Eso es como ganando la lotería sin colectando el dinero

First off, when you hear a place is ghetto, don't go and knock on random people's doors...life doesn't work that way. Anyways, this week was pretty slow compared to the last few so forgive me for that but it's because we were doing look ups a lot whereas before we would just go to someone's house who we knew were most likely home. We also started playing basketball in the mornings so now we're a little more tired than usual but that's the only way I'll get out of bed in the morning so that has to happen haha. Also, the quote above is originally from one of my best friends and the reason I used it this past week was to explain the power and authority of the priesthood. Luckily for me it directly translates from English to Spanish so I knew exactly how to say it. In English it's "That's like winning the lottery without collecting the money" because that's what it's like when you don't exercise the power of the priesthood. We can have it and not use it because we're too lazy or busy to go and do something for someone or if you don't have it, you don't ask for a priesthood holder to help you in any way. We have one of the greatest gifts around and without using it, we get nothing out of it. Just like if we were to not collect the money. 

Now, onto my week. Monday we had a noche de hogar at a member's house who is getting ready to go to the temple and so of course we're jumping on that like no tomorrow. His brother in law was also there with his brand new 2015 F-150 and man do those look nice! Wouldn't mind that in a couple years ;) Anyways, we talked about the will of God and how everything that happens in our lives has a reason but we always need to remember that our Heavenly Father knows best and that we always need to follow his counsel and that was a pretty powerful lesson. Then we went to the Artola's home to have some pupusas and man did that hit the spot. Oh and speaking of food, I've realized I can no longer even try to choke down beans. Tuesday night we went back to their house for food again (they really like giving us food) and there were beans I was trying to eat like always and I usually have a hard time keeping them down but this time I gagged a little so after that I was just like okay I'm done. I'm just saying I'm allergic I don't care anymore. So yeah! No more beans para mi por favor. Tuesday we also had a lesson with this family who recently had their daughter baptized then went less active right after so we went there with the Elder's quorum president and then they came to church again Sunday! So that was good to see. We also went to Buffalo Wild Wings that day as always and man does that hit the spot. 65 cent wings on Tuesdays are the best thing ever. I'm talking a lot about food...anyways! Then came hump day, which is more like Thursday for us I think but anyways, Wednesday was definitely more of a relaxing day. We went to another one of our favorite families, the Hurtado's where the young man who is getting easy for a mission is there so we went back there and ended up staying a little longer than expected. But they're moving so we helped them with moving some stuff out so we didn't completely waste time. That was fun though. Then they took us to this Colombian bakery that was super good and after that we went to the church for mutual. And this was definitely the highlight of my week. 

Allow me to explain por que: So for mutual they were learning to tie ties and before my trainer Elder Pincock left he showed me a super legit, easy and quick way to tie a tie so I showed everyone how to do it and their minds were blown because I do it without even putting the tie around my neck to tie it. If that makes sense. Basically I measure where I want the tie to go, do some knots and stuff around my hand and then after some magic, boom, it's tied. The only time it goes around my neck is after its completely tied. So I tried to teach some of the young men how to do it but they gave up. But they learned other ways so it's all good. Then we had a prayer and the fun began: basketball with soccer players. It was raining outside so we couldn't go and play soccer but there was a basketball in the gym so we decided to do that and boy was that a great idea. Needless to say, I saw the opportunity to be a little bit of a punk with everyone, and I took it. There were 11 of us playing I think and only 3 of us have played before so I knew I was going to have fun. And so I did. I've honestly never had so much fun playing before. So yeah, basketball with Hispanics is now my favorite thing. 

Then Thursday was my sneak peek at the city. (Pictures are coming) I went on exchanges there because my companion went to the temple for his anniversary temple trip (Mine is next month. Whaaat?) I saw a super legit view of Manhattan, the Pepsi cola sign and got to ride the subway. The city is like a different world. We didn't do much that day because the person I was with thought he was going somewhere else but it was still cool to see everything. I also saw a Lamborghini Aventador and a Ferrari so no complaints there. The main cars I see around where I am are really ghetto looking cars that have been lowered so it's about 1 inch off the ground and no me gusta. Then Friday, Saturday and Sunday we had some super powerful lessons with members again and each time I realized something: I'm speaking a lot. I mean my companion definitely speaks the most since he's a native and everything but when I start I will just go on and on and on. I might be exaggerating that a little but I do speak a lot and it's super cool! I'm also able to talk about past experiences from my life too so I'm really happy about that. 

So yeah that's pretty much my week in a nutshell! Here's a little sneak peek for next week: My companion, the wonderful Elder Peña's birthday is Tuesday and I talked with the Artola's about maybe having a surprise birthday party for him and they said they love the idea so hopefully that goes well. This is also the last week of the transfer so next week I'll be able to tell you all if I'm staying or if I'm going. I really want to stay but at times I feel like the guy that "Should I Stay or Should I Go" talks about. Except obviously Brentwood would be the thing I'm leaving. So yeah! Hope you all had an awesome week! Talk to you later! Enjoy the pictures! 

1) Our backyard beach 

2) Picture speaks for itself 

3) Manhattan 

4) The sign 

5) Your average subway station 

6) This amazing card from my 2nd family the Burr's 

7) Food 

8) Free food...and slurpees!

Tyler eating guinea pig! 

'Murica

So I would just like to take a second and appreciate America and all
the people who make America America! Then first was with this young man
who is getting ready for his mission but we're pretty sure he's just
going because his dad just wants him too, because he doesn't know much
about the gospel, so we're trying to help him. That particular day we
literally taught EVERYTHING. Every missionary discussion from start to
finish pretty much. But he still didn't understand everything so we've
got some work to do with him...but I have faith in him, as you do with me.
Then after that we had a lesson with the son of the 2nd counselor in
the bishopric who recently had an accident at work when someone ran
over his leg with a bulldozer or something like that. So we brought
this married couple, who are also the parents of our Ward mission
leader, and had a lesson talking about the will of God. He really
appreciated it and that was a really good lesson too. He also said my
Spanish is really good, so that felt good of course. Then to end the
night we went to the Elder's quorum president's house to share that
same message. The one cool thing there is that I had an impression
to say how everything you do will always start at the home so teach
your children the importance of this gospel and I feel like that stuck
with them. Then Wednesday came and this day sucked...my stomach hurt
like crazy to the point where I felt like someone was stabbing me. So
we stayed in all day. And it just wasn't fun...but then Thursday came
and so did our new mission president! We had a mission conference so
we could get to know him and his wife more and something cool about
him is that he has his own construction company and he is obviously
another spiritual giant and has awesome insight on a lot of stuff!
After the mission conference we got home around 7 maybe? I don't
really remember but then we went and visited two more people with that
same couple from Tuesday night and that was another great night. We
went to an inactive member who's daughter is on a mission right now in
Mexico and told her the importance of going to church and she says she
really does feel like she needs to sometimes, but then others she just
doesn't. The sister's normally work with her though so that was just
kind of a quick visit. Then we went to a member who is a little more
active but just needed some help right now and she felt so blessed to
have us in her home because we talked about the will of God and how he
gives us trials to test our faith and that's just what she needed. And
that ended Thursday. Then Friday came and the first lesson we had was
with a recent convert named Yefri (not my investigator from a while
ago. That was Yefry) but anyways we talked about prayer and I lead
that discussion and just had impressions to say stuff left and right
and I'm pretty sure that helped him a lot because his life is going in
a thousand different directions right now. So I told him how we can
pray to our Heavenly Father and ask Him for guidance and direction in
our lives and that according to our faith, He'll respond. Then after
that we went to the young man's house to teach him some more! But then
we felt to do the opposite. He teach us! So that's what we did. We
went over the restoration one more time, then asked him to teach us.
Pretty sure it helped but he also needed a lot of help as well. But
we're trying to give him as much help as we can! Then after that we
did some look ups, got some food then 7:30 rolled around and we
finally got to meet with our new Ward mission leader for the first
time and he is super awesome. He's 20, is still waiting a little bit
to go on a mission and has some awesome ideas on how to work with
members and that's exactly what this Ward needs. It's a big Ward but
it definitely needs some strengthening as everyone does sometimes so
that's what we've been working on a lot. Then we had some empanadas
which are a salvadorian dish and it's amazing! But I don't know how to
describe it but I'm sure you know what it is then Saturday came which
is one of my favorite days of the year: 4th of July!!!! It's obviously
a little different on the mission but the end of the night was quite
interesting. But let's start from the beginning. There's a member
family who went a little less active recently because of a big move
they just had and we finally found the husband Friday so we asked if
we could come over and he said yeah so we went over to see what's up.
I guess they completely remodeled the house they're in complete with
new floors, paint, walls and some other stuff so I was just like wow
that's a ton of work but they still need to go to church, you know?
But it was good to see them again and they were happy to see us in
there house so that was good. Other than that we just got lots and
lots and lots of food...I thought I was going to die by the end of the
night. But then we get home and see a huge party going on in the back
yard with crazy loud music and crazy loud bass which wasn't far from
my bed so I could hear everything absolutely perfectly. We looked out
the window at one point to get a glimpse at what the party was really
like but we couldn't see anything except people playing beer pong. Oh
they also had a super legit fire work show which is illegal here too
but it wasn't too shabby. I'm going to add a video of that as well so
hopefully it works too. Then yesterday we did a couple visits with the
bishop which is always an awesome thing to do to get his trust in us
and finished the night at the house we went to first on Monday but
this time the husband was home and the wife was not but we were still
able to come in. We ate some steak, rice, tortillas and my absolute
favorite thing in the world, beans. I'm still struggling to keep those
down a lot...but then the crazy thing was that all of a sudden we see
lights and hear tons of sirens and look outside and there's 3 fire
Trucks! We weren't sure what happened so we ended the message quick
and just kind of left. But not without a selfie in front of everything
with the husband of course! So that was my week!

Here's some pictures!

1) Our district and the 3 wonderful AP's
2) Two members who love feeding us...they also love giving us beans
3) We like to be cute too
4) And the most patriotic district award goes to...
5) The 4th and final dinner appointment from Saturday
6) The boys from the Ward. Left to right: Me, Jorge the Ward mission
leader, Elder Peña, Ronnie, Joesph, Angelo and then there's Anthony
7) The wonderful selfie

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