slippin and slidin

This was a killer week. We had a super fun activity on monday. We played volleyball with zone 1. There were so many polynesians so it got pretty intense. They were knockin' the ball all over the place. I have never seen such hard spikes.

Tuesday was a normal Tuesday. We had good district meetings. I gave one of the district leaders a blessing because he has been struggling. He is awesome and is such a nice guy. He is an amazing missionary. One of my favorite things about my mission is learning from people like this Elder. We did hot seats for Elder Bigler and Elder Clow. They usually are more funny than spiritual, but this one was powerful. They are super good elders and served valiantly. Again, love learning from the many amazing missionaries here. 

Wednesday we had an exchange with the assistants. They are super missionaries. We went to their area and had 2 companionships working in their area. I got to go with Elder Wilcox. He is a genius, and he is fun. We contacted some pretty funny people. We taught 2 or 3 lessons, so as you can imagine, we were contacting for hours. I use to not like doing that, but I kind of miss it. It was an awesome exchange, and I learned a lot. 

Thursday we came back to our area and cleaned our apartment super well. It feels so much better. We did planning and then visited the Vaca family to help them get ready for receiving the priesthood. 

Friday we proselyted. It was stinking fun. We went to our branch mission leader's home and ate quality crepes. They are awesome. We had our little meeting and then booked it home to get our studies in. We then visited the Branch president and his family. They made us super good soup/broth and ate it. My taste has totally changed over my mission. Mom, I love avocados. I ate like 3 at there house. After that, we went to another appointment that fed us a bunch of spaghetti (without telling us before). We then went to another appointment that didn't tell us that they were expecting us to eat with them, and made a huge dinner for us. It was super good... but by this time I wanted to puke. Then we went to another appointment. One of our members invited her friends over to hear the lesson, but they came over with wine and stuff so... hopefully we can teach them when they are a little bit more sober. All in all, it was an awesome day full of the Spirit, but I wish there was a way to not get  my stomach so full.

We woke up to a crazy weather situation. We didn't notice it 'til we almost slipped on the ice. It was warm enough at 7:00 to rain, but at 7:30 there was a big temperature drop. The roads were frozen over. It was nuts. People could not walk without falling. I didn't know how bad it was 'til we got about 5 minutes away from our house. We made it up a hill, but decided to take a different route because there were struggling cars up ahead. We turned and started to drive down another street. We decided to take a turn on another street going downhill and we started to slide before we made it to the turn. We didn't slide forward or backwards, but sideways until we were up on top of the sidewalk and curb. At first it was us and another lady who was stuck as well, but then came another, and then another, and another, until it was 5 of stuck and a policeman and another men with salt helping us get out. We got out and made to church just in time to be there for the decision to cancel church. The Vaca family was there, along with a bunch of people from the stake. So the people that were there did sacrament meeting. I played the piano in sacrament meeting....(?) and gave a talk I had already prepared for that day. Super crazy sacrament, but it was enjoyable. After the service, Juan Pablo got the priesthood. He then gave it to his son. He gave a really good blessing from the heart and it reminded me of all the blessing my awesome dad has given me.

My week was good. We are doing an activity for the zone so I have 0 time to write, but I am glad I got this time to tell you all about the fun I had this week. I miss and love you.

Waz good

Jersey Strong

Life is good in the gospel

Elder McFarty

Super good food from Nancy and Irina

super cool bench?

One of the 5 dinners on Saturday. So good :)

 Stuck

Nancy, she is awesome!

Love Caldwell

Welcome to an awesome week.

We gave a training to 3 zones. I liked the topic. It was stressful, but I like talking in front of people about the gospel. We talked about good questions and listening. It was a call to repentance. I thought I was a pretty good teacher, but I realized that I stink because I don't use good questions and I don't listen as much as I should. We also came up with our zone goals for this month. We went to  a super good taqueria called Los Gueros again because it is just that good. I went to Englwood to go on an exchange with Elder Preston. He is the definition of fun. He is hilarious. We taught well and tried to give a guy, who was in prison, a Book of Mormon. The police didn't let us :( stink. 

Wednesday we switched back and preached the good word. Thursday was the same story. Friday was pretty cool because we picked up another Elder so we could take him to the temple as well. We played soccer that night. There was a sister from Megan Blume's mission there and she got the biggest black eye I have ever seen. It was HUGE. Poor girl. She was super funny about it though. She made a bunch of jokes and she seemed like it was going to turn out fine. So that was an adventure.

Now... Saturday was the day of days. We 3 woke up at 5:30 and got ready. By 6:30 we were over at the Vaca's home to eat empenadas. It was a good meal, but we were all so anxious to get to the temple. We left at 7:30. The Vaca's drove so it was infinitely faster and smoother than the trip that we had planned for the zone. It was cool to be in NYC. We got to the temple and the baptisms went swimmingly (haha... I miss diving and swimming and hot tubbing). It was so cool to be there with the Vaca family. Diana decided to wait for her family before she goes to the temple. So we are going to work with them. After that we used our P day that we didn't get last week to spend time with the Vaca family. We went bowling and I talked with Nancy the whole time. She is one spunky grandma. She loves her family so much. I want to be as loving as her one day. After that we ate at this super good Ecuadorian Restaurant. Super food. We then played games with them at their house until it was time to start proselyting again.

We finished off the crazy week with a calm Sunday. Alvaro came to church and loved it. Baptism will probably happen the first of February. We did have a crazy lesson though. We were invited to share a message with a contact we had at her church. We thought it was a good opportunity to share what we believed with her and her brothers. But they took us into a lecture room and lectured about why the Sabbath day is Sunday. I tried not to bible bash, but I guess I looked angry when I told the man, "we could be wrong, but I dont think so." I went on to share my testimony. Sadly I didn't have the Spirit and so he didn't listen. He told us we had come to listen, not to teach. I felt bad that I hadn't listened better to the Spirit and kept my cool. But we left on good terms with the man and the contact. I don't plan on going back there soon. 

After that we got the Spirit again and visited with a cool family named the Cielo family. The parents just got married, but the mom has 3 kids. One is on a mission in Italy! It is interesting to see the other half of the missionary: his family. I hope that you all are feeding the missionaries and keeping the commitments they give you. It's awesome to be close to missionaries.

It has been a great week and I am excited to serve this week! Last week of the transfer and we never know what awesome surprises we have coming up. God does his work.

I believe that the Book of Mormon is true because I feel good when I read it, which is the spirit telling me it is true. Off of that I base my testimony of the Church and of Jospeh Smith. I belong to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latterday Saints. Thats awesome.

Keep me in your prayers!

waz good

Jersey Strong

 Life is good in the gospel.

Love you

Carrana family and the game headbandz. 

Diana got baptized a lil bit ago. 

So we had some fun with them.

This awesome Ecuadorian food place. I will take you there sometime :) <3

Shots of the Temple and the Book of Mormon play on Broadway ( It's a super bad show... or so I have heard). NYC

New York. We saw a huge billboard of the church in Times Square

a random cool cube in NYC. Irina Vaca and I in the temple and Juan Fer and I in the temple

TEMPLE!!! all of us together :)  

on the way to the temple:)

Juan Fer and I along with Juan Fer and I and Elder Smith

It was 11 degrees here. BRRRRRRRRRR

exchange in Englewood with Elder Preston

baptism

Back in paterson!!!! zone conference was there and I totally loved being back there. Practically the annual anniversary: I got there last year.

 I got there this year as well.

baptisms and tacos