An Adventure

Shortly after Christmas, we had a huge snowstorm that lasted most of Saturday and into Sunday.  All missionaries with cars had to park them and walk.  This wasn't a problem for the city missionaries, who didn't have cars anyway, but for us on Long Island, it meant we got a lot of exercise and not much else.  Sister Gines and I actually didn't even live in our area, so we left our area early on Saturday to park the car at our apartment. Then we trudged through snow to try and tract in an area that wasn't ours.  And we didn't live by very many houses/apartments.  So it was a little challenging.

Trudging through the snow

Passed the Amityville sign (where we lived) so we stopped for pictures

Found a random cart, so I hopped in

Church was cancelled the next day because of all the snow.  We didn't want to tract an untracteable area again, so we took the Long Island Railroad into our area.  I think it cost us like $7.  By then it wasn't snowing anymore, but we still weren't allowed to use our cars.  We met the elders in our district at the church to decide what we were going to do that day.  We decided to all walk to a house where an inactive member lived.  She wasn't usually home, but her sister was and we were trying to get her baptized since she had been coming to church for about a year and a half.  And she always fed us on Sundays.  (I heard after I came home that she finally did get baptized!)

So we made the long trek to their house, but first we got all bundled up (it was so cold!).  I'm the shorter one.:

Our district outside the church:

After we finally got there and ate and thawed out a little, we had a little snowball fight with the kids that live there.  (This definitely wasn't your typical Sunday.)

I think the rest of the day was spent trying to tract, look up inactives, etc.  By the time we got on the train to head back home, I was exhausted.

A Sad Story

During my first transfer we tracted into a family from El Salvador.  The oldest daughter, Louisa, was 15 years old and pregnant.  Not by her own choice.  One day she went down to the basement to take something to her uncle (whose family lived down there), and he took advantage of her.  When we met them I think she was about 8 months pregnant.  I can't remember if the uncle still lived there or not (we never met him).  It was one of the saddest things I've ever heard.  This family was very nice, quiet and unassuming.  So sad that something like that had to happen to them.

They did come to church once, but I think they felt kind of overwhelmed by all the well-meaning members, so they never came again.  We did visit them from time to time, though.  Louisa turned 16 so we made a cake and took it to her.

Our beautiful cake

Louisa blowing out the candles

We took the YW president with us, along with the one active young woman from the branch.
Left to Right: me, Santana (mom), Ines (little sister), Hna Chirinos, Louisa, Prisila Orduno