Tuesday:
Well transfers happened. Woooooof. Long day. Hahaha..To start off,
transfer meeting was pushed back due to the weather. So, driving to
Rego Park, Queens was pretty interesting.. To make it even better the
GPS took us down Sunrise Highway and all the way down Jamaica Ave,
and Queens Boulevard. What. A. Joke.
Haha sitting in traffic in Jamaica I looked at Sister Ewell and said
"can you see another white person anywhere?" -no- "that's how you know
you're in Jamaica!" Haha and it's true! There are so many people
everywhere but the only other caucasian person you're going to find is
another missionary.
Needless to say, we arrived at the mission office 50 minutes after 3:00 pm.
But we made it for most of the meeting and it was awesome! The
departing missionaries did their thing like usual and sang a little
hymn. President Calderwood spoke and that was great, as always. One
thing President mentioned is how this faith is not a one time 'born
again' faith. We do not have 1 experience with the Holy Ghost, declare
Christ, and become saved. We do this over, and over, and over again.
We are born again continually or in other words converted daily.
He's a super powerful speaker, and person. I always get a lot out of his talks.
Sooo.. Where in the world am I right now? Richmond Hill, Queens! (Part
of the South Queens Zone) haha.. Insane! It covers South Ozone Park,
South Richmond Hill, Kew Gardens, Cyprus Hills, and East New York.
It's a pretty crazy area. There are a lot of black people and Asians..
And it smells like the city. We obviously take buses and trains, so I
hope I figure it all out quick.
I'm not going to lie, half of my mission is basically over but right
now I feel like I just stepped off the plane from the MTC! A complete
Greenie! Everything is new to me. I'm in a total different
mission/world. Luckily my companions know what they're doing.
YA, that's right. I said COMPANIONS. TRIO LIFE.
Yep, I'm in a trio..
Sister Harris and Sister Jones.
Sister Harris is way cool! She actually trained Sister Snow (my
trainer). And, she just left companions with Sis. Snow as an STL in
Brooklyn. Pretty wild. Anyway, she is from Spanish Fork, Utah and has
four older sisters, no brothers! Cool. Me too.
She's super nice, hard working, and obedient. And, she only has one
transfer left, so I'm 'killing' her. Oh yeah, something awesome is
that Sister Harris already served here six months ago, so that's a big
help!
Sister Jones came out the transfer before me, and has served in the
city her entire mission. She's been in Richmond Hill for three
transfers, and this will be her fourth. She is from Washington
state.😊 I don't know a ton of stuff about her, but she's already
offered me trail mix.. So, I am sure we're going to get along just
fine. She is super nice. I'm excited to be working as a trio though,
because it helps balance our personalities out.
Wednesday:
"City missionary work is a lot different than the missionary work I
have been doing for the past eight months. Same in purpose, completely
different approach. We walk and walk and walk.. I'd say 60ish percent
of our time is spent trying to travel to where we need to go. So
that's a big change."
Thursday:
The day was good.. Long, but good.
The days always seem to be long haha.MAlthough, it's good we are busy!
So I'll just write a little about my life right now:
- we live in the most expensive apartment in the mission. Seriously, I
would never be able to live here in real life. I feel like I'm in a
movie or something! Haha we have a valet parking guy and a bell girl
who lets us in. It's the ritz! The mission has named it the "princess
pad".
- there's a gym on the second floor of our apartment building and it's
WAY nice. They have every machine you could ask for. Just no swimming
pool-- which is probably good because that would be tempting.
- we also have one of the sketchiest areas of the mission.. Haha so I
guess that the apartment building kind of compensates for that.
-we walk a few miles a day at least. Haha my legs have been a little
sore this week but I'll get over that quick.
- trio life has it's pros and it's cons.. But I definitely am not as
stressed to make sure my comp is happy because I have two of them and
they can be best friends if they want. I usually just keep to myself
when it comes to things not related to missionary work.
- Mother's Day is in like three months and then I won't see my family
until Christmas! That is crazy.
- I love mission life. And I like the city. It's different, but still good.
- would I want to go back to the island? Depends, for missionary work?
Yes. As an advocate for my physical body? Probably not.
Saturday:
Everyone's crazy here, even the Mormons.
Today we had correlation meeting with all of the missionaries and the
ward mission leader. Haha he's this 23 year old black guy who
is really muscly, into himself, and out spoken. But, I am just
grateful that we have a ward mission leader that will meet with us.
The work is really moving forward here in the Richmond Hill branch.
There have been quite a few baptisms over the past while, so we visit
all of the recent converts. It's cool to see the fruit of the other
missionaries labors. But I am ready to go and find new people to
teach.
Sunday:
Happy Sabbath. 🙏
Church today was good. It was kind overwhelming with so many new
people to meet. But, it was good. There were 90 people there! That's
more than I have ever seen even in Bayshore. But it is still a branch
because there isn't enough Priesthood to carry out the duties of a
ward. Some day though!
Tonight we got home late because we missed the bus coming home from an
appointment at the Ashrams. They are from Guyana and really nice. They
fed us and it wasn't the best, or worse food I've had on my mission
thus far.
Before that we were in East New York trying to find some people that
are less active. They live in the projects, but none of the addresses
were making sense and it was pretty frustrating. My companions and I
were walking down Stanley Avenue and all at the same time had a
prompting to turn around. We immediately started back to where we came
from and ended up passing by a huge really crazy/dangerous gang fight.
So we started like running to the bus stop and luckily didn't have to
wait too long to get picked up.
--I did this weeks email a little differently and basically compiled
and edited my journal entries. So sorry if it doesn't make sense or is
too long. But yeah, I love Richmond Hill, my companions, and
missionary work.
I'm experiencing so many things but I can't really write them because
you really wouldn't understand. I was thinking about that and how it
applies to the gospel. You can tell somebody all about it but if
they're not living it, they don't really get it.
Anyway.... Love you all!
Happy Valentines Day💕❤️💕❤️💕 and happy birthday shout out to Cassey!
Love, Sister Tenney
Mom, don't google the area I'm serving in.
No comments:
Post a Comment