Makin' it Rain

At the Christmas Program in Newark

Yet another great week in Jersey! And we got lucky because it didn't snow this week! But it rained almost every day.

So a few weeks ago our Zone Leaders decided to have a competition between the two districts in our zone. We keep track of little things we do during the day that help us to be more obedient and focused missionaries. We got points for waking up on time, making phone calls, contacting a lot of people, getting new investigators, stuff like that. The competition was for the past four weeks, and the district with the most points at the end would win a pizza party.

After 3 weeks, the competition was still pretty close, and Sister Stone and I REALLY wanted to win that pizza party, so we decided to step it up a notch. The fastest way to get more points was by contacting more people on the street. So we went a little crazy with the contacting this week. We usually do about 10-15 a day because our mission president says we should try to get at least 10 a day. So we usually get between 70-80 contacts a week. This week we decided to triple it!! So we ended up getting 250 contacts this week. We walked around in the endless rain every day and made it rain tarjetas (cards):)

One thing that made contacting more people easier this week is because of the new "He is the Gift" Christmas initiative the Church is doing right now. There is a video on christmas.mormon.org about the real meaning of Christmas, and this week they gave us a ton of pass-along cards telling people to check out the video. So whenever we would see people on the street (which is pretty easy because hey it's the most densely populated city in America!) we would just go up to them and start talking to them about Christmas and give them a card and tell them to check out the video on the website. Super easy. So that's the secret to getting 250 contacts in one week! Talk about Christmas, because everyone here loves Christmas! (Except for Jewish people and Jehovah's Witnesses, and there are quite a few of both of those here, but other than that...) But it's kinda ironic because we are telling hundreds of people to watch the video, and we haven't even seen it yet because we don't have any Internet devices (pretty sure we're one of the only stateside missions that hasn't gotten iPads yet...). So to everyone reading this who DOES have access to mormon.org, please watch the video because there are some missionaries who wish they could but can't :(

We had a big miracle this week!! On Tuesday we were walking around giving out cards (what we do best, especially this week) and saw a guy leaving his building so we gave him a card. Then half an hour later he actually called our phone number on the card!!!! We've written our phone number on HUNDREDS of cards and passed them out, and I'm pretty sure that's the first time someone actually called it. He told us he knows we are sent from God and that we have something really important to share. So we met with him a few days later and taught about the Restoration and it was THE BEST restoration lesson I've ever had. He was SO receptive to everything we had to say. He asked really good questions and he is SO interested in the Book of Mormon. And then on Sunday he came to church and he brought his two teenage sons!! It is so hard to get investigators to actually come to church. This is the first time I've contacted someone and they actually went to church the very next Sunday. So that's a really good sign!  We are super excited to keep working with him!

Yesterday there was a Christmas program at a chapel in Newark for all the Spanish-speaking missionaries in the mission. It was super fun because I got to see a bunch of the missionaries that I was in the CCM with. Each zone had a different Christmas song to sing in the program. It was packed! So many people from all over Jersey came!

Everything is going great!

<3 Hermana Harris

 

P.S.  My district won the competition mostly due to Sister Stone and I contacting like crazy. The pizza party is later today.  :)

 

 

On Saturday we contacted 110 people... 93 must be the magic number because our 93rd contact was an old Puerto Rican lady who was carrying a cake. She wouldn't even let us give her a card, but she gave us the cake. She just handed it to us and said "This is my gift to you" and walked away. We should get to 93 people more often! :D

 

My Spanish Bible got wet from walking around in the rain all day so I had to blow-dry it. Then I put something heavy on it during the night to flatten the pages. It worked pretty well!

Sister Stone and I with Sister Taggart at the Christmas program in Newark. When Sister Stone told her we've been contacting like crazy, Sister Taggart made all the missionaries in the foyer be quiet and she announced "These sisters talk to everyone! Everyone needs to be like these sisters!!" It was slightly embarrassing but we love her!

 

One more picture.. this was forwarded to me from my district leader's camera. This is my zone (Zone 3) at our last zone meeting before transfers this week.