Jersey City - Week 3 - "Done with Food"

Hello family!

Things are going good! Jersey City and being with Elder Drewes is such a great experience. This week was hectic. Just lots of running around and all. I love being a zone leader. We have the best zone in the world, hardly any problems. Just lots of solid missionaries that make our life easy as zone leaders. Ha Well I will give you a rundown of the week.

On Monday we went and saw this new recent convert family. Iran is the mom, Kelvin and Ivan are two sons and Jennifer the daughter. No dad, but just the most solid family in the Gospel. I just love them. I feel like I've known them my whole life. We are laughing all the time when we go and visit them. On Monday they fed us Baleadas. Some super good, super dense Honduras food. I was stuffed to the max. Its basically a thick tortilla with crème, cheese, beans, and avocados. Super heavy stuff. I ate two and was super full. Then they fed us even more. Some dessert and horchata. Love them. Just such a solid family in the Gospel.

I went on exchange to Bayonne with one of our zone members, Elder Winfield. Awesome missionary. Super funny and always cracking jokes. We taught this Egyptian named Helmi who understand basic English. So we had to teach super simple and check for understanding a lot. It was a neat lesson with him. He has a desire to learn more. Then his son walked in and we started teaching him. He wanted to bash a lot but we handled it well and answered some questions and then pointed him to the Book of Mormon. He took one and a Restoration pamphlet. We were happy that we were able to shut down the argument quickly.

On Wednesday Elder Drewes felt pretty sick. A member took us with hmo Ampudia to this restaurant called Noches de Columbia and order just tons of food for us. We started off with hot chocolate and bread. Which was delicious. Then they brought out tons of Empanadas. Then I did my best to tackle this local plate with tons of rice and meat. I got pretty far through it and just kept shoveling food down. I finished most of it but could not put down the rest of the Chicharon. Which is pretty much pig skin/fat. Oh I was like shaking. Super good but towards the end I was so sick and full. Probably the most full I've ever been. Then later that day another member fed us mashed potatoes and ribs. ha I have never disliked food so much in my life. I put all the food down though to show respect. I ended up throwing up like 90% of it at 12:30 that night. Ha it was terrible. But after it was all out I was laughing like "No way that just happened." Ha pretty funny.

We had Stake Conference yesterday. Some good talks about hastening the work. They talked about missionaries being full time teachers and members being full time finders. It was really interesting and reminded me of stake conference at home. Its interesting that anywhere you go the church still has the same good feeling to it. I saw Lauren Johnson and her Husband there. I guess they are living in Hoboken. It was fun to talk and catch up with them.

The cops are onto us out here. Ha Elder Drewes has like $200 of tickets and fees that we are trying to lower. The cops and parking police are a nightmare out here. We got a ticket for obstructing traffic (We didn't do anything. Just threw our hazards on and ran into a check store for honestly 5 minutes so Elder Drewes could pay off a different ticket. ) but we got summoned to court for the 9th of September. Sometimes I feel like the world's on my shoulders...

Ha

So awesome that Sam finished up his Eagle scout and even cooler that he was made a Priest to prepare and help with the Sacrament. So happy for him. So happy to hear that things are good. I am so grateful for such a good life.

Love you,

Elder Sumsion

More food

Baptism!!!! - He was happy I promise!

Me and Lexi (sister in NYC)

Exchange with Pres. Taggart, Elder Drewes