Ironbound Week 10

Familia,

And we made it. After a few months of working with him, M--- got baptized yesterday!!!! Oh man it was such a cool experience. It all came together so nicely and yesterday was such a spiritual (and exhausting day)! Ha that was tough putting a baptism together while fasting. I almost passed out a few times. But hey vale la pena. But really it was a great week. We saw him almost 3-4 times this passed week and brought the Bishop with us and it just turned out so well in the end. We had his baptismal interview scheduled for Saturday night and he called us at like 7 and said he was still working. He finally arrived at 8 or so and we walked to the church by 8:20 and he passed his interview. It was like 9 then. So we had to snag a ride off some other missionaries to give us a ride home. We lived like an hour and 15 minutes from the church. It has been such a fun time teaching him though. He had such good desires from the first time we taught him. He accepted a baptismal date the first lesson and the only thing holding him back was a little with the word of wisdom and he had to work a lot so we weren't able to see him as often as we wanted. But it all worked out in the end. Check out the pictures. E Marquez was pumped to baptize him. Baptisms are some hard work here but I am so grateful for the chance to be part of one of them these last few months. Its cool how God makes things work out when we just try our best and act and repent when we make mistakes. It has been a good road. Now with this fire we are looking for some more people!

Yay!  This man was his own referral and well prepared - so great.

 Haha mom when you said that it seems like my area is tough and in a drought of a teaching pool, I almost laughed. haha the area I am in is the bomb. Seriously we have so much work we don't even have time to see everybody. Ha we have to fend off other missionaries from poachin' our members because we have so many. We have to schedule things in advance if we want to see the right people. Almost everyone works in the day so from 5-9:30 we are super busy. But I guess I haven't been super good emailing about that. Yes we need the prayers still tough. ha no but we are just working hard, walking a lot, and praying all the time. Its a super fun place to be. We are eating like none other too and all the walking is nice to get all that food settled. Seriously this place is the bomb and I hope I stay at least one more transfer! I will try to include a few more stories and things. We just had a baptism so this week we will be looking for some new investigators. We have a few but none are progressing super well so this week we will be hitting the streets and talking a lot. There is a new Easter video about Christ and the Resurrection called: Because He Lives. So they give us these cool little pass along cards specifically designed for Easter and this video. Its pretty powerful stuff. Not gonna lie, the church is pretty good at what they do. By that I mean, Christ is really good at what he does and good at preparing for what he wants done. So yeah we are seeing miracles.

It just hit me again this past week about how blessed I am. Seriously thanks for being such an awesome family. Its a good life and I can see how God has put me in certain places in my life and now the mission so I can learn and grow but also just be happy. I am doing good in this area and the zone around me is awesome. The members are great. The weather is good. There are just so many things to be grateful for. I just base it all off the Gospel and of what YOU do for me! God is so merciful and loving. 

I love all the pictures you are sending. I will try to send more myself. Love the smiles and the bike riding. Nice job, Sam, on giving that class in relief society and priesthood. That's intense and in front of a lot of people! I am glad things are going good. Thanks for all the love and packages. The brownies were great. Thank you! Wow if things are tough for anyone reading this, just know things will get better if you live according to the Gospel. Things will always get better. I know it to be true. Yes we have our dips and dives but happiness is God's plan.

Love you all,

Elder Sumsion

ouch poor racoon! - nature in Ironbound

Ironbound Week 9 - Happy birthday!

March 23, 2015    THANKS TO ALL OF YOU WHO SENT HIM BIRTHDAY WISHES especially the dear family who made him dinner and the cute Primary kids and leaders in New Jersey!!!

Awesome members made him this great cake!  SUD stands for

santos de los ultimos dia! (latter day saints)

Just want to start off and say thank you for all the birthday wishes! It was seriously an awesome day! I loved all the goodies in the package you sent. I decided to share a lot of it with others in the zone too. I cant eat all that myself so I let others enjoy it with me. I saved the good stuff so no worries. Haha nah I'm messing. But seriously I loved it and felt all your love. It was a pretty great birthday. On Thursday night these one members invited us over. Holy smokes it was so legit. They went and bought this super nice cake for me! Check out the pictures. Man, I almost felt guilty it was so legit. They had balloons. And then they made us a super good meal. Rice with bacon in it? Sweet chicken. and some shrimp salad. It was unreal how good it tasted. So definitely felt the love that night. On Friday, the 20th my actual birthday, we had a big meeting in Morristown for all the new missionaries and trainers. Some of the zone leaders were there as well so I got to see E. Bellavance because he is still a zone leader, Elder King, my old zone leader, and some old companions too! The meeting was good and learned a lot. Super long! Haha but we did tons of role plays and listened to a bunch of trainings. Then that night, turned out the the primary was working on their duty to God requirements about service. So they threw a big surprise party for all us missionaries in the Spanish ward (10 of us!) and one of the little girls in the primary had her birthday the same day as well. So we celebrated together. They sand happy birthday, shared some service scriptures with us, played games, and gave us dinner! It was awesome. So it was a super happy birthday. 

Cute Primary and Elder Sumsion and Elder Warnock.  So sweet!

Craziest week in a LONG time though. Turns out E. Marque foot has been hurting him pretty bad so he called the mission nurse and doctor and they just wanted him to go get an x-ray of it. So we spent all morning on Wednesday getting that and talking to doctors. They didn't see anything wrong. At first they wanted him to be off his feet for a few days. haha we explained that really wasn't possible and no way we are staying inside for a week. I would die. So they recommended we go see a podiatrist to see if he can do something. We go there Thursday morning. Turns out its the day the doctor called in sick. So we weren't able to see him but the other doctor gave him a boot to wear around. (He has called like a million doctors. Ha) So he has been wearing that until we can get a new appointment with the podiatrist. So we have been running around to doctors appointments and pharmacies all week. SO that added to the craziness of the week as well. Luckily, we have been doing our best to get more rides to places so he won't have to walk on his foot as much.

Also, we have M--- who was supposed to get baptized this week which didn't happen. With the craziness of our week and the craziness of his, we just weren't able to see him enough.

Spent a little while this past week as well planning out college stuff too. It feels weird to be planning for college classes and stuff but hey its gotta be done. I have been talking to tons of missionaries to see what advice they give for classes as well. So I have it sorta figured out. I read a ton of stuff on the college websites so its been making a little more sense. Still have no idea what Im in for next year! Haha I have it laid out a little though. Praying a lot about it so things should be sweet this fall!

We didn't get our sushi run in yet. Hopefully this next week!

Thanks for everything. I am doing great and super happy! I think spring is finally here. It was 28 this morning but its sunny now. 

I love you,

Elder Sumsion

Ironbound Week 8 - BIRHTDAY THIS WEEK

Hello Family!   March 16, 2015

Can I just start off by saying thanks for all the birthday love! (HIS BIRTHDAY IS FRIDAY 20th) I love reading all these emails and seeing the pictures. I am just grateful for such an amazing family. Seriously, thank you for always making me happy. I love you!!!

We had quite the week. Super busy with all our meetings and studies and lessons. I dont even know how to jam this all into one email but Ill pick out the highlights for you. Things are going great with training. Its crazy how much different I am training now than I did before. Before I was just so young and was still learning everything myself Ha! Luckily, Elder Class and I got along great and we learned together and I did my best to teach him what I knew. Ha he was a champ. Speaking of him, I saw him the other day at our meeting. He is getting old haha he already has 14 months on the mission! With Elder Marquez, its different because he is pretty mature and I feel like we just our a normal companionship. He struggles a lot with Spanish. I am teaching about 90% of things right now but we are working little by little so he can teach more. But besides that we are just working great together. He is really good at strategy and read all sorts of books about it at home. I am learning a ton from him about it too. So we bounce ideas off each other all the time. I think it was a bit of a shock for him to see how different the wards were here than in Utah and California. Same church but different people. Thats for sure. We have been teaching and walking tons! I'm afraid we may have walked to hard the first few weeks. His right foot and knee is starting to hurt him a lot. Snap...

We had a sweet  all mission conference this past week. It actually was just the Northern half of the mission. It was nice to see all my old mission friends. A lot of my Jersey City zone was there too, so we got to catch up on things. I think one reason I got called to this mission was the social aspect of things. Our mission is super tight and there are a lot of missionaries in a really small area. We see other missionaries almost every single day. It would be weird to me to feel so isolated. Like right now for example, there are 8 of us missionaries in the library emailing! Ha between the Portuguese branch, the English branch, and the Spanish ward on Sunday, there are over 20 missionaries! We all share the same building so we are all there at the same time. Obviously when its time to work, we work! but its nice to be around so many awesome missionaries during meetings and church. Its a blessing to me. At the mission conference, they talked a lot about what it really means to 'receive the Holy Ghost.' You don't necessarily get the constant companionship of the Holy Ghost with you when you get confirmed, but through your righteous actions God will give you the Holy Ghost to guide you. It was a cool new way to look at things. We are just trying to find a way to get more convert retention in the mission. It was a solid meeting.

M--- is doing great. He is accepting of everything. We have his baptism for this weekend. It is dependent on his work schedule though. We need to see him a few more times before Sunday but lately his work has been making him work late. We cant really see him past 7:30 because it takes us an hour to walk home from his house. We do tons of walking. I am used to it, but I can tell its eating away at my comp. So we are looking into the bus schedule. The problem is is that at night, all sort of transportation is slower than walking here. But M--- is doing great. We have been bringing a few members over to get to know him more.

The real question is food. Everyday we ask ourselves ok are we going to get fed today or not. Ha its like completely random with the members. One day we will be starving and the next we will be stuffed out of our minds. Ha cant we just get some balance here? Ha its pretty funny.

I love hearing how you are all doing. Thank you for the emails! I love them. Thank you for the letter each week as well mom. I know that might be a lot of work. Thank you for it! 

We have half the ward wanting to feed us for my birthday! One member is making dinner for us on Thursday. Some two solid recent converts are taking us to get Mexican food on the 20th! And I have been dying for SUSHI, ha so I might go grab some if we get a moment. We found a cheap place. Thank you. Your love and support is means more than anything I could ask for. 

Love you,

Elder Sumsion

Happy birthday next week...

Elder Sumsion's  birthday is Friday the 20rh I am sure he would love a letter from his friends!  Thank you.