Monday, November 3, 2014

Week One In South Manhattan

Date: October 15, 2014 
Area: Manhattan South  
Companion: Elder Sprunt

So, week one in south man, its nuts I don't even know where to start! I guess I will start with what happened after I sent me email last week! So I go and my companion elder Sprunt gives me a metro card which lets me ride all the subways and buses in all five of the Burroughs in New York. So we head out of the church building and up through the parking garage, and then left down the street. And I find out where we are is called Ingwood, it's on the far north part of NYC. So we walk down the street and then we get on a subway, and it's wild. Crazy people love the subway! And I thought it was packed when we got on, but I would soon find out it was practically empty! Anyways we rode the blue line all the way down to 59th street or Columbus circle, so I come up out of the subway with suitcases and a giant box, and I'm in the middle of Manhattan! It's nuts! I can see the corner of Central Park! (Which I as of now haven't gone too!) so I follow elder Sprunt to our apartment which is through a mall down five streets and over one avenue. If you guys want to look it up its on the corner of ninth avenue and fifty fourth street above a grocery store! So I walk into the stairwell. And it smells way funky. And I prayed that our apartment won't smell like that! And luckily it doesn't. Our apartment is pretty much a really long strip of rooms, but it has a lot of windows so that's good! So I dropped off my stuff and left to go to the temple which is a couple of streets up! And it turns out that the temple also has a ward building/stake center in it. So that is where we meet a lot of our investigators because they stop by on their way home.
So we taught a lesson to a man named Anderson and he was baptized two weeks before I got here, but he's really cool we taught him about scripture study. Then we went to my first dinner appointment with two of the members from our ward. (We serve In the YSA ward) and we went to a place called A.G's kitchen. It was really pretty good! Then we went back to the homestead.
We have done some tracting in the projects, but from what I understand it's not very successful. But if we talk to just one person in two years of tracting it would still be worth it. Anyways most of our investigators come from member referrals. So we really try to make sure we are working with the members here. We do get to talk to quite a few people on the subways though but most of them just ask if we have seen the Book of Mormon play, which I guess is still playing. The subways are pretty crazy. I have seen a lot of people jam into one little subway car. And it gets tight! Also the subways aren't the cleanest they could be so I carry hand sanitizer in my bag. I haven't seen any rats yet though. Which I guess is pretty good! I've actually surprised myself at how I am starting to learn how to work the subways and buses to get where I'm going! I can definitely see heavenly fathers help with that! The subways are pretty sketchy though the lights will just randomly turn off and on and I swear the brakes are going out on half the cars. But nobody has died from it yet! The craziest thing I've seen on the subway was a homeless man trying to sell a magic pizza box, but I've heard stories of much worse happening.
On Sunday we got to go to a fireside with elder Perry presiding and he spoke! It was really good! He challenged everyone there to go to a website called faithcounts.net I guess it's a website put out by many different churches including our own, but he said if we would share the posts and use the website, faith will become prevalent in America again which is a pretty cool promise! A funny thing happened during the fireside too, some homeless man must have snuck into the congregation but during the opening hymn he stood up on his bench and danced to the hymn. So that was pretty cool for the first fireside on my mission.
Everything here is really expensive! I'm quite surprised! But it's whatever I guess! I've been to Times Square! Madison square Washington square And I've walked past Central Park a ton! I've also walked past the 9/11 memorial, but we didn't have time to really look at it but I'm definitely going to go back, just walking by it gave me chills.
I saw Will Smiths house from “I am legend”! And the Seinfeld diner! So yea for Hollywood! We got to teach a brand new investigator on Sunday too! He's a investment banker so he's going to be hard to meet with but he already has read to Alma in the Book of Mormon so that's amazing! I think he is going to be a wonderful investigator! And we are meeting another lady on Friday and from the phone calls she sounds really promising too! I'm excited! Anyways that's been my week In summary! Have a good one!

Love ya,

Elder Richards