Westchester #11

Hello Fam,

I have limited time because we went to the city to go to the Temple for P-day today! It was AWESOME! Wow!! The New York Temple is BEAUTIFUL!!! I think it might be my favorite so far!! :))) It was so awesome to be in the temple and to learn and to feel such peace. Ahhh. It was seriously the best!! I loved it!! 

Well Vasu was baptized!!! It was so so great! He was so excited to be baptized and after when he was asked how he felt he told everyone that he felt really really good. He stood up and asked if anyone had any questions for him. So those attending his baptism asked him questions about his conversion and what lead him to the missionaries and how the Johnson family helped with bringing him to the church. The Johnson family had invited Vasu into their home and we taught him there every Friday. Mom, you were just talking about the worldwide braodcast on missionary work. The Johnson family is the perfect example of what every missionary wants-- a family to invite a friend into their home to be taught by the missionaries. Vasu would not have been baptized without the Johnson family! And it was such a cool experience for them as well :) But speaking of the broad cast... that was amazing! The way missionary work is being done is totally changing! Technology is going to be incorporated so much more into our work. Our mission has not started doing FB, Blogs, Ipads etc but I think they will within the next year or possibly sooner. So that will be an exciting change. And the broadcast had a big focus on how the members need to step it up with sharing what they know with others. I just thought it was so great! 

Well our car was broken into this week. There was no windows broke or anything so either they somehow unlocked it, or we forgot to lock our car. But they went through everything. I think they probably felt pretty dumb going through all our pamphlets with Jesus on the cover or our box of scriptures. But they found our GPS and stole it. So Sis Awerkamp and I have been trying to get around without a GPS. Surprisingly we have managed pretty well which seems like a miracle! But thankfully we will be getting a new GPS soon :) 

So I know I have been talking about how quite a few people are leaving but seriously.... everyone is leaving! Three or 4 more families announced that they were moving out this week including our Branch President who literally holds our little branch together. It is a huge blow to our branch. The Johnson's, Hippens, Fillmore's, Stilson's, Altom's and Sister Van Beaver are out of here. And we are loosing a few individuals real soon.  Last sunday our branch council was made up of the 6 missionaries in our ward, 2 members and our branch president. There is going to be a handful of people will actively be attending the Branch. It is a little overwhelming because we have no idea who is going to replace them! There are not enough people to fill the callings, do the VT or HT and certainly not to feed us or to have member present lessons with us. And here I am, a missionary who has been out 2 and a half months and I am going to be training and trying to keep our little branch going. It is going to be a challenge but I am almost a little excited for it. I am ready to work hard. We won't have as many people so we will have to cut back on what we can realistically do and then work to build it back up. One of our new focuses as missionaries is to help some of our recently baptized members to slowly start feeling confident in accepting a calling. We are going to take baby steps by having them teach a 5 minute lesson at the beginning of Sunday school or asking them to share a 3 minute testimony in sacrament meeting etc. Then you work a little more and more until they feel comfortable and confident that they can accept a calling! So that is what we will be working on in upcoming months as well as of course getting our Less Actives to come more frequently.  

So we were tracking in Yonkers on Friday we knocked on a door and a brother and sister answered the door. The Brother, Mohamed said that he had just moved to NY from Egypt that very day!! We told them that we were missionaries sharing a message about Christ. The sister said that they were Muslim and that they were not interested. SO we gave them a mormon.org card and told them they could go on there if they had any questions. our number was on the back of the card if they wanted to call. So two days later we get a text from Mohamed saying that he wanted to learn more about Jesus Christ! We have met with him twice now. I am so thankful for the Middle east class I took last semester so that I understood a little about his beliefs and background. I am AMAZED how much our religions have in common!! It is unbelievable. They only believe Christ to be a great prophet so that would obviously be the biggest difference. But it has been so fun teaching him! We focusing mostly on helping him to have a spiritual experience. He agreed to read the Book of Mormon and to come to church with us this Sunday! He speaks French, Arabic, English and probably some more languages as well. But it has been really fascinating to learn about his culture and seeing how we have so much in common!!

Well I have got to go! I love you all so much! Have a wonderful week! 

Love Sister Lounsbury

Westchester #10

Hello family!!

Well it sounds like you all have had a lovely time at the beach! What a neat story and experience that you had to help to invite and befriend that man who had fallen away from the church. Look at you all being little missionaries at home :) And what a fun surprise to have Zack come and visit!!

Well I have got 20 mintues to write so we'll see how much I get done. Guess what? yesterday I hit my 2 month mark! I have been in New York now for a full 2 months! So this week we had the chance to have interview with President Morgan. He tries to have interviews on a fairly regular basis if he can. Transfers are coming up soon on July 10th. President has a hard time keeping secrets sometimes. He told me in the interview that Sister Awerkamp is going to be transferred to a new area and that I would be receiving a brand new missionary fresh from the MTC to train!! I was speechless! I didn't know what to say! It felt like I was just at the MTC myself!! But President told me that he had received revelation and that he was confident that this is what the Lord wanted me to do. He read to me D&C 123:17 which reads "Therefore, dearly beloved [Emma], let us cheerfully do all things that lie in our power; and then may we stand still, with the utmost assurance, to see the salvation of God and for His arm to be revealed" So although I feel inadequate and have all sorts of worries, this scripture makes is all melt away. As a trainer if I do all that is in my power, if I try my hardest, if I do everything that I know, then I can be still and be at peace. I can know with the utmost assurance that God will take it away from there and I will see His arm revealed in the work we do. So, on July 10th I will receive a new missionary from the MTC!! Today, this Wednesday, she is actually entering that MTC! She is starting on her journey as a new missionary and I am so excited for her and to meet her. I pray for her and pray that I may be strengthened and that I may continue to prepare for when she arrives. I know that this is really going to push me. But I know that it will also cause me to really turn to the Lord for help daily, and hourly. 

Vasu is getting baptized on Saturday!! We are so excited for him! He has met with missionaries for years and I feel so privileged to be the one who gets to see him be baptized!! 

At APF this week (when the whole Zone goes tracting in one area) we had two really cool experiences! We knocked on one door and a hispanic lady opened up. We talked with her about her belief in God and how she has seen God in her life. After talking for a while she asked us which church we went to and that she would like to go! We shared with her the Book of Mormon and gave her our number. She is not in our area, so we won't be working with her but I will be checking up with the Elders who will be teaching her to see how it is going. Then we also knocked at a door and the lady was so nice to us and invited us in to have water (which was so lovely since we were both dying of thirst). It turns out that she has a neighbor who is Mormon and she is close friends with another Mormon family. So she was very receptive to our message and accepted our invitation to read the Book of Mormon and to pray to know if it truly is the word of God. We won't be able to teach her either but it was really cool because we normally don't have such great success tracting door to door. But the Lord is preparing people daily to receive the fullness of the gospel of Jesus Christ in their lives. We just have to go and find them! 

We met with Diane again. She is the one who has a hard time remembering things. That continues to be the case as we meet with her. She forgets things that we have shared with her and she is progressing, but very slowly. She has been relgious and reading from the Bible for 14 years and it is hard for her to understand the concept of the Book of Mormon. She struggles to understand how God speaks to his children no matter where they are and that prophets have written down and recorded God's words in Ancient America as well as Jerusalem.  Last time she was telling us her concerns about it and how she doesn't want to do anything that is wrong in the sight of God. She feared that God would be angry with her if she read the Book of Mormon. I felt the spirit very strongly that I needed to tell her that I loved her. I thought that was a strange thing to say but the spirit kept pressing me. So finally said "Diane, can I just tell you that I love you? Do you want to know why? Because I can see how honestly and sincerely you are trying to live according to God's will in your life.  Diane I know that God has been a part of your life thus far. He has kept you safe, He has changed your life, He has answered your prayers and I know that he will continue to be a part  of your life. If you read from the Book of Mormon and pray I can promise you that he will answer your prayers just as he always has. He will not let you go too far astray before he will step in and get you back on the right path. So Diane, will you commit to reading the Book of Mormon and pray to God to know if it is true?" I just felt the spirit so strong and it was a really cool experience. She has told us that she knows the Book of Mormon is the word of God because we have read with her a few times and she knows that the doctrine is true. But she still has some barriers she need to overcome. The concept is all very new to her. I think next time we will try to answer more of her questions and teach her how the Bible and the Book of Mormon go hand in hand and that they both testify of the divinity of Christ and help men to draw nearing to God. 

Here are some other random thigns that happened that week

1. We were planning out our day in our apartment and we heard the loudest thunder we have ever heard! We both screamed and jumped! It sounded like an explosion like bombs were going off!! It was crazy!!

2. We were stopped at a stop sign yesterday and someone threw a pear from the building above and it exploded on our car window! It scared us so bad! We had no idea who threw it but now we have dried pear all over our car :/

3. Jalissa moved to New Jersey rather abruptly. We are so sad because we were making really great progress with her. We will send a referral to the missionaries over there so they can try to reactivate her and help her work towards her goal of entering the temple.

4. Kodi, a girl in our branch, came out with us all of saturday! It was really cool and she had a great experience helping us teach Diane. 

Well that is all for now! I am about to go to a BBQ at the mission home with our zone. It should be fun :)

I love you all so much! 

Love, Sister Lounsbury

Pictures

Westchester #9

Hello my lovely Family!

Happy early Birthday Mom!! And Happy early Father's day Dad! You both have a letter coming your way :) I love you both so much! 

Your letter this week was awesome! I will for sure try to send some pictures of the Yankee's game and others after I write. How fun that you got the garden planted! And strawberry short cake with homemade strawberries... Wow that sounds amazing!! Congrats Zack on getting a permanent job as a MTC teacher!! That has got to be the best job ever!! You are a stud!! Noah and Enoch, I am so excited to see your scripture story drawings that mom sent! That will be awesome!! Keep up the good work! It sounds like summer is here for everyone! Isaac,how exciting that you are on your way to Middle School! Madeline, congratulations on the graduation on high school! And with Honors, way to be! You are going to love these up coming years. They are such a fun time full of adventure and growth. 

Well let me tell you about my week. Both me and my companion were actually sick with the cold and a cough. So we were really feel quite crummy. It is hard to have the energy to go, go, go all day doing missionary work when your throat hurts, nose is running and head is pounding. But we made it through all right. We are both almost entirely recovered :) Oh the other sad thing about this week was that the Hippen Family moved! We had our last dinner with them :(((( We had a lovely dinner with them, the Elders in our area, the senior missionaries and the AP's were there on splits as well. So we had a ton of fun with everyone.  And Sister Hippen requested that I sing my uke song "672 Days". She recorded in and apparently it is up on her facebook now because I have had people from the ward tell me that they like my song and that they want personal performances haha We are so sad to say goodbye to the Hippens. They were so welcoming and just make you feel right at home. They would have us over every Tuesday so we are really going to miss having dinners with them.

Well we were so excited this week because one of the Less Actives that we are working with finally came to church! Her name is Jalissa. She is 18 years old, has a 2 year old and is pregnant. We had met with her every now and then and it was not really going anywhere. But when she realized that she had hit rock bottom, she finally came to us and told us that she wants to change her life around and get things in order. We told her we would reteach her the missionary lessons. We have taught her the Restoration and Plan of Salvation and she is learning really quickly and making connections about why we read scriptures or why we come to church.  She came to church and the lesson was on on temples. It really had a powerful impact on her and I got to talk to her after church about what she would need to do to be able to go in. She wants to go in so bad! She heard in church everyone's experiences and she said she wants to experience it for herself. I told her that through Temples our families can be sealed for time and all eternity. I told her that it would bless her life in every aspect and that she would feel close to God in the Temple. She told us that she knows she will have to make changes in her life and that it will be hard work but she is determined to go inside! We are so excited that her goal is to be worthy to go into the temple and that she is ready to make those changes in her life! The only bad news is that she might be moving for work for 2 months. She asked us if she could stay in contact and ask questions/be taught over the phone. So we still be able to talk with her even during those 2 months.

We have stopped by to see Mel a few more times. She has always been very friendly to us but she feel that she is already saved and that we have no need to talk to her. She struggles with addictions to alcohol and every time we visit her she is a little bit drunk. Which can make for an entertaining conversation but it is hard to teach her anything. But sometime really cool happened last time. We teach her on the stairs of her apartment. She knows just about everyone on the street. People here don't live in their houses. Especially when it is hot. They are all out on the streets, hanging out on their stairs or porch or wandering around. So quite a few people pass us when we teach Mel on the street. So these two girls passed us by who Mel had  talked to before. She stopped them and told them that we were "saved girls" (Mel has given us the nickname of "saved girls" because she can't remember our names. A few others investigators we have met with refer to us as "holy people" haha). She told the teenage girls that they should meet with us and that we could help them. So we got their numbers and they told us we could meet with them!! Here is Mel running after these people on the street finding people for us to teach! It is awesome!! Mel is very supportive of what we do. She knows we are good Christian girls but she isn't willing to listen to our message. But she has told us to keep stopping by because she wants to FIND people for us! Haha! Can you believe that? So great!! And since we have met with Mel she has started to make a few changes in her life even though we haven't been able to teach lessons. She wants to stop smoking, drinking and cussing. So we hope to keep stopping by to encourage her to keep striving to make these changes and to see if she has anyone for us to teach :)

Ok funny story of the week!

So one night after we got home we made some milkshakes and we thought it would be fun to eat them outside on the fire escape. So we go into the other Sister's bedroom and climbed out their window on the fire escape to eat our shakes. As we were out there enjoying our treat the brilliant idea came to us to stay out there until the sisters got home. So we pulled the blinds down over the open window and waited for quite some time but it was worth it. The sisters came into their room and they came close to the window to turn on their AC and BAM we jumped out and scared them so bad! HAHAhaa oh man they screamed so loud and we got a good laugh out of it :) 

So we get hit on by the men here quite a bit. We get hooted at when we have to walk by . When we are stopped at a red light, the cars next to us often take the opportunity to roll down their windows to hoot at us, honk their horn, wave, or blow kisses. On two occasions the car next to us gestured for us to roll down our window and we did so thinking they needed help or directions but we quickly found out that was not the case haha. This week we were crossing a street and a car that was turning stopped to let us pass. The men inside recognized us as missionaries or "church people" so after we walked across the street they yelled after us "Hey girls! Let's go study sometime!" We usually get a good laugh out of the comments we get as long as they aren't crude. 

Oh! Here's an exciting piece of news! Zack, you're going like this!! So our District leaders had a meeting with President Morgan who told them that our mission is going to be one of the first to experiment with i-phone and i-pads! He says that they have them right now but he is waiting to make sure our mission is responsible and obedient enough to use them in our missionary work! So that is exciting! Also they are coming out with an updated version of the Preach My Gospel book with a section that focuses on Less Active and Reactivating so that is really awesome as well!

Well that's all for now. I love you all so much! I will try to send a few pictures to ya right now :) 

Love Sister Lounsbury

Westchester #8

Hello Family!! 

Well I just got back from a Yankee's baseball game! A ton of missionaries from all over our mission went and it was a lot of fun to see everyone! I got to ride the subway for the first time and caught a glimpse of the city feel. Well this week seemed to go on forever because we didn't really get a full P-day last week. We hardly had any food this week! Our one dinner appointment cancelled and we didn't really have any food to cook (because we didn't have time to shop for food last P-day). The night before fast Sunday all we had was a muffin for dinner. But we had a delicious dinner Sunday night at the Matthews and I got to play the guitar there which was so fun :) 

So the weather has kinda been all over the place. It was really hot and humid a few weeks  ago and then it cooled off and randomly it will pour rain! Sister Awerkamp accidentally locked the keys in the car one night when we got home. We just kinda sat there wondering what to do and of course it starts raining. At first it is lightly raining and we were enjoying he cool drops on our face  because it was warm out. And then it starts POURING rain. Like really pouring! We just start laughing and start dancing in the rain. We were soaked all the way through! That has happened to us twice now where we have been completely soaked through by the rain. We come into our apartment looking like we had just taken a shower with our clothes on. It was really fun though and it felt really good because it was warm outside. We ended up calling someone and got our keys out of the car that evening so it all worked out :) 

Well things are going  good with the people we are teaching. Diane really likes to talk a lot but we prayed that she would be able to feel of the importance of our lesson so that she would listen and it worked!  We were  able to get through the whole restoration lesson. She  is  very receptive to what we have to say.The only problem is that she asks the same questions over and over. She apologized and said that she is listening but she has a bad memory. We wonder if her MS affects her ability to remember. 

Jessica has come  to church every week since we found her! She is a member  who stopped coming to church when she moved to NY from Australia. She has a sweet accent. Her sister who is a return  missionary wants to meet us this week so we can all have a lesson together. So that  will be so cool. I bet  Jessica's sister is so excited that Jessica has been coming back to church. We haven't met Jessica's hubby but we hope to be teaching him soon as well. 

We saw Elizabeth at church again! She is so happy and always wears a beautiful smile. She was the one who when the missionaries first met with her she didn't believe in God. Now she loves coming to church because it  gives her a warm feeling  and she like how everyone is so kind and friendly. She finally committed to reading the Book of Mormon and to pray about it to find out for herself it is true. That is AWESOME because she always gives us excuses for why she can't read it (school, work, taking care of daughter) We explained  to her that the Holy Ghost is a gift that God  has given to us to let us know truth when we  hear it and that she can come to know truth for herself through the Holy Ghost. We asked if she wanted to know truth and she said of course she does and agreed to read it. So we'll see if she follows through with her commitment. She is progressing very slowly, but it is exciting to see that change that has occurred from when we first met with her until now. 

This week I have taught a lot of lessons about the Plan of Salvation or God's Plan of Happiness for us. I just  want my family to know that I have a testimony of Heavenly Father's  plan for us. We are his children. He loves us more than we can comprehend.  He wants us to receive all that He has. The way to receive these blessing is by turning to our Savior Jesus Christ. Christ is central to God's plan of Salvation. It is through Christ that we can be forgiven of our sins and live for eternity with our families after this life. I have had things put into perspective this week as I have taught this plan to others over and over. I realized just how short our time really is here on earth. It is just a small part of God's whole plan for us. I love sharing this plan with others and I am so thankful for the knowledge I have at such a young age of where I came from, why I am here and where I am going. Never forget who you are. You are children of God and you have a divine potential. God is wanting to give you all that He has. His invitation has always been "come unto me and I will receive you" we simply have to come unto him by follow Christ's teachings. As we draw near to Him, He will draw near to us. 

I love this gospel!  I love being a missionary! It can be hard at times but it is always worth it! My testimony has grown so much as I have seen the gospel transform and change the lives of others. It has helped build my confidence and faith that God can and will help us all no matter who you are or what circumstance you are in. My heart has been so touched by the faith these people have in God. Their life  stories and faith make me want to be better! It is truly inspiring. 

I love you all so much! I hope all is well at home! Enjoy your summer break and the new trampoline! And I am excited to hear about the scripture  challenge you are doing! Maybe you can copy some of the story pictures Noah and Enoch draw! And Isaac, Caleb and Madeline--I want to hear a few insights you had or what you have learned :) What a fun way of reading from the scriptures daily! Well I have got to get going! I'll talk to you all next week :) 

Love Sister Lounsbury