No Longer a Picky Eater!

***In this post, Hermana Parkin makes a reference to Liz and Dev. For those who don't know, Liz and Dev are one of Hermana Parkins's aunt and uncle. They are super close so it didn't suprise me when she said she found a family that reminded her so much of them.***

Hey!!

I don't really have a ton of cool stories today but rather some random facts about life here in the Bronx.

For those of you who claim I'm a picky eater, you should see what I eat here. Not only have I eaten tuna many a times, something that I think is super gross, I've also eaten eggs, something I think is even grosser than tuna. I also ate at a pescaria the other day, which basically translates to fish store. You just go in and they have a bunch of raw fish, you tell them which fish you want and which vegetables and they throw it all together with some spices and steam it. I got shrimp so it wasn't too bad. But the weirdest thing I've eaten so far is cow stomach. It actually wasn't too bad though. Just a little too chewy for my taste.

I found out the other day that 35% of the Concourse ward is active. Yes, that's right, active. That means most of our ward is inactive. Which means there has been a lot of missionaries just baptizing the heck out of everyone out here and not making the effort of helping investigators find real conversion. As a zone, and really as a whole mission, we are focusing on members and getting members to help us with missionary work. If the members get involved, the convert has friends in the ward once they are baptized and then they already have a support system to help them through this transition. We're also focusing on member referrals, which is great because I don't really love street contacting or door knocking so much.

I bore my testimony at church this past Sunday. I debated about whether I would do it for a long time, but finally I decided that I would be disappointed in myself if I didn't. I'm pretty sure I sounded like I five year old with my limited Spanish, but it's okay because luckily the ward thinks my Spanish abilities are cute. For those who've asked, I do not speak Spanish all the time. All of our district and zone meetings are in English and a lot of the members speak both. Sister Pipes and I try hard to speak Spanish whenever we can, but most of the time I end up speaking Spanglish and just saying half of my conversation in English and half in Spanish. We always teach in Spanish though and most of the members, even if they speak English, prefer speaking Spanish. So usually the only time I use English is when I'm talking with other missionaries.

We found out today that Elder Christofferson is coming to talk to us on Saturday morning so we're all pretty excited about that. We also have a big ward activity called Dia de Naciones (Day of Nations) on Saturday. Since we have so many different cultures in our ward, everyone from their native country is going to do a dance from that country and bring food from that country. They told the missionaries we had to be involved. Since we're missionaries though, we're going to try to do something spiritual so that it wasn't completely doing nothing towards missionary work.

Tianabel came to FHE at a members house on Monday. It was so awesome for her because the family are going to be great fellowshippers. The family actually reminds me a lot of Liz and Dev's family, except for their Dominican. They have a little boy who is four and a little one year old son. Ruth, the mom, decorated their apartment all cute and she's all cute and nice and Tommy, the dad, is all cool and funny. It was sort of weird how similar the two families are. But clearly, this means that they are one of my favorite families.

Things are still going really well. Some of our investigators are having some struggles and others we just struggle to find times  that we can all be available. But I know that if we have faith, everything will work out great.

Sorry if you've written me and I haven't gotten back to you yet! I'm trying hard to write back but it's also hard to find time.

Love you all!

Hermana Parkin