Westchester #2

Hello family!

How is everyone doing? It was so great to hear from you all! I would love to reply individually to you all but I don't have much time. So I will do this email first and then reply to the others if I can.Alright so let me tell you a little more about my area. I am in the Westchester area which includes a few cities including Yonkers (where we live), Hastings on Hudson, Dobbs Ferry, Elsford, Irvington,Tarry Town, Sleeping Hallos and Thorwood. Our area is really large so we use a car to get around. We got lost quite a bit this week because Sister Awerkamp hasn't had to drive before. But we are getting a hang of it. It varies as far as rich and poor areas. Yonkers is really poor and no one wants to live there really. We live in a nicer part of yonkers so we have a pretty nice apartment. Everything works just fine. We have a small kitchen with a stove, oven and fridge. There is one bathroom for all 4 of us. (There is a Spanish companionship and then Sister Awerkamp and I). It is really fun living with the other sisters. We only see each other in the morning and at night.

Down Town Yonkers can be a pretty scary part of town. We are not suppose to walk around there at night. There is one street in Yonkers where a less active and a member live that we go and visit on occasion. On this street there is a park where a lot of people (usually men) just chill and hang around. Everyone just stares at Sister Awerkamp and I as we walk to our appointments. Let me tell you, two white girls in Yonkers is a sight to see. We really stand out when we walk the streets because we are minority. Everyone looks at us and I am sure they are just wondering what are two young white girls in skirts and nice blouses are doing walking around in Yonkers. We really stick out. When we pass the guys that hang  around at the park they will just stare shamelessly and make comments. It is rather uncomfortable but as Angela said "You just have to walk like you own it and they will leave ya alone". Last time we were in Yonkers doing look ups we decided to smile and say hi to everyone we passed no matter how rough they looked. This ended up being really fun and we saw that most everyone was happy to return a  smile and a hello. There was one big, tall, rough looking black man we smiled to and said hello. He looked a little surprised and said hi back. When we passed him later he stopped his conversation on the phone the was having to tell us that we were so beautiful and had the most lovely smiles. No one really smiles or interacts with each other so it is really fun to break that and to be friendly with people and to watch them transform from something hard, mean or intimidating to someone kind and friendly by simply smiling and saying hello.

Well my area has only been open to the Sister missionaries for about 3 months. There is a lot of work to do. One of our biggest focus is helping less actives to come back to church. We have 13 pages of less acitve members in our branch. We go around looking up these people to find out if the have moved or why they aren't coming to church ect. So we spend a lot of time doing look ups to find these less active members. The problem is that everyone cancels on us or they are neverhome. We had a really rough day where every single appointment was canceled and none of our referrals were home. We did have a funny thing that happened to us though. We were looking up a man named David Grenky, age 47 who was a less active. We go to his apartment door and a young man opens the door. When we ask if David is home he tells us that he moved to the only downstairs apartment around the back of the building. So we go down there and see a man on the porch. We ask him if he is David. "David who?" he asks. "David Grenky" we say. He looks at our name tags then our faces then our name tags again and replies "Oh...David passed away".  He told us David passed away a few years ago which he was obviously lying about since the young man upstairs just sent us down to talk to David Grenky. We let him be and had a good laugh about it. We could had made the situation very uncomfortable by catching him in his lie but we didn't. So that was the story of David Grenky. May he rest in peace. 

We only have two investigators but I have only met one. His name is Vasu. He is extremely intellectual and has done a ton of school. He is on his way to being baptized soon. We teach him every week at a members house. Elizabeth I have not met yet but she doesn't believe in God. She was found through tracting. She has been busy lately but I will meet her soon. We have a few hopeful referrals including a girl named Jessica who texted US after talking with the Elders saying that she started read the Book of Mormon and is excited to talk with us about it. We asked her when we could meet and she said she needed to check her work schedule but she hasn't  gotten back to us. We will follow up with her again soon. There is another member who called us asking us to meet with his friend because recently his wife died so he wants us to teach him about the plan of salvation. There are a few others like that where we are waiting on them to get back to us. As a missionary you do A LOT of calling, following up, scheduling, planning and then calling again, following up again, rescheduling and adjusting plans when people cancel or fail to get back to you.  

Our branch is so small!! Only about 40 members. There was 4 youth in sunday school.  There was 6 women in Relief Society. We meet in a office building but the interior looks like any other church. There are 3 solid families, but they're all moving out!! We are so sad! But everyone has been so so nice. We have a dinner appointment most every night because some of the families have us over every single week on a certain night. Yesterday I got to meet the Hippins. They were so much fun!! The mom reminds me of Hannah Downs because she was just so funny and outgoing. One of their daughter' personality reminded me of Isaac. She is 12 and also really like to color and draw. Then they had a little 4 year old. Even though they had all girls, it still reminded me of home and I felt really like a part of their family. All the members are so kind a welcoming. I'll just be sad when all the "big" families with 3 children move out.

I have done some street contacting and tracting but I don't like it at all! It is hard! I had an interview with President Morgan and he made me feel better about it all. He told me that I don't need to change myself and that I should approach people as I do naturally and to focus on really asking inspired questions  that would cause them to think deeply and reflect on what I teach. Both my companion and I are practicing on street contacting and door approaches. We are both figuring this out as we go. She is awesome though. I am so glad we are companions. We can have a lot of fun together and it's easy to talk. Over all it has been a long week and it wasn't exactly how I thought it would be, especially with focusing so much on finding less actives. But it has been really good. I wish I could share more stories but there are people and visits that make it all worth it. It is exciting to finally be out here! 

I hope all is well with you all and that I got to all of your questions. I love you all so much!

Sister Lounsbury

She's in NY!--Westchester #1

This letter came to Zack:

Shoot Brother! I already left! I am in New York right now! I only have 5 minutes to email so I will email the rest of the family a longer letter later. I have been assigned to work in Westchester. Our branch has about 45 members that regularly attend. I have only known my companion for a few hours but I can already tell that Sister Awerkamp is so awesome! She has only been out for 12 weeks and she is training me! She seems way awesome,down to earth and ready to work. I am excited to be with her. My P-days are on Wednesday (Today) so if I don't get a chance to email the family tomorrow then you won't hear from me til next Wednesday. I already got to hear about a few of our investigators. I am excited to teach them! We only have 2 investigators right now so we will be doing a lot of contacting. My companion has only been contacting 7 times. There are lessons that she hasn't even taught before (I only have practice teaching the first lesson) so we are really learning and figuring this out together as we go. So with us both together we don't have very much experience but I think she is a really hard worker so I am happy :) 

So the other people haven't showed up to kick us off the computer yet so I am just gonna keep typing til they get here. So I LOVE my Mission President and his wife. (President Morgan and Sister Morgan) they are such wonderful people. They are both easy going, loving and easy to talk to and joke with. President has such great insights. He encouraged us to have faith as we teach and to be obedient. He got emotional for a bit looking out at all the new missionaries. We had 30 new missionaries in this transfer. Apparently that is the second largest incoming group of missionaries to a mission in the entire nation. The largest (of 41 missionaries) was last transfer and it was also in our mission! There are now 274 missionaries and 64 of them are sister missionaries. So there has been a ton of growth in our mission! We just opened 10 new areas because of all of the new arrivals. The South Manhattan area opened up for sister missionaries for the first time in years! They have been asking for sister missionaries and now they are finally going to get them! It is so amazing to see all the growth that is taking place. You can really see "the hastening of the work" . It is exciting! Well I got to go! Forward this on to mom and dad if you can! Love you! 

Sister Lounsbury

MTC #1

     I haven't ran into Zack because I am not in the spanish building :( I have ran into a lot of other people though! I ran into Elder Christensen and My cousin Rachael and a bunch of people from BYU-I so that has been really fun to see familiar faces.

     Well from the first moment I got into the MTC I felt so welcomed! Everyone was so nice and welcomed us. It was awesome. It is such a unique place here. So many smiling faces!!! (And everyone is dressed up and looking pretty snazzy). There is just a special feeling here and I love it! We immediately met our district and was assigned a companion for our stay at the MTC. My companion is Sister Allen and we get along just great :) She is a lot of fun but we both know how and when to focus in and study hard. We have 6 sisters and 4 Elders in our district! We have been told by many that this is a historical district because no one has ever seen more sisters then Elders in a district! We all love each other and have a lot of fun. We can be a little too talkative sometimes which can be frustrating when you are trying to study and learn. But I wouldn't trade them because everyone is so great! The sisters in my district are my roommates as well, 6 in a room. It can be crowded but we only sleep in the room. I go to the temple today on Pday. The food is fine. There are a good amount of options. I am feeling well and healthy except that I am waking up almost every morning with a head ache! :( Everything else is done in the class room. We have personal study time, companion study time, classroom time when a teacher comes in, and a time to teach investigators. So for a lot of the day we are by ourselves without supervison. So it really is up to us to get a good focused study time in. I love both of my teachers Brother Lewis (in the morning) and Brother Reddish (In the Afternoon). Class time with a teacher lasts 4 hours usually. It's a lot of sitting but we usually switch rooms and switch up the activities so it's not so bad. Your only break is eating which might only be 30- 50 minutes. In class we study preach my gospel and other materials. For instance yesterday we had a quick lesson on stress management or we will just read from the Book of Mormon and stop and discuss what we learned. Yesterday we learned about how to teach people not lessons. So first you greet people and get to know them, their beliefs, their background, thier relationship with God and other small talk. Then you tell them what your purpose is as a missionary which is to invite others to come unto Christ. You ask them what they expect to learn from us as missionaries and then you tell them what we as missionaries expect of them. (which is to help them make commitments to come closer to Christ) and you go from there.

     So! Let me tell you about teaching investigators. Our first progressing investigator was a teacher pretending to be an investigator,. You learn briefly about them and why they are open to talking to the missionaries. Then you go and teach them! After the lesson they evaluate how you did and give you some feedback. So our progressive investigator was Mike. We taught him that God was his loving Heavenly Father and that the Gospel of Jesus Christ would bring peace to his life. He had no previous belief in God so we taught him how to pray and invited him to pray to God and he said he would. After our lesson Mike evaluated us and was amazed that he was our first investigator. He told us "you don't teach like other missionaries but that is a good thing." We were so relieved! Our second lesson with him also went really well! We taught the restoration, the need for priesthood authority and prophets and then  committed him to read the Book of Mormon and baptism. (Yes baptism. We learned that you should try to commit people to baptism on the first visit). He said if he did find out for himself that what we were teaching was true he would be baptized. The third lesson (and last one) was so powerful! The spirit was so strong as we taught and bore our testimonies. That was such a special experience because we really felt like we were lead by the spirit in that lesson. It was an experience I won't forget.

     Sarah was our TRC. Members or Nonmember can get paid to be an "investigator" for an hour. You don't know if they are a member or not when you are teaching! I just wrote a letter to grandma about how that went so I will be brief. Our first lesson was really rough. We were all over the place, she had no belief in God and struggled to understand why it was even important. She had heard a lot of weird things about the church so our conversation was all over the place. At the very end she opened up to us about how her sister had cancer and it was terminal. Both sister Allen and I felt so bad and felt so much love for her. We really wanted to share a message of comfort with her but we had run out of time. We were so scared to teach her again. We had no idea how or what to teach her. But we studied, prepared and prayed that we would be guided. We had such a powerful experience. We had talked for quite a bit answering various questions. Finally she asked would it even make a difference if God lived? Would it even matter. I bore my testimony to her of God and the love he has for us. I told her of how i have felt God's love in my life. The spirit was so strong in the room. I asked her that if what I was saying was true, if God was our loving Heavenly Father, what would that mean to her? It was silent for a long time. Her answer was "I don't know... I just don't want to talk about God." But after another silence her real issue with God came out. Tears were flowing as she told us again about her younger sister and how she had cancer. Everyone was telling her that it was God's will for her sister. "How could God be so mean?" she asked. My companion then shared a personal story about how she lost her dad was she was 8. She and her family had always gone to church and had been good people. Why did it have to happen to her? Sister Allen realized she had to make a choice to be angry at God or to realize what she needed to learn from this. She said that God doesn't make bad things happen to people He allows bad things to happen so they can grow. She told Sarah how her family grew closer and that she grew closer to God. The she told Sarah that God is aware of what she is going through and that she loves her. When Sister Allen said this you could see that Sarah was really believing it and more tears came. It was such a powerful experience. we felt so amazing after! We won't have a chance to teach Sarah again. We won't even know if she was a member or not! But she was in reality going through a really hard time. I believe that her sister really does have cancer because she could not fake the emotions and very real concerns. I hope that we were able to help her feel God's love and to teach that there really is someone who is watching out for her and aware of her needs.

     Well I am out of time here. My laundry is almost done (finally I got to wash my clothes in an actual washer and dryer instead of in the shower! haha) This week we will continue to teach Fred who is our new investigator. I'm excited! Well I love you all so much!!!

Love,
         Sister Lounsbury