Pics - Seaside Heights, Pizza, and Jersey Shore House

Seaside Heights

Our new hoodies we got at one of the shops

 

Biggest pizza of my life

 

This is the house where Jersey Shore was filmed.

iPads from Heaven

Happy Pday!

Last Monday for Pday, Hermana Bloxham and I went to Seaside Heights with the English sisters serving here. We walked down the boardwalk and looked at the cute little beachy shops.We each got a hoodie with a decal that we got to pick out and they ironed it on for us. We also got pizza and they were probably the biggest pieces of pizza I've ever seen. Jersey is so fun!

Tuesday was the all-mission conference that the whole mission has been anticipating for many months now. We had to be there at 7:30am, and since we are just about as far south in the mission as we can get, we had to leave at 5am to get there. President Taggart and a visiting authority spent several hours explaining to us how we will use the iPads and what we can and can't do with them. It was pretty long and tedious, but then right before we left at 3pm, we finally got our new iPads!!

It was a great day. The only sad thing was that I said goodbye to trainer Hermana Galvan. This is her last transfer before she goes home to Argentina, and I won't be at the transfer conference when she goes home, since Hermana Bloxham and I are staying together in our area for another transfer. 

Right now the mission is still in the beginning stages of iPad use. These first couple weeks we will just be getting used to the iPads and learning how to teach with them, show videos on them, and use them as effective study tools. In a couple weeks we will start having our Area Books and our Daily Planners on our iPads, so basically all of our paperwork and planning will be digital now. A couple weeks after that, we will be able to get Facebook and start using it as a proselyting tool. 

The missionaries who will be going home in November or earlier were given used iPads that they will have to give back to the mission when they go home. The ones going home after November were given brand new iPads and when they go home they will have the option to pay a small amount to take it home with them. Lucky me, I'm going home in December so I'm in the first group that will get to take our iPads home!

Wednesday I was on exchange with an English sister training leader, Sister Woodland. We had an appointment with a Mexican man named Neftali who doesn't speak any English. It was a super cool experience for me because during the lesson, she would speak directly to him in English and I would translate for him so he would understand what she said. She was able to do just as much of the teaching as I did, even though she didn't speak his language. He definitely could feel the Spirit just as strongly as if she had been speaking Spanish. I was very grateful that by now my Spanish is good enough that I was able to translate the lesson without any problems and he got the full effect of what we were telling him. We invited him to be baptized and he said yes! He just needs to change his work schedule so he can come to church on Sundays.

Friday we visited William (the one who's been in rehab since March? Yes, that one). We've invited him to baptism several times and he's always said that he doesn't feel ready and he needs more time. This time we showed him a video of Christ getting baptized using our fancy new iPads. Then we invited him to be baptized on June 14th and he said, "No, I think I can be ready sooner." We were totally shocked because he's never said he feels ready before. But now he is on date for June 7th! He just needs to get out of rehab first...

<3 Hermana Harris

Family picture! My mom Hermana Galvan, me, and my two daughters

Hermana Stone and Hermana Bloxham

Saying goodbye to my mamacita before she goes home to Argentina :( Love her!

iPads!

Things Are Happening!

 

Happy Pday!

 

Monday we decided to look for one of the inactive people on the branch list. He opened the door right away and was super cool! He's a 14-year-old who got baptized 4 years ago but hasn't been to church in 2 years. He is about the same age as one of our investigators and they both play guitar so we are trying to get them to be friends so they can go to church together!

 

Tuesday we tried a bunch of names and addresses we had in Point Pleasant. I love that town! It's so cute! If I were to live anywhere in Jersey it would be Point Pleasant. And the beach and the boardwalk are awesome!

 

This week we found a new investigator named Raul. After our first lesson with him we were blown away by how prepared and willing he was to receive the Gospel. We taught him three times this week and he happily accepted a baptismal date for June 7th! Woo! But then yesterday afternoon we had another appointment with him and he wasn't answering the phone. We decided to go anyway and we took the Relief Society President with us as a team up. We show up at his house and we find his girlfriend who tells us that he is passed out from drinking so much... long story short we ended up teaching her instead and got her as a new investigator! So turns out Raul might need a bit more work and patience than we thought he would. Hopefully next time we visit him he'll be awake...and sober...

 

Saturday night there was a Mother's Day party at the chapel. The men provided the food because they didn't want the women to have to cook since it was their "special day"... so they ended up buying like 12 feet of sandwiches rather than having to cook haha. And of course the missionaries got a lot of the leftovers :) And our Peruvian investigators Cesar and Luz came to the party too :)

 

Tomorrow we have an all-mission conference in Morristown. We have to be there at 7:30am which means we will have to leave from here at 5am :( But it's ok because we are getting trained for iPads tomorrow!! We haven't heard for sure whether we will actually receive the iPads tomorrow or at a later date, but it will be soon! I have heard rumors of iPads coming ever since I got to Jersey back in August, and now, 9 months later, it's finally happening!

 

<3 Hermana Harris

 

 

Skyping my family on Mothers Day!

 

 

Jersey Mike's!  My new favorite place.  So much better than Subway!

 

 

Dia de las Madres!

This week was crazy busy! So much stuff happened!

Tuesday we had interviews with President Taggart. He's awesome. He radiates the Spirit. He said that Hermana Bloxham and I make a powerful team. I'm so grateful to have her as my companion!

Wednesday there was a meeting at the mission home for all the new missionaries and their trainers. It started at 9am and we had to leave at 6am because we are so stinkin' far south. We heard trainings from the Assistants and President Taggart. Their daughter also told us some stories from her mission in Argentina. Later, all the trainers went downstairs with the assistants while the new missionaries stayed with President Taggart and talked about how they are adjusting to mission life.The trainers were able to talk to the assistants about what our companions are struggling with, and we all shared advice. I had no complaints at all about Hermana Bloxham. She came to the mission amazingly prepared and she is so positive and happy! Afterwards they fed us an amazing lunch- we can always expect that at meetings when Sister Taggart is involved :)

Thursday we were with a team up and went to visit one of our new investigators. When we pulled up in front of the house, the front door was open, but then by the time we got to the porch, someone had closed the door and nobody answered when we knocked :( Hate it when that happens... but then we decided to go to a different apartment complex and try to find a former investigator we've been looking for. When we got there we saw our Peruvian investigator Cesar, who also lives in that complex, getting out of his car. It was perfect timing. We talked to him and he had just gotten home from work and happily let us in for an impromptu lesson with the member that was with us. We read 3 Nephi 11 with him and talked about Jesus Christ visiting the Americas and he understood it so well and loved it! The Spirit was so strong. So it ended up being a good thing that our other investigator pretended not to be home, because it led us to an amazing lesson with Cesar! God knows what he's doing!

We usually don't get fed a ton. We maybe get fed twice a week. But this week we had SO MANY dinner appointments and we ate SO MUCH FOOD! Wow. Something I've learned is to never ask a Hispanic for "a little more food" because they will fill up the entire plate again and you will be expected to eat all of it. Hermana Bloxham and I have decided to go running more often to counteract all this oily salty Hispanic food we are being force-fed haha.

Yesterday our 18-year-old investigator Eddie went to church! He attended both the English and Spanish sacrament meetings because he speaks both languages and he is trying to decide which congregation he would rather attend. He seems like he doesn't want us to stop teaching him though so he may be leaning towards sticking with Spanish, because if he chooses the English ward we will have to give him to the English-speaking elders here. 

And of course the highlight of the week was getting to Skype my amazing family! We Skyped at the home of the Aparicios, a cute member family in the branch. When we Skyped on Christmas, we were only allowed to go for 40 minutes, but this time President Taggart let us go for an hour! It was so great to talk to them! The weird thing for me was knowing that it was my last Skype on the mission because I will be home before Christmas!! Crazy!! So the next time I see my family, it will be in person at the airport!

Happy Mother's Day!

<3 Hermana Harris

We like to match. :)  We think we're cute.

Spring!

Mi familia!

Wait for It

Happy Pday! I can't believe it's May! 

 

Wednesday we spent a couple hours volunteering in the Family History Center at our chapel. We've been going there almost every Wednesday since I got here. When I first started, I knew basically nothing about how family history worked. But now it is one of the highlights of my week. I love it!

 

Also on Wednesday we visited William again in his rehab center. He's been recovering from his fall for almost two months now, and it's been pretty frustrating because he wants to go to church so badly but he can't leave the center. He told us he should be getting home this week. But then again, he's already told us that about 4 times in the past month. So we'll just have to wait and see. 

 

Our progressing investigator Eddy is doing pretty good. He is reading the Book of Mormon and understands it well. He just needs to go to church! 

 

Yesterday we visited this cool Peruvian couple we've been seeing for a while. The English elders knocked their door a few months ago and the husband Juan answered the door and said "Hey, I think I'm a member of your church!" Turns out he was baptized in Peru when he was 8 but he hadn't been back to church since he was 10 years old so he had forgotten almost everything in the 35 years that he hadn't been to church. Over the past several months he has been coming back to church! It is a whole new world for him because he went so long without church, but he is loving it! Originally he would only come to sacrament meeting, but yesterday he went to the priesthood meeting too! Our focus with him is getting him prepared to receive the priesthood (since he stopped going to church before he turned 12, he never received it). His wife Elizabeth is Catholic, and is always willing to listen to us when we come over, but doesn't want to ever stop being Catholic. We'll see about that ;) 

 

We've been finding a ton of new investigators lately, and this week we had about 7 of them who said they would go to church on Sunday but none of them did :( We are just going to keep working hard and having faith that these people will have desires to progress and that we will also find new people who will! We're doing all we can, now we are just waiting to see results. 

 

It's interesting. This is the hardest I have been working on my mission, yet this is the longest I've gone without a baptism, and it seems like no matter how hard we try, we can't get a single investigator to church. We work so hard but we still aren't seeing many direct results of our efforts.  Hermana Bloxham and I always just collapse at the end of the day because we are so exhausted. . Yet despite all of that, I'm so happy all the time. It's weird how happy I am. Maybe part of it has to do with the awful winter finally being over. But in addition to that, something I've learned lately is that happiness is all about your attitude rather than external circumstances. So I am choosing to be happy!

 

<3 Hermana Harris

 

 Shadow Selfie

Jersey Pizza

Breakfast for Dinner