Sand, Snow, and Chicken

Hello from Jersey! 

This week we taught a lot of the less-actives that live in our area. We spent more time in cities south of where we usually are. There are so many cool places in our area! There's so many cute little seaside towns with charming names like Bayville, Beachwood, Seaside Heights, and Point Pleasant. 

We also taught Nestor (the older brother of Andy who got baptized two weeks ago) three times this week. He is ready for baptism and is scheduled to be baptized on Sunday the 15th!

Wednesday was Sister Daines' birthday so I took her out to dinner at Chick-fil-a (our dinner appointment cancelled on us) although maybe I partly took her there because I missed it so much. I hadn't eaten there since my last day of working at BYU's Chick-fil-a in April! I don't know how I went almost a year without it!

Also on Wednesday we were driving around looking for former investigators in a part of our big area that we don't go to very much and we got lost and ended up at a frozen lake. It was a really foggy day and it was just before dark so it made for some sweet pictures!

Thursday there was a freak snowstorm. It snowed nonstop all day. I couldn't believe how much snow there was! I thought that when March started winter would start to go away. Nope. We were told not to use our cars that day so we were basically snowed int. Luckily it was our weekly planning day so we had to stay inside and be as productive as we could without leaving the apartment. 

We had a bit of a scare on Saturday when our progressing investigator William called us and told us he had made a last-minute decision to move to New York the next day. He feels like he doesn't have any reason to stay here except for his sick mother who he has to care for. We asked him why he wanted to move to New York and he just said "Because New York City is the center of the universe." Haha. He's funny. Anyway, we were so afraid that he was going to move away. His eyesight is bad so he hasn't been able to read the Book of Mormon. Last week we ordered him a large print Spanish Book of Mormon and it should be coming tomorrow. We were so worried that he would move away before we could give him the large print Book of Mormon so he could finally read it! But then when we called him this morning he told us that he was unable to find someone to help care for his mother after he left, and he took that to mean that "The big man upstairs doesn't want me to leave yet and it must be for a reason." Thank goodness! So he's at least staying for a couple more weeks now, and hopefully by then he'll be over this "New York is better than New Jersey" nonsense...because Jersey is obviously better ;)

Saturday we visited a member that lives in Seaside Heights, which is such a cute little seaside town. It's actually on a long skinny island off the coast from the mainland; we had to go over a pretty long bridge to get to it. After the appointment, we just had to stop for a minute to check out the beach. It was my first time standing on a beach since I left CA in June, and it felt so good... although it was completely covered in 6 inches of snow from the storm a couple days earlier. I never thought I'd see a beach covered in snow... apparently that's a thing here? It's not La Jolla but I'll take what I can get. 

I feel so blessed to be here. Being a missionary is awesome!

<3 Hermana Harris