Presto

Que tal?

Sup? :) jk. Okay so awesome rockin week I'm pretty sure last friday was the best day of my mission yet but I'll get to that later first of the week first. OKay mom, you ready for this. Guess where I went last p-day? Don't be jealous... :) So my comp. scheduled this tour about 6 months ago and they were all filled up when she scheduled it until march but then they called her back and told her they had a cancellation for January if she wanted to come then. She didn't even know if she was still going to be on her mission but she decided to take the appointment just in case and then it worked out that she did up extending/training me and I totally benefited from the coincidence. So my companion and I went along with four other missionaries to the Steinway & Sons Piano Factory here in queens. Man! Mom it was so cool! You would have loved it. I watched a piano be born and I stood in a room with more than a million dollars worth of wood for piano's. I watched how they construct them and the effort that goes into the masterpieces. Our tour guide was so cool and definitely passionate about music. Each piano is unique and I learned a lot of cool things. I wrote it down in my journal so maybe in a year and a half we can find my journal and I can tell you all the cool random facts about Steinway. But por ejemplo, did you know that the hammer key part is put together by them factory women and the construct more than 60 different little parts by hand. I also watched the artisans construct the harp into the belly of the piano. Their precision and accuracy is amazing. It makes me want to get a Steinway when I grow up. The lucky man I'm going to marry will have to love me a lot haha because I really want a steinway hahaa. But ya, you would have liked it mom and I thought of you. I was glad I was sister Stephens companion so that I got to be part of that great tour. We even did a little missionary work on the tour because our tour guide was of course curious about us missionaries. he told us we were cousins because he is protestant. yet he really admires us youth going out and preaching the gospel. It was chill.

Mom, second thing is... you need to know I wasn't lying about the bread. Ya, my package really did come almost 2 weeks late but my food wasnt' bad at all. We really did enjoy it. When that last delivery came into the office right before christmas and my package wasn't there I was a little down and I said god if my package isn't here for christmas would you please just let everything in there stay good until I do get it? He gave me the warm fuzzy feeling- spirit saying yes. So naturally when i got the package it was absolutely delicious. I still have the loaf of bread actually. Its in the freezer and I finished up the rolls this morning. The tea ring tasted absolutely Delicious and fresh and I really do think the cold helped it stay good. But I'm a sister missionary and the lord definitely listens to my desires of my heart and often grants them no matter how small. :) Even if it is just tea ring that I love oh so very much. So thank you for your thoughtfulness. I loved it/loving it all. The boots are absolutely perfect.

Rego Park here is awesome. Lots of rockin people and the lord truely is blessing me. There are so many people that I just think are awesome. I dislike talking about them because I almost feel like I jinx them in the coming week so I don't know how much depth I want to go into but I'll tell you one of the miracles I've seen this last week that I just love. He is our new investigator Colton Rupp- I mean Jonathan :) Yet every time I'm talking or teaching him I almost call him Colton. lol. Jonathan is 21 and just moved here to New York here by himself from Ecuador about 5 months ago which means about the time of my mission. My companion and I have only taken a wrong train 2 times in the time I've been here and both times we have randomly contacted really good people. Jonathan happens to be one of these times so in my opinion it is fate. My companion and I were sitting waiting for the subway. I had this feeling to go talk to him but made some rationalizations/excuses because I had already had some bad contacting experiences for the day and he looked younger which often times means they don't even speak spanish or they would rather die than have to try and listen to you speak it to them. lol. si entiendes? Anyway I know bad excuse right. I know I don't need the lecture trust me i've given myself one. :) Naturally shortly after that my companion gets the same impression and asks me if we should go talk to that kid standing up against the wall. I said ya, probably... i was thinking along the same lines. So we target this kid and approach him as many other people throughout the day. We just decide to approach him in english but he says " sorry I'm not confident in my english, I've only been here for a little less than 5 months learning english" The only thing is that he said it without hardly any accent at all and he spoke so formally. I think that's another reason why he reminds me of colton is because he speaks so formally and uses very educated word choice. He is also very philosophical and well read. The more I get to know this kid I'm absolutely appalled that he has only been speaking the language english for 5 months. That's the same as me! If he can do I should definitely be able to do it with Spanish right? lol He said he just practices with himself in the mirror which he finds awkward yet helpful and then only listens to english music, books, and movies. He's definitely able to talk the language of his heart better in spanish but his english is better than most people here the states I think and it just amazes me how smart this kid is. Anyway we start talking to him about the restoration. He really thought it was interesting but he had so many questions for us. By this time we are on the train and we realize we are going the wrong direction so we tell him we would love to tell him more and meet with him another day. Cause we had to switch trains... yadadyadada. So we get his number and call him the next day and set up an appointment. Long story short we taught him a couple of times this last week. We gave him his book of Mormon to start reading. He asked for it in English but we also gave him Spanish because we told him the old english is sometimes hard to understand. By the time we came back a couple of days later he had read to page 30 which is super awesome. Not only in the English but in the Spanish too because he wasn't sure he was understanding the English. He has read the Bible cover to cover a couple of different times he says and finds the Book of Mormon very interesting. He is very curious about our religion. He likes the restoration but he doesn't know if he believes that God the father and Jesus Christ could actaully appear to a boy younger than us to restore his church yet he still thinks it very curious. He says ever since he met us on the train he was very curious to the happiness that we seem to have. He thinks we are different than other people and he wants to find out more about why we are the way we are. He can't imagine going on a mission for a couple of years simply out of faith and love for God. Yet he is already learned so much. I honestly have no idea what will become of Jonathan through teaching him. He's so analytical! Yet we taught him how to pray and when we called to check up on him the next day to see how his reading and prayer was.... wow. Like I said he had read to page 30 in the BOM (spanish and english both) so really that's like 60 pages and then he said that he prayed for a whole hour. He said he felt really weird at first just talking out loud but then it just started all coming out he said and an hour later he closed his prayer how we had taught him. He said it was like therapy. I said well " God is the greatest therapist of us all no?" So it makes sense that you would feel good after talking to him. If god created us he obviously knows best how to help us and how to make us feel good when we are done praying. He said I know it makes sense. Yes it does. IT just makes sense. Why can't all people see that? GO JONATHAN!!!! Anyway and then next time we taught him we committed him to come to church. He had to work all night saturday into sunday mornign into Manhatten and so that didnt' go over very well for him but then we talked about the importance and even if he could only make it for the first hour it was better than none. He agreed. This is the other thing that I like about Jonathan is that he actually does what he says he is going to do. So he did he came straight from work in Manhatten to Church after a long night. Not only did he stay for first hour but all three he ended up staying for. He loves the single adults we have in the ward. They rock. We took a couple of them with the appointments we had earlier in the week and they just absolutley involved him in everything. Then he went home and slept and then we took him to teh CES fireside with elder christoffereson. Whcih was cool and he took so many notes and just loved it! Todo bien he said. I just really think he is awesome and so smart about everything. I really hope things continue to go well and that he just really continues to have light and knowledge as we teach him.

Oh no, i'm running out of time but i'll keep you updated. I'm really worried about Ana. Pray for her.

Loves and hugs.

Sister lewis