we had enough time last night
to talk to enough people to match the weekly goal since nobody would
actually let us in there house haha. But yeah the goal is 105 and we
were at like 70 so we just went hard with knocking and ended up with
two more lessons and finding some solid people. Just gotta hope they
give us a second lesson now. That's another miracle that needs to
happen more haha.
So yeah that pretty much sums up my week! I also had chicken hearts
for the second time and that's always fun.
Have a good week!


🇲🇽 Elder Rossi 🇲🇽