Shaking an Apostles Hand

I've decided that I don't want to serve anywhere else in my entire mission except the Bronx. I just want to serve these people for the next 15 months (because as of tomorrow, I've been on my mission for three months. Crazy!). I don't think President Morgan would really be okay with that but a girl can dream right? I just love all the people here. Our investigators are awesome, even if sometimes they ignore us. But it's okay because even though our lives revolve around them, their lives don't revolve around us so sometimes it's just hard to set up appointments. The ward is also awesome. I actually know a lot of the ward so when I go to church, I don't feel really awkward because there are lots of people to talk to and say hi to and introduce investigators to.

This past Sunday was a huge miracle. We had been struggling to get a hold of basically all of our investigators so we were feeling pretty down. We didn't think any of them would come to church because they hadn't been calling us back. But when we got there, two of our investigators were there and a less active that we ran into a few weeks ago. It was so awesome!! I know the Lord was blessing us for all of the hard work we had been trying to do and I'm so grateful for that blessing.

Elder Christofferson came on Saturday so we all went to Scarsdale. He shook everyone's hand before the meeting started. We didn't really get to talk to him because there just isn't a lot of time for 150 missionaries to talk to one apostle. But it was still really special to even get to meet him for real because I didn't get to shake his hand when  we saw him at the Salt Lake Temple. He talked about how as missionaries we are supposed to teach repentance but what does that really mean? And how repentance means action and so everything we teach is basically teaching repentance because everything we teach is inviting them to change. He also talked about how we have to be converted to the doctrine of Christ ourselves and have to be willing to change ourselves if we really want to help others do the same thing. It something that seems so basic but it really made me think more about what aspects of my life I need to change and improve on. He also talked about the importance of the Sacrament and how we should be spending the whole week preparing to take the sacrament so that when Sunday comes, we know the things that we need to be repenting of and the things that we need to try to change for the coming week. It was fabulous and I just love that man.

We had interviews with President Morgan yesterday. It was so great to talk to him one on one. I feel so lucky to have such an amazing man as a mission president. He is just a great example of Christlike qualities. He also talked to us about what the new missionary age would mean for our mission and for missionaries in general. Since there has been so many applications since the announcement, the MTC had changed their program and if you serve in English, you go to the MTC for 10 days. If there isn't any room for you in the MTC, you just go strait to the field. If you serve Spanish, you are only there for 6 weeks. But about a year ago, the general authorities started a 12 week in-field training, which is basically everything I learned in the MTC. So that was clearly inspired because now those who come strait to the field still have training/ He also said that the domestic missions (the U.S. and Canada) will be receiving the initial surge of new missionaries. Which means that in the next three to nine months, our mission will be receiving about an extra 100 missionaries. Which therefore means that we will all be training, which means that I'm sort of freaking out because I don't even know anything and I might be training in January. But it's going to be so awesome to have so many new and excited new missionaries.

Everything else is going really well! I still love everything and I love all of you!