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!