Week 11: One Cycle Down!

Yo yo everybody! It's been a pretty awesome past week and I am pretty much done with my first transfer which is crazy! Time is seriously flying by out here and I'm sure it is at home too! 

Last week we went to the temple in Manhattan and that was so awesome, probably my favorite session so far, even though I'm not a huge fan of the look of the temple here haha. But it was so cool going through it,even though we had to do it in the mandarin language! That was different for sure haha. Then we ended up going back to the temple on Friday to do baptisms with the ward and with one of our recent converts, Francisco. Francisco is like 60 and so dope. He's pretty much our grandpa out here haha he loves us so much and is super funny. He had to get surgery on his eye though so he couldn't get baptized but he watched and was able to be confirmed which was so cool. We also did some family history work for a lady in our ward, and I was able to find someone to do it for in my family tree as well! Me and elder Munoz were witnesses for the baptism which was sweet, and Francisco loved the temple. Definitely a super cool experience! If I could go to the temple everyday I would.

Elder Munoz, Francisco, and me! 

Alright so last Wednesday night we were almost home and then we got stopped by two like 40 year old guys smoking cigarettes and weed and we were like oh great were about to get roasted or something. We started talking and they actually loved us and were super interested in our message and with our knowledge about Bible stuff. It was super funny cause they were so drunk and stuff but we talked to them for like 40 minutes and one of them is wanting to come to church! He's wild though so hopefully we can change his ways haha. He definitely has a rough life and we saw him yesterday literally in the middle of a drug deal. He stopped us and we were talking then the lady he was with says "we gonna smoke some crack or nah?!" pretty funny haha. He gave us laundry soap out of his bag though and then offered me his bag, he legit loves us and wants to just give us free stuff all the time it's hilarious. Hopefully he actually comes to church and wants to change though cause he's way cool to us!

On Friday before the temple, we get stopped by this guy on the train, and our zone leaders actually got into a Bible bash with him earlier in the week so it's crazy that we ran into him too. He started bringing up all this anti Mormon stuff and scriptures in the doctrine and covenants he said were false. I was like how do you know about the doctrine and covenants and not the book of Mormon hahaha. You obviously just Google how to attack Mormons. But anyways it was basically a waste of time and we just said he could pray and ask about our church and that's about it. Then we left before we wasted any more time with him. Definitely hard to be nice sometimes though to the people here, especially the people who preach against white people lol they're the funniest. They legit just swear at you and say white people are going to hell hahaha. 

I went on a split Monday with another Elder Allen! So funny, but it was awesome he's a funny kid and we got along great. Then after we ended our split me and elder Munoz went and tried to meet with our recent convert, A___. He wasn't there, so we hop back in the elevator in the projects, and start going down from the 19th floor. We were just messing around like jumping in the elevator and then we started shaking it a little, and the whole freaking thing like fell a foot and just stopped in between two floors... Hahaha. We were just chilling in there ringing the emergency bell for a while and joking around how this is like out of a horror movie, then a lady living on the floor we were near yelled that she called for 911 and the fire department was on their way. After like 30 minutes they showed up and we got out fine and that was it, when they saw two white guys walk out they were pretty surprised hahaha. The next wild thing was when we were in McDonald's with A___ later, and these homeless people come up to us with a jehovas witness book and Bible. We thought they were gonna roast us but they actually really wanted to know more and we might end up passing them on to the English elders! Only thing was, the guy of the group was telling us that there are reptile men under the earth who bring diamonds up to the people of earth hahaha. So freaking weird I was trying not to laugh. Then we saw those guys on the street and all that happened and yeah it was a long day haha. Super cold but humid and rainy which was great.

Last thing! So we have the 100 day book of Mormon challenge, and it's been so cool so far I'm marking this thing up like crazy and I'm gonna send it home once I'm done. I encourage all of you to do it too, it's on the mission website. Basically read the book of Mormon for someone else. Have a specific question in mind for the whole book. I've already seen how it has changed my perspective of the book of Mormon reading it for other people. This book is true there's no doubt in my mind! 

Love you all, talk to ya soon! :) 

Love, Elder Allen