Week 9: 2 Months!

What Up everyone! 

This week has been way dope and I'm gonna try to include everything I can remember! Sorry if I forget something though haha. Also thanks for all of the emails for my birthday and just throughout the week all of you rock and your emails are the best!

So last pday after I got done emailing we went down to Manhattan and went shopping down there and just looked to everything. Definitely blew some $ on a Knicks shirt from the NBA store and a hockey jersey from the Madison Square garden store haha. Worth it though! And then after that we went to Rucker park, and that was so sweet. legit have wanted to play there my entire life! So many NBA players go there all the time for tournaments and stuff like that. We balled on some dudes that were playing in a league there, and they werent good at all haha. East coast guys aren't ballers! 

The other day me and my comp were walking back home after a lesson, and this huge Dominican guy was dressed up like a bird just walking around making like crow noises and other bird noises. They were super realistic though I'll give him that haha. He would go stand outside of stores and look at the people inside and just yell at them. So funny but so freaking weird haha. There's so many insane people here it legit cracks me up everyday. And we always get asked for money by the same people like 4 times a day so that's fun haha.

We had a lesson with our boy Ad____on Friday, and he is the coolest. He takes what we teach him, and teaches his wife that night because she is always working when we come over. He is always so interested and always is smiling. This last time he had a bunch of snacks for us and had the biggest smile on his face when he offered them to us. This guy is the best! So we had set a baptism date with him last week, for the 23rd of September. We were going to ask his wife for the same date the next time we saw her, but he said that the same night that we asked him, he told his wife about it and she said she wants to get baptized the same day! So we legit got a bap date without even asking her haha. He legit is the coolest guy and would get baptized today if he could get to church every Sunday. I can't wait until they get sealed in the temple, legit will be the coolest thing ever especially if I get to go through with them!

Okay so we had two pretty crazy things happen on Monday, and then yesterday. Monday we were planning our FHE with Mama Sheila (Super cool young women's president) and we couldn't think of anything to teach her. We sat in our planning session for like 10 minutes until finally Elder Munoz said, dude I just heard a voice in my head say "I'm the Gardener here". So that phrase is from a Mormon message about the Lord knowing our potential and having a plan. So we decided to share that, and when we got to the house later that night, mama shared a scripture she had some questions about that was legit exactly the same topic as our video. We shared it with her and by the end she was bawling and saying how grateful she was. It's funny how real revelation is! 

Our second cool story was with a girl named An____. Two weeks ago we decided to clean out our phone of people and numbers we didn't know (something that has literally not been done in like a year with this phone) and we came across her name. We couldn't find any info on her in any of our records, so we decided to call the number and just see if she was interested in learning more or just needed help. She answered and apparently had met with missionaries before, and was actually about to move out of her apartment, so we offered to come over yesterday and help her move. We went over and got everything done, and ended up having an awesome lesson with her after. We were reading in 1 Nephi 7 and the whole time she was typing on her phone. We thought she was just texting through the whole thing, but she legit was taking notes as we were talking! She ended up saying the closing prayer, and told us that we were the first ones to ever get her to pray. That legit was so cool to hear. The only bad part is that she's not in our area with her new house so we can't meet with her anymore :( If she gets baptized we're going though for sure!

Alright so last thing, I met this less active member named R___ last night, and he is my favorite haha. He loves fashion and shoes and stuff so we were legit just talking about like the coolest shoes out there for a while. He's super cool and is actually getting married soon. We're hoping that we can get some lessons in with his fiance because it would be so cool if they got sealed in the temple. This guy is seriously so cool, it took a while for him to open up, but at the end of the lesson he gave me a hug and said "I think we're gonna be best friends" haha It was so dope. 

We've been studying a lot about the atonement recently because our mission president set a goal for all of the mission to study it for a week straight. I've found so many things about it that I never noticed before. My appreciation for the Savior has grown so much and I seriously can't believe God loved us enough to send his son here. It's crazy how many people don't want to hear about that. Love all of you guys so much! Have a dope week!

Elder Allen