no snow yet but pouring rain

Hello,

I can't think of a very good intro to start out with so I'm just gonna
start writing about the week.

Last Wednesday we bought tickets online to tour the Yankees stadium. I
was super excited to go because I wanted to go on the field and the
locker room and to all those good places but we didn't go to any of
them. The reason we didn't go on the field is because they were making
it into the football field for the pinstripe bowl and I don't know why
we didn't go to the locker rooms.  We only went to the Yankees museum
and that was pretty cool they had a bunch of trophies and rings and
old jersey for famous players. The second place we went to was the
monument park which was also pretty cool and we finished with the
press box. It was kinda fun but defiantly not worth 23 bucks.

We came home did the laundry and bought food and played monopoly for
the rest of the p-day. I wish I knew how to play monopoly before the
mission because it is really fun. For me at least.

Thursday is weekly planning day, so we were sitting and planning and
out of nowhere our phone rings and it was president. We got a little
scared because president doesn't really call us unless we do something
bad or he need us to do something, so we answered the phone and he
just pretty much tells us that he has been thinking of us and wants to
make sure that everything was ok. Everything was good and so we just
continued planning.

That night before we were leavings he apartment to go out and work I
was checking the weather and it said that there was 100% chance of
rain. I don't know what we were thinking but we didn't bring
umbrellas, it didn't rain at first when we went to visit a lady but
then after we came out we were gonna take a bus but we just missed it
and the next bus was like 30 minutes away, we were about a mile away
from our apartment so we decided to walk and as soon as we started to
walk the rain just started to pour super hard. After a few minutes we
were all soaked and we didn't care anymore that it was raining. When
got home there were puddles of water everywhere.

Friday we had a ward party thanksgiving party and that was a lot of
fun. There was a whole bunch of food because pretty much every single
person brought a gigantic plate or a pot of something.

I don't really remember what we did Saturday.

Sunday we had the stake presidency come to our ward and one of them
didn't know how to speak Spanish so he gave his talk in English and
there was another guy translating. It was the first time in a long
time that I actually understood everything what the speaker was saying
to the congregation. It was great!

Monday we had a lesson with a guy named Matt we tracted into him. He
is catholic but is open to other religions and so we taught him the
restoration and the Book of Mormon a he said that he would read a
little bit before we can meet with him next Saturday. The next day he
calls us and he tells us that he read the whole 1st nephi and he wants
to keep reading because he loves it. We were really excited that he
had read that much and we can't wait to meet with him this upcoming
Saturday.

After the lesson we had a lot of time to tract and we tracted into a
lady, she opened the door and told us that she was very Catholic and
that she doesn't want to change religions, but we talked to her for a
little longer and then we were gonna leave but she invited us to come
over to her house on thanksgiving, I was a little surprised but didn't
say anything because it would be a great teaching opportunity and also
our 5th food appointment for thanksgiving.

Tuesday we had a few lesson but after our second to last lesson I
started to have a really bad headache, I thought I could wait it out
and let it pass by but in the middle of our last lesson I honestly
thought I was gonna throw up on the people because I just felt super
sick. The lesson turned out to be really good and nobody got thrown up
on. We came home at around 9:30 and I just went straight to sleep and
this morning I felt great again.

This is all I got, I hope that everybody has a great week and a
wonderful thanksgiving!

Love,

Elder Pugmire

Cold weather, tracking, serving, teaching - What a life!

This week has been pretty cold especially when its super windy, the wind blows pretty hard pretty much every day.

In the morning out apartment is always cold so for studies I usually wear a big winter coat over my proselyting clothes and a beanie and sometimes gloves. The good thing about our cold apartment is that it helps me stay awake for the studies.

So this is how the week went, on Friday we had a few hours of tracting and it was a very successful use of our time because we got 5 people to set up a lesson for next day. 

Saturday we had a youth come with us to go visit the people that we tracted into the other day, his name is Emerson he is 16 years old and was baptized I think in June or July I don't remember, anyways we only had one person answer the door (people do that here all the time, they would tell us to come back tomorrow and would not even be home) this lady was our last option because she only spoke French and a little bit of English, it was really hard to teach her because she didn't really understand what we were saying and she didnt let us come in so we had to talk to her in the hallway with a lot of distractions and somebody was blasting their music the next door. We gave her a Book of Mormon in English but we are also gonna give her one in Spanish as well. 

On Sunday we had 2 out of the 4 people with baptism dates come to church, it was Gabriela and her son Bryan but she only stayed for sacrament only because she said that she had a emergency so she left early but Bryan stayed for all 3 hours. 

Later that night we went to help out a family in the ward the Hernandez family to help them carry a chair out of the apartment to their car, they are gonna give it to some lady who lives in Washington Heights.

Monday pretty much nothing was happening until we tracted into this cool investigator his name is Eduardo Polacios, he is just one of these people who the lord has prepared for us to teach because as soon as he opened the door and we started talking to him I just felt really good and felt the spirit, he invited us and pretty much told us his life story how he was drunk he got in a bad car accident and went to jail. After that he decided to change his life and that's when we ran into him and we shared the restoration gave him a Book of Mormon and scheduled a next appointment. I can't wait to meet with him again. We finished the night with a family home evening at the bishops house like always. 

Tuesday we had service for old people again we serve them food, we had a lot of people this week because of the holidays and after that we just had 4 lesson 3 with less actives and 1 with a investigator. 

This was my week I hope everybody is good and everything is going well. 

Elder Pugmire 

Chillin in the Bronx

This past week has been pretty different. On Friday we had another
split with the district leaders (we have to split with them every
cycle at least 2 times) and this time Elder Richards went to work with
elder Cheney in his area and I stayed and took over our area with
Elder Perez. Taking over the area was a new experience for me and it
was also pretty hard. We had a great nightly plan for what we were
gonna do the next day, and in the morning we had really good studies
and planned out what we were gonna teach and everything seemed to go
the right way. We were pretty excited because elder perez' area is not
as good as ours and they pretty much never teach more then 2 lesson a
day, so we were pretty pumped to go out and teach like 6 lessons that
day, when we started calling to see if we can come over, the first
appointment cancelled, so we were like ok that's fine we still have 5
more, so we called the next and they also cancelled and you can guess
what happened to the next four appointments, they also cancelled. I
could not believe it because this was literally the only day where
every single appointment has canceled on us and I was in charge of the
area. I didn't really know what to do after that so we made some
backup plans. We decided to do lookups, first the less actives then
the potentials and after that if nobody opened the door we were gonna
tract or street contact. Well to keep the story short we pretty much
tracked the whole day. It was awful and to me it seemed like a whole
day went down the drain, but I did learn how to make backup plans if
everything falls through and I had a lot of practice how to knock
doors.

On Sunday we passed Delight Stackhouse our most golden investigator to
the sister training leaders, she was so awesome! She was a little sad
because we weren't gonna teach her anymore and she told us that we
would always have a special place in her heart because we were the
first to find and introduce the gospel to her, but at the same time
she was really happy and excited to take this new step in her life. I
think she is being baptized on December 12th.

Yesterday was a great day because we had a zone conference, and it was
awesome! My mission president is soooo cool and everytime that we have
these conferences with him I feel reenergized and just ready to go out
and do the work, I don't know how he does it but it's so motivational
and so uplifting that I don't even know how to decried it. Also we got
to see a new video that the church came out with for Christmas and it
actually doesn't come out until November 29th but we got to see it
early and it is so cool, I can't wait until it comes out so I can show
it to people.

Also I forgot to say this before but right now I'm sitting at the
church writing this email and the house of Edgar Allan Poe is right
across the street, it's kinda random but it's pretty cool. Thats
pretty much it.

Love,
Elder Pugmire

Halloween Week

Another week has past by and it was a really good one. On Friday we had a lot of time to go street contacting and door knocking, we didn't have much success but we did run into a lady who was pretty interested but we haven't been able to contact her yet. After we talked to this lady we went down to the bus stop to catch the bus because we were gonna go back home but we wanted to take a picture before we leave and we saw this one guy standing there and we asked him if he could take it. After I asked if he would like a card with a picture of Jesus Christ and he said yes and we started to talk to him about church and that kind of stuff. He has never heard of Mormons before except from South Park and we explained to him what our church does and believes and he was really interested. He has been trying to change his life around and he has been praying for help, but he said it was really hard for him to do it by himself. We talked to him about the plan of salvation and also gave him the Book of Mormon and he was super excited. We talked with him for about 25 mins and then he left. He was really happy that we ran into him and decided to talk to him and he kept saying how he was so happy that he could not stop smiling. It was really cool to see how the lord prepares people to hear the gospel and this was one of these times. 

On Saturday was Halloween and we pretty much didn't get anything done because we didn't have any appointments and nobody answered any doors because they were gone or they just didn't want to listen. We also had a curfew at 6:30 as well so that limited our time to do the work, but we saw a lot of cool costumes.

Sunday was great we had 2 investigators come to church Morena and her son Nathaniel. Morena wanted to leave after Sunday school but Nathaniel wanted to stay and so he convinced her to stay the last hour and also we made a deal that if they came to church this week that me and elder Richards would have to go to their 7th day Adventist church this Saturday. I'm pretty excited to go and see how other churches are like. 

Also on Sunday we had a really cool lesson with this one lady he name is Delight and she is what you call a golden investigator. I really like her because she is really nice and even thought we only had one lesson with her she has read so much in the Book of Mormon. I don't really know how to describe her except that she has been the best investigator that I had so far, but the bad part is that she only speaks English and so we would have to give her up to the English sister but that's still ok because thats another soul coming into Christ. 

On Tuesday we had a Lesson with the Aguilar family and the thing they need to do is to go to the temple and be sealed as a family because the Mother has a disease called muscular dystrophy and she is slowly dying and they need to go to the temple soon but she has been really scared because she can't see or walk very well so we brought the ward family history person and she gave a really good lesson, she went to town about temples and family history and how important the temples are in our lives, because we have temples we can be together for ever with our families.

Today me and elder Richards and elder price and elder salceda went to the city to just go and explore and also me and elder Richards did some initiatory, it was very nice. It really cool to walk down the noisy streets and then enter the temple and as soon as the doors close its nice and peaceful and quiet. 

That's it for this week.

Elder Pugmire