Letter from Hermana DeLong

Hello family and friends ! How are you all doing? I'm doing alright. The keyboard is missing some keys so if this looks weird than, I'm sorry. Anyways... this week was another hard week. I'm pretty sure every hispanic person in our area works 24 hours a day and when they go home for a break, they have no desire to listen to us. We had one lesson this week with a man named Santiago. The only thing is we haven't got his phone number and we can't get in touch with him right now. I felt so dumb leaving that house without his number. I forgot and by the time we remembered we were too far gone. This last week we had a general authority come and teach us during mega-zone-conference. His name was Elder Bowen. He is super cool. He made a lot of great points, one of them was about less-active members of the church.He said that there are no less-active members in the church, there are just members who don't understand the doctrine. Which makes sense. It makes sense to me because there are so many people I've known in my life that have said that being LDS is difficult, because we have to many rules. But if they understood the doctrine they wouldn't see them as rules as  much as they would see them as saftey nets. Obedience makes you happy, disobedience makes you unhappy. It's as easy and simple as that.

The other night we were out knocking doors because we don't  have anyone to teach and we came to this door and I knocked it. Then this man on the other side of the door said, "No one is home." And I told him in the best spanish I could that I knew  there was someone in there and that I knew the message we had to share is something he needed in his life. The other side of the door was silent and we left to go to the next door, then as we were talking to a woman at the door, he came out. Max. We went and talked to him and I told him that he needed the gospel in his life so him and his family could be together for eternity. He said he would listen to us some other time. But I felt like I had made my stand, and like I had been a straight-forward and honest missionary. Compare this to three days ago me standing there against the Wolf & Lamb resturant crying and wondering why in the world I am here. I'm not quite sure of that exactly anymore. It's been really difficult, no one will listen to us andwe haven't had any number success. I feel like we've been trying really hard, and working non-stop but haven't seen much come from it. I guess it's all with time. It's like the talk from Elder Holland about missionary work and the atonement. How he said we have to wade through just a small part of what Christ experienced, because salvation is not cheap, and it was never ever easy for him, so why would it be easy for us? I also listened to a talk about Grace this week and was reminded that we aren't trying to EARN our way to heaven, and that we aren't paying back a debt, we are here to PRACTICE for Heaven. Because Christ already paid the debt in full. We are saved by grace, but that doesn't mean we get to be with God again. Not without works. Our good works determine if we will make it back to his presence again.

Funny stories. We were on the bus the other day and there was this lady with a walker in the front handicap spot. Her walker was HUGE and was blocking most of the pathway in. She had a bunch of bags full of cat food, because little old ladies always buy cat food to feed the stray cats. So this old jewish man get's on the bus with his walker and he is trying to get on but the lady is blocking the entire walkway! There is a huge line outside of the bus with people trying to get on, and the little lady wont move. This man from the back of the bus went and tried to help her move her walker, but as soon as he reached forward to touch it, she slapped his hand then started yelling at him in Russian. So she is yelling, the jewish man is yelling and then this indian man stands up and starts yelling at the lady to come to the back part of the bus so she is out of the way. But she wont. She wont let anyone touch her walker, the jewish man can't get in and he is getting mad. So finally the little lady moves over a few seats and is somewhat out of the way, but people are trying to get on, and they can't because of the walkers. She finally moves it and leave the handicap bench empty. The indian man is still yelling, and I'm pretty sure that the jewish man was crusing in hebrew. So this other little lady gets on and sits on the empty handicap bench, and everyone is screaming and she just reaches up and turns off her hearing-aid and starts to laugh and smile to her face. It was super funny. I really wish I would've video taped it.

I'm trying to be more healthy, and my companion is a pretty healthy girl too. So we went on a 3.5 mile run today around prospect park here in Brooklyn. It was pretty fun. I had a hard time, but I ran the entire thing and old stopped to get a drink of water once. It was great! I feel awesome now. I'm running out of food though, and healthy stuff. SO I'm going to have to do some major shopping today. My companion Hermana Zimet is a fashionista, so I feel really frumpy next to her and all I want to do is buy new clothes. BUT I have to just get over it because I can't afford that, and that's not why I'm here. I'm here to preach the gospel and I'm going to do it even when I don't feel like it! HA Anyways, not much else happened this week. It was a struggle, but good. I'm learning more and more everyday that I need patience and more love.

 

Love,

 

Hermana DeLong

 

P.S. If anyone is interested in sending me anything (which you totally don't have to this is just in case.) I like fruit leather, maple oatmeal, cereal, and granola. :D