What a View

Hermana Parkin and Sister Lotulelei @ the Empire State Building

 

  Bronx District - Elder Kohli, Elder Fuller, Elder Rutland, Elder Holzer, Elder Lartey and Elder Hajje

Hanging out in New Rochelle

Hey all,

In case anyone has been wondering, tomorrow I hit 9th months on the mission! What the crazy!?! I can't believe I'm already half way through. Time flies.

So update on life in my new area. New Rochelle is basically the opposite of everything I knew in the Bronx. The ward is big but the attendance is super small. But everyone is super nice and excited to have sisters in the ward (because lets be honest, we're way cooler than those smelly elders). It's actually a Spanish and a Portuguese ward which makes life a bit more interesting. Most everything is in Spanish but the Gospel Principles teacher is Brazilian so it was fun trying to figure out what she was saying the whole time. Luckily the two languages are similar enough, especially with church language, that we understood most of it. Also, I'm just liking that I'm serving in Spanish again, even if sometimes I think "Wow life was so much easier when I was serving in English and I understood everything that was going on."

The area is different. There aren't very many apartments but all of the houses have multiple people living in them. They split each house into apartments by floors so knocking doors is a little strange. We did start knocking this one apartment building and it ended up being a senior citizen home. That was a first. I'm pretty sure Hermana Brog thought I was psycho that I made her knock there but I didn't even realize that it wasn't a normal apartment building until everyone we talked to ended up being in wheelchairs or on their death beds.

New Rochelle is also a lot classier than the Bronx. I mean it's not too far out of the city so we're not talking super classy but there's not as many creepy men yelling things at us on the street and the sidewalks are trash and dog poop free so that makes life wonderful. We even had a nice man and his wife say "God bless you" out their car the other day and it was a genuine comment not a sly way of saying "Hey I think you're hot" like the boys in the Bronx meant it.

Despite all of these great things, I am still missing the Bronx a lot. I hate driving around here because I'm pretty much always lost, even with a GPS. Luckily, Hermana Brog also doesn't want to sit in the car all day so we park our car a lot and walk around, which has been the best. Also we just aren't working with too many people so that's hard. But it seems like each day we find either a new person to work with or potential people to work with so little by little things will get better. I just don't think I really knew what I was getting myself into when I accepted the call to open a new area. Plus I think no matter how awesome the rest of the areas I serve in are, I will always love the Bronx just a little bit more. How could I not after serving there for half my mission?

Training had been good so far. Hermana Brog is really hard working and thankfully she doesn't hate me too much for also having no idea what we're supposed to do here. She says that knocking doors makes her feel like a real missionary so I'm glad I could help fulfill all her missionary dreams. And she doesn't hate me for crying sometimes (or a lot of times....) because all the stress starts to build up and I freak out. Looks like things haven't changed too much in that area of my life while I've been on a mission.

I hope you are all enjoying the lovely springtime weather! Have a great week!

Love,

Hermana Parkin

New Companion, New Apartment, New Area

The big news for the week is that I've finally been transfered out of the Bronx! I'm really sad that I'm leaving such an awesome zone of missionaries and an amazing ward. But I'm excited for a new area as well. President Morgan has asked me to train and my new companions name is Sister Brog. She's super cute and we're excited to be working together. We're opening up a new area in New Rochelle, which is just right above the Bronx but on the east side (because I was serving on the west side). Our area actually borders the Bronx. So I didn't go too far but we're considered upstate now so we have a car. Which I'm not super excited about because now I just have to stress about not getting in a car crash or having the car get broken into. But overall I'm excited to be here. I've heard awesome things about the ward. It's going to be super different because there are only two other elders in the ward and I'm leaving a ward where there were six other elders. So it's a lot smaller up here and the work will be different but super great.

 

That's pretty much all that's going on. Sorry there aren't any cool stories for the week.

 

Hope all of you are doing well!

 

Love Hermana Parkin

My fear.....a haircut!

Real fast email this week because we didn't plan our time very well....

We went to the Empire State Building today for FREE! Super awesome. There's a member one of the elders knows from an old area that works there so he got us a special pass to go all the way to the top for free. It was cool but I'm glad I didn't have to pay for it because it's not worth $40.

I also finally caved into my fears and got a haircut today. A member in the other Spanish ward cut it for me. We visit her because she is in our area but there aren't Spanish sisters to visit her and she speaks English. It doesn't look bad but it looks pretty Dominican. I pretty much felt like I was watching a murder scene as she cut it though. She cut off SO much I thought I wasn't going to have any hair left. But then when she finished, it is still really long so I'm not really sure where all that hair came from.

We found an awesome new investigator this week. She is Russian and doesn't speak very much English but she's super nice and wants us to come back. Luckily we have a member that speaks Russian that can come with us and help with some of the translations problems. It was a struggle because we basically didn't know how to simplify what we were saying enough for her to understand. Plus we kept talking louder and louder because we're freaks. So by the ends we were saying things like "YOU HUSBAND WORK?" and "YOU GO WITH TO WASHINGTON?" It was ridiculous. But she was the cutest and we're so excited to teach her!

Transfers are in a week! I'm pretty sure that it's my time to leave the Bronx. =[ But who really knows because President Morgan is always a surprise. Guess you'll all have to wait until next week to find out.

Love you all!! Hope you enjoyed General Conference! It was the best!!!!!!

Love,

Hermana Parkin

The Bronx Zoo

Hey all! I don't really have anything too cool to share this week. Things are going really well and we're working really hard. I love the ward SO much. They're almost as great as my last ward (they're just a little lower because I don't think anyone will ever be able to beat the first ward I served in.) We're working mostly with less actives because apparently everyone in the Bronx is a less active member. We don't have a ton of investigators right now but we have lots of potential investigators so hopefully we'll be able to find a few people that are really interested in coming closer to Christ.

Easter was so great! Sacrament meeting was so spiritual and awesome and there were more people than I've ever seen at church the whole time I've been out here. It was the best. I hope all of you had a great Easter as well!

Today our whole zone is going to the Bronx Zoo. Zoo's aren't really my favorite place ever but it's going to be cool because we're going to be with other cool missionaries. Plus apparently it's a pretty famous zoo (from what I've heard but what do I know really?) so maybe we'll see some exotic animals or something.

We're getting ready for General Conference this weekend. I'm so excited! We've been talking with our members about how to prepare for this weekend and we're trying to prepare and I think it will make it an even better experience with a little spiritual and physical preparation. Hopefully this time around there are no problems with the broadcast so that we can actually watch all of it.

Have a great week and an awesome General Conference weekend!

Love,

Hermana Parkin