Baby, It' Cold Outside

 

Well another transfer has come and gone. I have been in the field for 3 now. I am on my fourth (and probably my last) transfer here in Union City. I only have 6 more weeks left of training Sister Stone! Time flies when you're having fun! So Carlos, the Dominican we contacted last week, has quickly become our main focus because he is progressing so fast! He is definitely the most prepared person I have ever found! He asks perfect insightful questions and always takes notes in a little notebook. In a lesson this week we were talking about how faith needs time to grow and then he said "So does that mean faith is like a seed?" and I was like "funny you should ask that because that's pretty much the whole point of an entire chapter in the Book of Mormon" so he immediately grabs his little notebook and asks what page Alma 32 is on so he can write it down and remember to read it. He's awesome! He is now on baptismal date for the 28th of December. His two sons Sebastian and Argus aren't as enthusiastic about the church as he is (probably just teen angst haha) but they come to church with him at least, and we know that if their dad continues to be such a good example to them they will eventually follow him. There were a lot of little miracles this week. One we really appreciated was on Thursday. Our dinner appointment cancelled on us, and we had a lot of other people to visit so we weren't going to have time to go home and eat. We were about to go into an appointment with a less-active lady and we were really hungry so right before the appointment we prayed that she would feed us even though she usually doesn't. Then less than a minute after letting us into her home, she asks us if we've eaten yet, and when we told her that we hadn't, she gave us a huge mountain of delicious Dominican food. Prayer works! We also had a lot of little funny moments this week, We were reading in 1 Nephi with our investigator Agner from El Salvador and Sister Stone mentioned about how in 1 Nephi 17, Nephi's brothers are trying to hurt him and then he puts out his hand and shocks them with the power of God. Then Agner just laughed and said "Es como Dragon Ball Z!" and then he just giggles for about two more minutes. We thought it was pretty funny that he likes that show (I never knew much about it but always thought it seemed super dumb) and that he could relate it to the Book of Mormon haha. But whatever works! Also on Saturday we were at dinner with Hermano Jimenez, the second counselor in the bishopric, who is from Costa Rica. His teenage son was there and I asked him "so if your dad is from Costa Rica and your mom is from Argentina, where were you born?" And he said "North Bergen" (a city right next door to Union City) but Sister Stone thought he said "North Korea" and was really confused for a bit...a Costa Rican and an Argentinian having a kid in North Korea... makes sense. It's getting pretty cold here... I don't think I'll ever complain about California or Utah cold again because East Coast cold is humid so it's so much worse. Everyone keeps telling me it's only going to get worse as the winter goes on :( This will be my first White Christmas! And speaking of Christmas, we finally got to see the "He is the Gift" video that the Church put out for Christmas! So now when we give out tons of cards and tell people on the street to watch the video, we won't feel guilty for telling them it's a great video when we haven't even seen it haha.  Have a great week everyone and spread some Christmas cheer! <3 Hermana Harris

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.

Estomago lleno de Pavo

  

We got matching hats and we already had matching CCM shirts...

​matchy matchy cutie cutie 

 

 

Hola Everyone! Hope y'all had a great Thanksgiving! This week was super awesome!

 

First of all, the work is going great. We've been picking up so many new investigators these past couple weeks, I can barely keep up with all of them. Also our 16-year-old Guatemalan investigator Diego is on baptismal date for the 21st of December! And we have a couple other really solid ones that hopefully will be on date soon!

 

Wednesday was the first day of snow this winter! And it snowed a lot! We were supposed to have our district meeting that day but it got cancelled because it was too dangerous to drive in the snow and all the missionaries were told they couldn't drive that day. Not that it really affected us since we don't have a car... so we were walking around Union City in heavy snow! Sooooo that was lovely.

 

Thursday was Thanksgiving! All morning long there was a Turkey Bowl with all the missionaries in this area of Jersey... there were probably like 60 of us. And it was about 30 degrees and it was snowing almost the whole time. Two things I usually am not very fond of are 1) Football and 2) Snow. And I did both of them, at the same time, for 3 hours! So I was pretty proud of myself for putting on a smile and just doing it haha.

 

 

Playing football in the snow and trying to have a good attitude about it

 

And of course, we had to pay tribute to our favorite place :)

 

 

My district at the Turkey Bowl

 

Elder Bryce Davis, from good ol' Temecula

  

Then in the afternoon we had dinner at the home of the Quiles family. The wife is from Ecuador but the husband was born in New York and he's just about as white and American as someone in a Spanish-speaking ward can be. So he cooked us a very good and very American Thanksgiving dinner. The mashed potatoes were the best potatoes I've ever had ever... probably because there was 2 cups of sour cream in them haha. We ate so much and they kept telling us to eat more. It was a struggle! Then after we finished eating we watched the Prince of Egypt on their TV. There's a list of certain movies missionaries here are allowed to watch on Pdays and holidays and Prince of Egypt is one of them! And we had been wanting to see it forever so finally getting to watch it made our Thanksgiving that much better :) And of course they sent us home with approximately 10 pounds of leftover food. Later, we went and ate again at the home of a sweet Dominican lady in the ward named Hermana Lara. This was a very Dominican meal... rice and plantains haha. Then we were almost out of time but we also got to stop by and meet the family of our recent convert Emilio. By that time we were so full so we literally only had a roll.

 

 

A very American Thanksgiving.

It was good to have American food at a member's house for once!

  

Thanksgiving Dinner # 2 - This time, very Dominican

  

Marisol's Farewell! She has gone on so many team-ups with us and we don't know what we will do without her! But sweet home California needs her!

 

 

There's a girl in the ward named Marisol and this weekend was her farewell. She leaves this week for the California Ventura Mission. Lucky girl! On Friday there was a big farewell party for her at the church building and there was SO MUCH FOOD... as if we hadn't already eaten enough this week. And there was a cake there that was made at the famous Cake Boss Bakery in Hoboken! But alas, I was not able to eat it because the missionaries had to go home and get to bed before the people in the ward got to the cake </3

 

​The cake from the famous Cake Boss bakery

 

 

Hope everyone is doing well! I can't believe it's already December!

 

<3 Hermana Harris

 

 

 

Accion de Gracias

At the Thanksgiving Party

 

Well the dreaded cold has officially come. I can honestly say that I never knew what it truly meant to be cold until this week. Tuesday night was the worst. It was probably 20 degrees, which I have been in before, but the cold is so much worse here on the East Coast because it's humid. So when I walked outside that night it literally felt like I had jumped in a pool of ice water. I'm used to the dry cold that Utah has, but this wet cold is so much worse. PLUS I'm in a walking area, so we are outside in the cold all the time. The only way to survive is layers upon layers upon layers!!

 

So there is this recent convert named Emilio (from Ecuador) . He got baptized 2 days before I got to Union City, so I've been teaching him the recent convert lessons about once a week ever since I got here. For a while we were worried that he would go inactive because there was about 3 weeks in a row where he didn't go to church. But we worked super hard with him and I don't know what it was, but something got him to come back right when he was on the edge of going inactive. Now he's been back 3 Sundays in a row :) Also, Sister Stone challenged him to start reading the Book of Mormon from the beginning and finish by New Years, which is not very much time to read the whole thing. So I was a little skeptical about whether he actually would accept the challenge because he usually isn't very good about reading when we tell him to. BUT, a week later we checked up on his progress and he was already in Mosiah! Ahead of schedule to finish on time! And last time we checked a few days ago he was already in Alma! He told us that his testimony is growing every day as he reads more. It makes me so happy to see how well he is doing compared to just a month ago :)

 

Wednesday we didn't get any teaching time in because there was a meeting in Morristown for all the new missionaries and their trainers. It was weird because I remember being at that same meeting just 12 weeks ago as a new missionary, but this time I was going as a trainer! Time flies...

 

Friday was really awesome. The ward had a big Thanksgiving party with a ton of food. Apparently Hispanics actually do celebrate Thanksgiving, but they call it "Accion de Gracias". The party was super fun and of course lots of good food :) Hispanics know how to throw a party! Also our progressing investigator Diego (from Guatemala) showed up!  So we pulled him aside to teach him a quick lesson and we had Emilio be our last-minute team-up! It was Emilio's first time helping us teach someone else and he did so good!

Sister Galvan, me and Sister Stone - Three Generations

In general the rest of the week was pretty good. We contacted a ton of people and got some pretty solid potentials and new investigators. Hopefully some of these people will start progressing this week!

 

So Sister Stone is always talking about how I am apparently incapable of being mean or getting angry about anything. Yesterday she compared me to Giselle in the movie Enchanted how she tries to be all stern and angry and goes "I'm angry!" and just kinda giggles. Because according to her whenever I get somewhat angry I just laugh and smile and brush it off. I just thought it was really funny because I've never identified with Giselle before but  I do love that movie!

 

These past couples weeks everyone's been talking about Thanksgiving/ Accion de Gracias even though it's still not quite Thanksgiving. But it's awesome because it helps me to be grateful for everything. Even things to complain about, if you try hard enough you can turn it into something to be thankful for. Like this cold weather. At least it's not snowing yet right? :)

 

I hope everyone has a good Thanksgiving! It'll be weird not being home for it, but don't worry about me. We've already got two different member families feeding us for Thanksgiving, I will be well fed and well taken care of :)

 

<3 Hermana Harris

Field Trip

 

There's a little bridge from Jersey to the Island. Only authorized personnel 
​can go on the bridge. And we get to go on it :)

 

 

Never gets old

Hello everyone!

So this week was by far the coldest it's been since I got here. I've started wearing fleece tights every day because if I don't, my legs are freezing and I'm miserable. It hasn't snowed yet, but people are saying it should be snowing next week. I'm just so grateful that we made it this far into November without snow. People told me that last year it was snowing on Halloween, and the rest of the winter was insanely awful. I remember seeing on the news how bad the winter was in the East Coast last year. It looks like this winter isn't going to be as bad. Thank goodness!

 

But aside from the cold, this week was pretty awesome. We had 7 new investigators! So we're super excited about that. All our other numbers this week were pretty good too. Sister Stone is a boss! She is making our numbers go way up!

 

On Wednesday we had individual interviews with President and Sister Taggart. These don't happen very often; this was the first time since I got here over 3 months ago that I had a personal interview. Right before our interviews, we found out that the Taggarts' daughter was in the middle of giving birth right at that moment. They were on the phone with her for a little bit but then they went back to the interviews. It really made me appreciate them and realize just how big of a sacrifice they are making. Sometimes I feel like I am sacrificing so much to be here, but this made me realize that they are sacrificing even more. They missed the birth of their grandchild! The interviews went well. President Taggart is an amazing man and he radiates the Spirit!

 

On Saturday we got to go to Ellis Island again! Field trip time! Haha Ellis Island is always super fun. I feel like I always take pictures of the same things while I'm there but oh well, you can never have too many selfies with the Statue of Liberty, right? It was Sister Stone's first time so of course she was super excited, and of course we ended up taking wayyy too many pictures.

 

So there's this family we've been visiting once a week since I got here. Rosalba is an inactive member, and her boyfriend Alfredo isn't a member. They live together and have two little boys. We've been working so hard with them because they have so much potential. We really want Alfredo to get baptized, but before that they first have to get married because they are living together. They always read the Book of Mormon when we leave them reading assignments, but they haven't come to church in years. Honestly I was about ready to give up on them because it seemed like they were never going to change. BUT yesterday, they showed up to church 15 minutes early! I was so shocked I just stood there for a second. I never thought I would ever see them in church, but it happened! We've talked with the ward Relief Society President about them and she really wants to get the RS together to throw them a wedding. If I can see them get married before I leave this area, that would make me so happy. Of course I want Alfredo to get baptized, but marriage is the first step for them. We are super excited!

 

Yesterday our phone randomly shut off and wouldn't turn back on. We feel pretty helpless without our phone because we have no way of calling people and scheduling/confirming appointments. Also, every Sunday night we have to send in our numbers for the week to our district leader, but we couldn't do that without our phone. So we went to the apartment of this nice old Cuban lady who lives across the hall. She's the sweetest thing ever and she let us use her phone to call our district leader and then she gave us ice cream! So it turned out alright :)

 

Have a great week!

 

<3 Hermana Harris

 

  

 

 

 

 

Perfect Week

Hola!

This week was great. We called it the "Perfect Week" because this was the first time in a long time that our numbers actually met or exceeded all of our goals for the week. Sister Stone is a boss and she made sure that we met our goals with total lessons, team ups, new investigators, stuff like that. We found some awesome new investigators this week. One of my favorite ways to find new people (besides contacting on Bergenline) is knocking on random doors and when people open we say "Hola, estamos buscando Maria?" (Hi, we're looking for Maria?) And since there are sooooo many women named Maria here that's really a believable thing to say and people don't get weirded out. And if they say that there's no Maria there then we just say "Oh, sorry, well, we're missionaries..." and start talking to them. It might sound kinda dumb but we got an awesome new investigator this week named Diego out of doing it!

Our Mission President has promised each companionship that if they go through the area book and try to contact every single former investigator, at least one of them will get baptized. So that's what we've started doing. There are TONS of former investigators in our area book and it will take a long time to get through them all. So we are just focusing on one street a week (our area only has 11 blocks). We will eventually get through every single one in our area and we area excited to see the miracles that come from it!

Another thing that made this week perfect was that I got 3 letters and I got a package from my awesome family with Jesus the Christ and some old Ensign magazines, as well as some yummy fall treats. Made me super happy!

 

Also, after being super sad about leaving Union City, Hermana Galvan is back less than two weeks later! Long story short, one of the other sisters serving in Union City got emergency transferred, so her companion obviously needed a companion, so Hermana Galvan was sent back to Union City! She's in the same ward and everything, she just has a new companion and a new area now. But I am super excited because I'll get to see her all the time! And it was super special because even though the one week she was gone was the week Cristian was baptized, she got to see him get confirmed yesterday! Because (in our ward at least) convert confirmations are done in Sacrament Meeting the week after their baptism. So that was super cool for her!

Training is going good. Sister Stone is fearless! She's so great at contacting. When I first got here I was terrified of walking up to random strangers on Bergenline and talking to them. It took me a while, but I've learned to love it. Sister Stone already loves it! A bunch of the missionaries here who I haven't even officially met know who I am because they know me as the sister who's training right after being trained. Ha. So that's fun. People keep asking me how I feel about it, and I don't know what to say because I honestly don't feel like it's any different! Sister Stone is so awesome that it doesn't even feel like I'm training her. I'm still pretty new and I still have so much to learn!

<3 Hermana Harris 

 

Cristiaaaannnn

 

Hola everyone! Hope you all had a great Halloween!

So I am officially a mom/trainer now! I got to meet my hija on Tuesday. She is Hermana Stone and she is perfect! She is from Washington State and she's 19 too and she goes to BYU too! We get along so great and we know we are gonna have a blast during our 12 weeks together. 

Halloween is supposed to be pretty sketchy here, so all the missionaries in our mission were told to be in our apartments by 6pm on the 30th and the 31st. I loved it because we got a ton of time to just chill in our apartment and talk and feel like normal 19 year old girls for a while. It was awesome!

It's getting super cold here. Yesterday it was like 45 degrees all day. I've been trying to put off wearing heavy coats for as long as possible because I felt like wearing heavy coats was like admitting that it's actually winter. Last night I finally caved and wore my heavy winter coat because we are in a walking area and it was freezing!!! But we also know that it's gonna get much worse in the coming months... this California girl is gonna struggle! Pray that I don't get frostbite! 

 

Also CRISTIAN WAS FINALLY BAPTIZED YESTERDAY!!! After working with him for about two months and a sad setback when he didn't show up to his own baptism last week, we just had to have faith that it would all work out... and it did! He texted us this week saying that he felt horrible for being too nervous and skipping his baptism. He said that no matter what he would be ready this time. When we got to church yesterday he was already there waiting for us. After church quite a bit of people showed up to his baptism which he didn't love because he's pretty shy and doesn't like getting a lot of attention. But all was well and the baptism went smoothly! He was baptized by our new Bishop, Obispo Ernest. When he came out of the water he put his hands together and did a cute little bow (he's really into yoga so that was totally the type of thing we would expect from him). Afterwards he was talking to me and thanking me for changing his life and telling me how what I gave him was priceless and I may or may not have teared up a bit (or a lot). He said that the only thing that would've made it better would be if Sister Galvan could have been there. It was really sad that she coudn't be there since she's in her new area now but I called her afterwards and told her all about it. 

Happy November!

<3 Hermana Harris

 

Our last lesson with Cristian before Hermana Galvan got transferred.
I'm with my two favorite Argentinians! 

 

Four generations: My daughter, me, my mom, and her mom. (Sorry it's kinda blurry)

 

Sister Jorgenson (who was also serving in our ward here in Union City)

went home this week. We will miss her!

 

Me and my hija