President Calderwood gave us all some awesome news! Since we, as a mission, are focusing and setting goals for the temple on everyone we are teaching, President announced that we will be able to attend a temple session every 6 months instead of at our year mark and 2 year mark. I am really excited about it, but I am so bummed that he didn't announce this before my 6 month mark! It reminds me when President Monson announced the missionary age change and I already had my mission call and was leaving the next month! I was like "man, why couldn't you have said that last conference!" Its all good though.
Our ward has an awesome system going right now! The ward mission leader created a list for the Elder's Quorum and Relief Society to sign up for one day a month to come out with the missionaries. For this month, we have someone signed up to go out with us everyday so the four of us Elders here see which member would suit best for our investigators or planned activity that day. It is working really well so far and it helps to have different members come to the appointment because it gets everyone familiar with our investigators which then helps increase fellowship when they come to church! The members are also getting excited about it too.
Elder Tuiaki and I have found 2 new investigators, one of which is the girl friend of a Less Active we have been working with and the other was a referral from the Spanish Elders, Stanli, from Poland. Stanli had many questions about the Plan of Salvation and also had many ideas that he had been researching that was completely "on" with our doctrine. He also led us straight into the Restoration too! We have so many people that we are working with, but we are struggling to set firm appointments with them all.
We have been working a lot in the southern part of Staten Island by the church and man, there are some mean people in these upper class neighborhoods! We both have been getting slightly discouraged at their remarks, but we just carry on and find someone else.
On Saturday, we went to a beautiful park called Willowbrook Park with the sisters and sang hymns for people. I accompanied everyone on the violin which was really fun! There was a spiritual wall around us. People couldn't pass by without feeling it. It was such a beautiful place to. We are going to try doing this by the Staten Island ferry this week too.
I had a pretty interesting experience a few days ago too haha! We were driving home from a meeting in Brooklyn, and we passed by this large Catholic church and there was this lady who was literally "prostrated" on the ground like the Bible says! She had her hands up on the large door and was kneeling down praying. I asked Elder Tuiaki to stop the car because I wanted to see if there was anything we could to help her and maybe be the answer to her prayer. She said that she was an RN, but gave up everything for Christ and prays in a unique way to inflict pain to her body to be closer to God. It was kind of sad that she doesn't understand the way the Atonement is supposed to work, I mean I still don't completely either, but there is absolutely no need to put abnormal strain on your body to enhance your spirituality. It was kind of a funny experience though. I wish you could have been there to just see what it looked like.
So the new shoulder bag that I got has Velcro on it and I got the idea from my Zone Leader to buy some Velcro patches to put on it. I got the coolest patches ever that go perfectly for being a missionary! One says "W.W.J.D?" and the other says "WORKING FOR GOD DOESN'T PAY MUCH, BUT HIS RETIREMENT PLAN IS OUT OF THIS WORLD!" It was just too funny not to put on my shoulder bag. So far, everyone else likes it.
Well that is all for this week. My comp and I are going into Brooklyn to play some volleyball!
Love,
Elder Hooper
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