January 3, 2011 Queens NY

I've been very lazy about posting any of Stephen's letters. Rather than trying to catch up I'm just going to start with January 2011. A couple of days before Christmas Stephen was transferred to the Flushing Queens area. It is the first time in his mission that he won't have a car. He will be walking or riding the bus. He hasn't sent any pictures of this area yet but I will post them when we get some.

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This week we spent a lot of time walking to peoples apartment to see if they were home and they were NEVER home. So we just kept walking and walking. Luckily I bought some nice boots on Monday and they kept my feet dry as I tromped through all of the slush and snow. We had a lot of good visits with some less-active members this week and two of the families came to church this week.
For new years eve we had to be in our apartments before 6:00 p.m. So we worked until 6 then went back to our apartment to update our area book and make plans for the upcoming week.
On Saturday, new years day, we had a "Street Sweep" with the whole zone. I spent the whole morning boiling water and pouring it into a big cooler for our free hot chocolate stand.
We filled it up with about 8 gallons of watter and then dumped 2 buckets of cocoa and I don't know how many little packets we put in, but it was a lot. I will show you a picture of the kitchen full of cocoa boxes and little cocoa packets. The street sweep went pretty well. It actually turned out to be a pretty warm day. We started at about 11:45 and it was probably 45 or 50 degrees outside. but it cooled down and everybody started taking the hot chocolate and we talked to lots of people. I talked to a man from Egypt for about 45 min. He told me that he was King Tut's great grandson but I wasn't so sure about it. He said you could tell because of the shape of his eye's...Anyways he has been in New York for about 2 months. He was interested in a book of mormon so I gave him a pass along card to call and order and he call the number right there and handed me his phone. So I talked to some girl in the referral office and we decided that it would be easier if I just gave the man a book of mormon right there. So I found one that another missionary had and gave it to him. He wanted one in Arabic so I picked up an Arabic copy from the church yesterday and we'll bring it to his house today or tomorrow. Then the English elders will hopefully start teaching him. He said his country is Muslim but he believes that we all worship the same God. He was very nice and he told me that when his daughter comes from Egypt that I can be her "friend"... Supposedly she is a gymnast and has the best grades in her Egyptian college. I told him I was leaving in July so it probably wouldn't work out. He gave us his number and told me to call him Bob Tut because his first name was Akawhajadab or something and it was to hard to say. The cool thing about New York is that there really are people from all walks of life and from any country you can think of.
My companion and I don't have too many investigators right now that we are teaching but we are really trying to do work with the less actives and all of the members so we can gain their trust and teach their friends and family. At the same time though we have to keep talking to everyone and trying to find people on our own. But there are lots of great members here and I have high hopes for the future. There are a couple of Chilean families in our ward so that's pretty cool. One of the Chilean members, Hermana Falcon, told me she was going to make me some empenadas so I'm excited for that.
Today we are going to go get some food from target for the week and we have a zone activity. For the zone activity we are going Ice skating, hopefully I don't hurt myself. I'll let you know if i do. I also forgot to bring my camera so I won't send any pictures this week. Next week I'll send you some pictures so don't fret.
Everything is going great. It's a little cold, but I got the package from and Ann with my Thermals in it so hopefully they will help keep me warm. Have and awesome week and have fun and all your camp outs!