Happy Monday! Everything is great on Staten! Lots of good things happened this week.
After a few weeks of just struggling, I finally felt my Heavenly Father answer my prayers. While sitting in sacrament meeting yesterday morning, I felt the spirit very strongly, and I just felt so at peace with myself and everything. I also learned that I needed to let myself fall into the arms of the Atonement, be humble and trusting toward my Heavenly Father, and show more reverence to Him. So far as I have applied this, the spirit has been much more present with me!
While we were mowing the lawn of one of the members in our ward, we got a phone call from an investigator of ours and he was wondering if we would be able to come and pray with him since he needed some extra help. We gladly accepted the invitation and then he told us why he needed the prayer. He said that he had $77 in his wallet that he was going to use to rent a lawn mower so that he could get the side of his house cleaned up so he wouldn't get in trouble with the state. He is currently unemployed and has 3 kids that he is trying to take care of so $77 so a big deal for him. I told him not to rent a lawn mower and I will give the ward a call to see if we can help. After I hung up, I was just like, well I am mowing a lawn right now and could just bring it over and do his lawn. That is exactly what we did. We emptied out the trunk and loaded up the lawn mower and weedwacker in our small compact Subaru and got his lawn taken care of. It was a joyous experience to be an answer to one of Heavenly Father's children. A funny/sketchy part of this was that the member we were doing yard work for wasn't home so I just made the judgment call and just borrowed the tools. They didn't care that I stole them anyway. There also was a member that was moving out that emptied their entire cabinet of food and gave it too all the missionaries and we got a huge bag full of organic delicious food. We knew that this family needed it more than we did, so we had the sisters take it to them. They were shocked and so thankful. We were so glad we could help them! We also met with them again last night and gave them priesthood blessings which I could definitely tell it brought them peace!
I also have never been so full in my life! We ended up having 4 dinner appointments in one day and I thought I was going to kill over and die! We were fed pizza while we helped a member move out, fed by a family we were teaching (delicious ravioli's), pizza again by another appointment we had, and then to top it off, we had some amazing Sri Lankan food from another member. I thought I was going to explode! I couldn't even walk I was so full. I am pretty sure I gained a few pounds after that too.
On Saturday I had the wonderful opportunity to go to the temple with the ward to do baptisms with the youth. It was really fun. I took my first ferry ride from Staten Island too Manhattan. It was so much fun. We all had a really good time! Afterwards, we went with the Spanish district in Staten Island to one of their finding activities in the park. We played Jenga, chalk, chess, checkers, football, soccer, volleyball, frisbee, and Uno with kids at the park! It was so much fun. The kids there all loved it and their parents loved it because their kids were happy. We had several potentials from it that were all solid families too! It is a great finding opportunity for us while we are having fun!
We had a lot of success at the ferry again as we did a Family History street sweep. We had the sisters there with us this time and I think that made all the difference! They are so much easier to talk to then us. To all the women that past by they were like "we like your skirt" or whatever and then they would start talking to us. If I said I like your skirt, they would just think I am a creeper haha! It was fun!
We finally were able to talk to Tsubon and Myunbo's mother! She had some questions regarding the plan of salvation so we talked about that a little bit. I sure do hope we can unite this family together and bring them all to the temple to be sealed! President Calderwood wants us to do this too!
We watched the Joseph Smith: Prophet of the Restoration with a couple as well. It was really cool. When I bore testimony of Joseph and the Book of Mormon, there was power behind what I said. it was so cool. I saw the change in their eyes when I bore my testimony. I just love Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon and know that he was a true prophet!
All is well here in Staten Island! I love it a lot and hope I never have to leave this area. Oh by the way, I went to Costco today and bought lots of muffins! Yum!
Here is link to a video of some missionaries in my mission. Its pretty cool. Sister Bradfield is a good friend of mine too:
http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/article/mormon-missionary-life
Love,
Elder Hooper
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