Attacks and Accidents!

Hey!

So I've decided that it's time I share some random thoughts I've been having about the Bronx and also some random stories. But first, the missionary work is still excellent and we are always working hard. Tianabelle and Bethany are still working towards their baptisms on Dec 8th, but we've considered pushing them a week or so later into December for a few different reasons. That's not totally confirmed yet though and we're still working towards and hoping for the 8th.

Ok so first. I ate chincharon. Do you know what that is? Pig skin. Yep, you read that right. Pig SKIN. Sounds disgusting, huh? Well, it pretty much is. Actually, ok so it's basically like eating a steak except for that the entire steak is actually fat so it's kind of a weird fatty texture. But the taste really wasn't bad. It was mostly the knowledge that I was eating pig skin that was grossing me out the most.

Second. I've started to sleep talk in Spanish, according to one of our roommates. How cool is that?!?!! I'm good enough at Spanish that I can talk to people when I'm asleep. I was pretty excited about that news.

Third. I found the most beautiful dog in all of planet earth while we were tracking the other day. It was an all white Siberian Huskey and I'm in love and want to go steal it. Too bad the owner wasn't super interested in our message. (I told you these thoughts were random)

Fourth. Two of my biggest life struggles living here in the Bronx are a) I'm afraid to get my hair cut because no one in the Bronx has white people hair so I don't know if they'll know how to cut white people hair. So I think I'll just never get my hair cut...and b) there are all these stupid bridge things we have to walk over all the time and they go right across the freeway and their pretty tall and I'm terrified of heights sooooo I basically want to die every time we walk across them. Lucky I have a great companion who just lets me be weird each time we walk on one.

Fifth. Last p-day on our way home, I was driving a Bronx cart, which I have no idea what that is called outside of the Bronx but it's one of those metal cart things you see people have in cities so that they have somewhere to put all their groceries so they don't have to carry everything home from the store. Hopefully you're catching onto what I'm talking about. So I'm driving it home and it's filled with two huge, heavy boxes of copies of the Book of Mormon that we ordered. But our Bronx cart is possessed by the devil or something and gets stuck all the time. One of those times it got stuck, the boxes got shoved forward and I basically ended up falling over the cart and everything in the cart came flying out, including a delicious half a pan of brownies. It was pretty funny until the next day when both of my legs had (and still have a week later) gross purple bruises on them. No fun.

Sixth. I was basically attacked on Monday. Sister Pipes and I usually go visit this pretty awesome recent convert Monday afternoons. So we're on the way to his house and this guy is hard core looking at our tags. But he looks kind of creepy so I don't want to talk to him and Sister Pipes in on the phone confirming an appointment we had later in the day. So when he stops right in front of me, I have no other option but to talk to him. He says something along the lines of "You're not an Elder." I think, "Oh, he knows something about the church." So I start talking to him about the church and asking him how he knows about us and all that jazz. He doesn't speak Spanish and we didn't have anything in English with us so I just gave him our card with our number. But I hadn't written our names on the card so he gave it back and asked me to write our names so I write "Sister Parkin and Sister Pipes," hand him the card back and shake his hand. But as we're shaking hands, he pulls me into him to give me a hug so I try to back away and just give him a little pat at which point he tries to kiss me and so I hurry and turn my head and he kisses me on the cheek and I push him away and grab Sister Pipes and run off. It was terrible!!!! I thought I was going to die from a disease or something! What sort of crazy person thinks it's okay to kiss random strangers?!?

Ok well that's all my thoughts for this week. I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving! 

Love you all!

Hermana Parkin

Happy Thanksgiving!!

Hey all!

 So I feel like I'm at the point where things are pretty much the same from week to week. So this might be a shorter letter...

We have another baptism on December 8th with Bethany. Yay! She is 12 and her faith is amazing. She's read so much of the Book of Mormon and her prayers are so sweet. We have really enjoyed working with her. Her parents are both members but they have been inactive since moving to New York from the Dominican Republic. We're trying to help them come back to church so that Bethany has some support. Her mom comes pretty much every other week but her dad works on Sundays. But they all know how important the church is and know the blessings of being a member and we think that Bethany's decision to get baptized will help the whole family start being more active in church. We're planning on working with them for a while after the baptism too so that we can make sure that we have another strong active member in the ward and not just another baptism.

We had stake conference last week and it was SO good! I even understand basically everything that was being said, which was really great because I feel like church is when I struggle the most with my Spanish because there are so many distractions and what not. But at stake conference, they announced that the stake would continue to go down to Rockaway to help with the hurricane damage. They have trips set up for Friday and Saturday and the missionaries are allowed to go to both but since Sister Pipes and I have a lot of appointments already set up, we're only going to go on Friday. We've also heard rumors that we might have the chance to go to New Jersey and help out there, which would be also super fantastic. (Both because I would get to leave and go to yet another mission area and mostly because I love helping all the people.)

I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! I am so grateful for all of you and for the opportunity to serve the people in New York. It's the best and you should all serve missions. =] Don't forget to thank God for all the blessings he's given you! Love you all!!!

Hermana Parkin

Hurricane Relief

Hey all!

So as I mentioned last week, President Morgan said we might have the opportunity to go to the south mission and help out the people affected by hurricane Sandy. We ended up having that opportunity on Saturday. We were really lucky to have a stake that put together a trip down there and President approved the request for the missionaries to come with. We went down on buses Saturday morning and we went all the way down to Rockaway, which is basically a little island type thing off of Brooklyn and it's way far from the Bronx. It was so sad to see all the damage that was done there. I felt like I was walking through New York City when you see it in the movie "I am Legend." There was sand everywhere from the flooding. Everything had been flooded like 5 feet. Which means that all the cars that were there were destroyed, houses were destroyed, and everything was wet. It was an overcast day, which made everything feel even more gloomy. It's hard to express how sad I feel for those people. They are going through a really hard time right now.

The group that was organizing everything had a bunch of work orders from people that needed help, but they were all gone so we were told to just go out and start asking who needed help. We ended up helping this family basically tear apart their basement. It had been pretty recently redone and was super nice looking, but everything was ruined from the flood. Sister Pipes and I, along with 4 elders from our zone spent the day tearing apart their entire kitchen and then tearing down all the walls to the studs because it was all un-savable. They were really grateful for our help, but I was really grateful to be able to help them and serve those who were so badly affected by this event. I think it hit especially hard because those of us here in the Bronx were kind of complaining that we were stuck inside, bored for two days and while we were complaining, we had no idea that so many people were getting really hurt by what was happening. It was really sad to talk to the people and find out how badly the hurricane affected them. The man told us that he had stopped smoking two years ago and he started back up when he saw how badly everything was damaged. It's just really hard to see that not only did people loose a lot of material things, but it's really hurting their personal lives and emotions and all of that in ways that I don't think a lot of people really consider. It was a really great experience to go down and help out and we're all really hoping that we'll have more opportunities because they need help from anyone that is able to help out.

The rest of the week hasn't been super exciting. We're still working with some awesome investigators and are really excited about that. I don't think I've mentioned this yet but we put together a ward mission plan that is really super awesome. Since President Morgan wants us to focus on getting the members involved in missionary work, we've put together a plan that is definitely inspired by the Lord. To put it in a nutshell, we are going around asking for member referrals, but getting everyone really excited about referring their friends. One of the biggest problems about asking for referrals is that a lot of people don't trust you to take good care of their friends. So we're asking each member we visit to pray for help deciding who needs the gospel, because God knows better than we do. Then we make a plan with the member for each referral and how that person should be taught and how much the member wants to be involved. So if a referral needs to come to a bunch of ward activities before ever meeting with the missionaries for lessons, then we plan out activities for that referral. We haven't been working on it for very long but it's already been working really great.Plus, because converts usually stay more active when they have member friends first, it is really going to strengthen the ward as a whole because the members are going to come together and the new members are going to have better retention.  Sister Pipes and I met with a member the other day and she gave us 8 referrals. Which is basically a crazy number. It's usually really hard just to get one referral. So we're already seeing the blessings of this plan and are excited to keep working with the members.

Thanks for all the support and love! Love you all!

Hermana Parkin

A few pics from New York

Time Square with Hermana Pipes

Barbie Dream House - Toys R Us, Time Square 

First Republic Office
(Dad's employer) 

The Damage of Sandy

Hello All!

So I just found out today how much damage Hurricane Sandy did. Because it basically did nothing to us here in the Bronx, I just assumed it really wasn't that bad anywhere. And I had no way of knowing for sure. So at transfer meeting today, President Morgan told us how bad things are in the South mission. I was so sad for all those people. There are entire neighbors that have been destroyed. So far there isn't an organization helping with all the clean up and they don't want anyone going out to help until there is more organization and people to direct what needs to be done. So the missionaries in the city areas (aka me) should be heading down to the South mission as some point in the near future to start helping out with everything.

As far as other news goes, we have a baptism!! Tianabelle is going to get baptized on December 8! We were hoping to do it a little bit earlier because she will definitely be ready earlier than that but there are some legitimate scheduling conflicts so we're happy with that date and we're excited to keep working towards then. She is just so awesome and she is going to be an amazing member.

One of the counselor's in the bishopric has a son that just moved back into our ward. I was talking to him and his family and found out that he serving in the Oakland mission. And even cooler, he served in Concord 1st ward and the Spanish branch. This was clear back in 2001 but he was totally in the Denkinger building all the time and he was living in apartments over by the church building across from Clayton Valley. It was way cool to make that connection!

I've been debating whether or not I should share this story, but I feel like it describes my typical life so well, so I just have to. Yesterday, I really had to go to the bathroom. So we stopped at the McDonald's bathroom but it was kind of a long process because I had my big jacket on and tights and a slip and it just took forever. So while I'm in there, I think I here a yell, but the music is really loud so I'm not really sure if I hear anything. I go about my business and think maybe there's another yell. So I think "Huh, maybe there's a food fight." (I know. The conclusion that come to my mind are crazy). And then I think "Huh, I really hope Sister Pipes is okay. But I'm sure she is." So I finish and walk out and there's a big group of people huddled on one side of the building. I still think maybe there was a food fight. Then I see Sister Pipes and she rushes over to me and tells me that this drunk guy was smoking in the building and they tried to kick him out but he wouldn't leave so this other man pulled a knife on the drunk guy and then drunk guy pulled out a razor and then they ran out of the building. It was crazy. Except that I don't actually know because I was oblivious in the bathroom the whole time. haha However, I am very grateful that we were safe while that crazyness was going on.

That's about it for this week. Love you all!!!

Hermana Parkin