It's raining in NYC

Hello family and friends!

It's been a rainy week in Staten Island but that doesn't keep us from sharing the light of the gospel!  This week wasn't very eventful... It was probably the slowest and least busy week on my mission. But that doesn't mean I didn't learn a lot because I most certainly did!  You learn something new everyday here. Like it's not safe to stand on wood floor beams that have been torn apart from a hurricane... I fell through the floor of a house we were scrubing mold in but no worries! Only a couple of bruises :)  My companions and I are learning how to teach as a trio which is kinda a challenge but I am learning a lot about the kind of love, patience, and selfless service Christ has for each of us.  Christ's entire life was spent doing His Father's work. Everything He said and did was not for himself, but for His Father. That is how I want to live my mission. It's hard to explain but it's something I am working on daily. Another thing I learned this week is that the only way we can become better everyday is to commit ourselves to changing or improving everyday.  That means we have to set goals and follow up on whether or not we are achieving these goals.  One goal I am currently working on is to write a goal based on what I studied and then to apply it throughout the day and at night try to determine if I completed it or if there is something I can do to continue to work on it. I feel like I am kind of rambling on right now but I hope that makes sense haha

Anyway, my invitation to you to help you come unto Christ is from Helaman. When Samuel the Lamanite was about to turn away and go home because he wasn't having success, the Lord told him to go and preach what it is in his heart. I thought about that phrase and realized that that's exactly how you and I can share the gospel. Share what's in your heart. That's all there is to it! I love my Savior, I love His gospel, and I love my family. So that is what I will share with the people here even though there way of life is much different than mine.  We are all different in this world, but we all need the Savior. It's universal. But also very personal. I am so grateful for the love He gives me daily. He truly strengthens me and lifts me and enables me to teach and love in His way.  I met a member this week who is a retired nurse. She was shocked when I turned down the nursing magazine she tried to give me but I was able to bear my testimony to her that the Lord has called me to provide an eternal service for his brothers and sisters. One that no amount of schooling would ever measure up to. "I am set apart from the world to serve the Lord, Jesus Christ." The mission vision President Calderwood has created is divinely inspired. It is my desire to make that vision the description of my mission.

Also...when we ask ourselves "why?" quickly ask, "why not?" The Savior took upon himself every pain, every affliction, every heartache, and struggle. So why shouldn't we?  We can't give back to the Lord anything that He has given us, but we can use the agency He has given us to choose to follow Him and become like Him.  I know the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints is the restored gospel of Jesus Christ once again on the earth. It is led and guided by a prophet of God who has been called to assist us in our lives.  This gospel is the way for us to have happiness and peace in this life. Share what's in your hearts, whenever and to whoever you can. I love you and thank you for all of your prayers and support. I am so blessed to have such an amazing family. I can't express how grateful I am to have been raised in a home where the gospel is the foundation. Sorry this email is all over the place haha I hope you have a wonderful last week of school!! Thanks again for everything!!

Love, Sister Meyer

Happy Mother's Day!!! I'm so sorry I wasn't able to talk a lot yesterday. It was SOOOO good to hear from all of you.  I love knowing that my family is being faithful and obedient. I was studying in Alma today I read about the stripling warriors.  I love this story so much. Why? Because it's true!!  The miracles that surround me are the result of being faithful and exactly obedient.  And the reason I can be faithful and obeident is because I do not doubt that my mother has a testimony of Jesus Christ, a love for the Savior, and a desire to raise her kids in righeousness.  Mom, with all of my heart thank you for giving me a reason to never doubt that this gospel is true.  I look up to you so much and hope to be more like you everyday.  Your charity, service, and patience is inspiring. 

 

This week was full of heartbreak but also full of so much joy!  Crazy how life can be such an emotional rollercoaster haha First off let me explain something about doing service here in Staten Island.  Yes we do help sisters in the ward with their gardening and moving and unpacking and such... but we also do some pretty insane and totally wicked things too!!! Like last week when we cleaned out the crawlspace of a house.  I had no idea crawl spaces even existed haha it's the space between the floor of a house that has been completely ripped out and the actual foundation of the house. if that makes sense ha anyway, so we get the lovely opportunity to jump down into a 3 foot space (sometimes smaller) and clean out dust, dirt, old magazines, garbage from the ocean, and even some dead organisms... gross! It's actually a lot of fun!  We also scrubbed the mold off of wood frames in an old flower shop that was wiped out by the hurricane.  Full body white jumpsuits, purple gloves, and masks.  It's a very stylish look (picture umpa-lumpas haha) I will send some pictures so you can get an idea of what to go buy at Home Depot for your next service project!

 

Okay, enough sillyness...We were so blessed this week in many ways.  First, we had a dinner appointment with a member and his nonmember wife.  Her name is Maria and she is such a faithful lady.  She expressed her trust in God and was willing to let us come teach her later in the week! I have never prayed and studied so much for a single lesson.  But I knew that her husband, in-laws, and so many others have been praying for her to become interested and now is the opportunity for  that to happen.  The lesson went wonderfully. When the spirit is the teacher, the lesson becomes God's lesson,  not my companions lesson, not my lesson, but God's lesson.  And that's all we can do as missionaries.  Please pray for her!!!  We are looking forward to meeting with her again this week.  We tried to throw together a YSA activity this week and tried to contact over 50 YSA's in Staten Island.  Only one showed up.  But through this experience we were able to set up an appointment to meet with a less active, found a referral of a street full of families, and enjoy the blessings that come as we followed the promptings of the Spirit. The Lord comprehends so much more than we can.  I truly believe that.  I also gained a stronger testimony of that as Brandon's baptism was once again postponed.  His mom is still sick and called me friday just before the lesson to express her concern that Brandon wasn't ready to be baptized.  Through so much prayer and studying and pondering we decided that we needed to prepare him a little more.  I bawled like a baby when I got off the phone with him after telling him that we were going to wait on his baptism.  But by small and simple promptings the Lord blessed us with comfort and guidance.  We visited his mom on saturday and then stopped by on Sunday to talk to Brandon.  He said a prayer with us before we left and the spirit once again testified that everything would work out.  It's incredible how much we NEED the Holy Ghost in our lives.  Sister Jorgensen and I had the great opportunity to give a workshop about keeping the sabbath day holy at our zone conference this last week.  I was reminded of how truly important and essential the sacrament is.  I am so grateful the Lord loves us enough to give us a chance to rededicate, recommit, and restrenghten our desire to follow the Savior. All of our questions and concerns about life can be answered as we make the gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism (or the sacrament), and receiving the Holy Ghost), the focus and path that we follow.  It's a lifetime process of enduring to the end but it brings continual peace, joy, and guidance.

 

So this upcoming week is transfer week and I'm SO excited!! I will be staying in Staten Island with Sister Jorgensen but we will be getting an additional companion!! This sister was called to the Brazil mission but hasn't received her visa so she gets to come out here with us! Which means I will have the opporunity to have an additional hour of study time called language study and I think I'm going to try to learn Spanish! How exciting?!  I'm really looking foward to it!  We also have a mega-zone conference this saturday with Elder Koeliker of the Seventy!!  I'm so stoked! Well I must be going, but please know that I love you, pray for you, and hope you are all finding peace and joy in your life.  Keep being the valiant and true stripling warriors that you are:) 

 

Love, Sister Meyer

Happy Mother's Day!!! I'm so sorry I wasn't able to talk a lot yesterday. It was SOOOO good to hear from all of you.  I love knowing that my family is being faithful and obedient. I was studying in Alma today I read about the stripling warriors.  I love this story so much. Why? Because it's true!!  The miracles that surround me are the result of being faithful and exactly obedient.  And the reason I can be faithful and obeident is because I do not doubt that my mother has a testimony of Jesus Christ, a love for the Savior, and a desire to raise her kids in righeousness.  Mom, with all of my heart thank you for giving me a reason to never doubt that this gospel is true.  I look up to you so much and hope to be more like you everyday.  Your charity, service, and patience is inspiring. 

 

This week was full of heartbreak but also full of so much joy!  Crazy how life can be such an emotional rollercoaster haha First off let me explain something about doing service here in Staten Island.  Yes we do help sisters in the ward with their gardening and moving and unpacking and such... but we also do some pretty insane and totally wicked things too!!! Like last week when we cleaned out the crawlspace of a house.  I had no idea crawl spaces even existed haha it's the space between the floor of a house that has been completely ripped out and the actual foundation of the house. if that makes sense ha anyway, so we get the lovely opportunity to jump down into a 3 foot space (sometimes smaller) and clean out dust, dirt, old magazines, garbage from the ocean, and even some dead organisms... gross! It's actually a lot of fun!  We also scrubbed the mold off of wood frames in an old flower shop that was wiped out by the hurricane.  Full body white jumpsuits, purple gloves, and masks.  It's a very stylish look (picture umpa-lumpas haha) I will send some pictures so you can get an idea of what to go buy at Home Depot for your next service project!

 

Okay, enough sillyness...We were so blessed this week in many ways.  First, we had a dinner appointment with a member and his nonmember wife.  Her name is Maria and she is such a faithful lady.  She expressed her trust in God and was willing to let us come teach her later in the week! I have never prayed and studied so much for a single lesson.  But I knew that her husband, in-laws, and so many others have been praying for her to become interested and now is the opportunity for  that to happen.  The lesson went wonderfully. When the spirit is the teacher, the lesson becomes God's lesson,  not my companions lesson, not my lesson, but God's lesson.  And that's all we can do as missionaries.  Please pray for her!!!  We are looking forward to meeting with her again this week.  We tried to throw together a YSA activity this week and tried to contact over 50 YSA's in Staten Island.  Only one showed up.  But through this experience we were able to set up an appointment to meet with a less active, found a referral of a street full of families, and enjoy the blessings that come as we followed the promptings of the Spirit. The Lord comprehends so much more than we can.  I truly believe that.  I also gained a stronger testimony of that as Brandon's baptism was once again postponed.  His mom is still sick and called me friday just before the lesson to express her concern that Brandon wasn't ready to be baptized.  Through so much prayer and studying and pondering we decided that we needed to prepare him a little more.  I bawled like a baby when I got off the phone with him after telling him that we were going to wait on his baptism.  But by small and simple promptings the Lord blessed us with comfort and guidance.  We visited his mom on saturday and then stopped by on Sunday to talk to Brandon.  He said a prayer with us before we left and the spirit once again testified that everything would work out.  It's incredible how much we NEED the Holy Ghost in our lives.  Sister Jorgensen and I had the great opportunity to give a workshop about keeping the sabbath day holy at our zone conference this last week.  I was reminded of how truly important and essential the sacrament is.  I am so grateful the Lord loves us enough to give us a chance to rededicate, recommit, and restrenghten our desire to follow the Savior. All of our questions and concerns about life can be answered as we make the gospel of Jesus Christ (faith, repentance, baptism (or the sacrament), and receiving the Holy Ghost), the focus and path that we follow.  It's a lifetime process of enduring to the end but it brings continual peace, joy, and guidance.

 

So this upcoming week is transfer week and I'm SO excited!! I will be staying in Staten Island with Sister Jorgensen but we will be getting an additional companion!! This sister was called to the Brazil mission but hasn't received her visa so she gets to come out here with us! Which means I will have the opporunity to have an additional hour of study time called language study and I think I'm going to try to learn Spanish! How exciting?!  I'm really looking foward to it!  We also have a mega-zone conference this saturday with Elder Koeliker of the Seventy!!  I'm so stoked! Well I must be going, but please know that I love you, pray for you, and hope you are all finding peace and joy in your life.  Keep being the valiant and true stripling warriors that you are:) 

 

Love, Sister Meyer

Hello!

 

I am so sorry I wasn't able to send an email last week.  My companion is feeling much better and we will keep thanking the Lord for her good health!  Thank you for your prayers!!

 

This week was good!  We did more service and have even more planned for this week... I love it!  We also did exchanges and I stayed here with Sister Santi, a really awesome missionary from California. We got a long so well and just laughed and talked a ton. Maybe too much.  But I was very grateful for the lessons I learned while working with her.  We also spent a few hours in Brooklyn with our zone knocking the doors of a few streets.  It was so fun!! Brooklyn is so different than Staten Island, a lot of walking and knocking haha I am very grateful to be where I am, working with the people here, and learning how I can become more like my Savior.  It's a marvelous life:)

 

So Brandon's baptism wasn't able to happen on Sunday because Saturday afternoon we got a call from him saying his mom had fallen in the shower. We weren't really sure what was going on so we left service and drove over to their house. An ambulance was pulling away as we got there so gratefully we were able to get ahold of Brandon (he just got a phone last week) and he told us where they were going.  We visited them in the emergency room, the elders came and gave her a blessing, and then we brought dinner to her last night. She is doing better, they aren't really sure what happened or what's wrong, so she's just recovering and resting at home.  So the baptism will be next sunday, we hope!  I'm so grateful for the way the Lord works.  His ways are definitely better than ours. 

 

Another lesson I learned this week is that having faith in the Lord means we trust Him.  There were a few days where I didn't feel like I was really receiving revelation or guidance and I couldn't figure out why.  But through diligence, patience, prayer, and study, I recognized that I was thinking too much and trusting too little.  The Lord will guide us. Trust Him.  My motto for this week was Faith, Trust, and Pixie Dust!  I don't remember where that came from or what pixie dust has to do with missionary work but I know that if we have faith and trust, life will be so much happier! I also know that the Lord is blessing our lives with tender mercies and too often we don't recognize it. Like the package you sent a few weeks ago? Ya I didn't get that until last wednesday but that's exactly when I needed it.  Thank you for the jeans, cookies, and general conference talks.  Those talks were truly an answer to my prayers and my companion and I really needed to be reminded of those words. Your challenge this week is to read Alma 37:44-46. The whole chapter is wonderful but those verses really stood out to me this morning.

 

Well I think that's it for this week!  We are going to try to make it to the Staten Island carnival today! It looks like the same rides they have at Lagoon! haha I love you all!! Thank you so much for your prayers, motivation, and love!

 

Love, Sister Meyer

"Be entitled to nothing, but grateful for everything."

Dear Family,

Sorry I didn’t get to email this week. My companion has been sick for a few days and as we went to the library she ran into the bathroom and threw up. I feel terrible and pray continually that she will have strength. She is such an amazing girl. Prayers are truly answered. I have no doubt. The first few weeks I had a hard time really loving her and I wanted so badly to support, love and learn from her. But the Lord has blessed me even more than that. Sister Jorgensen is so willing to ask for forgiveness, is always telling people she loves them and is constantly following the spirit. I love her so much. Together, we are seeing miracles. I don’t always recognize them as miracles because I don’t really have other things to compare to them but she tells me all the time “that never happens!’ or “people never let us talk to them like that!” I definitely believe we are here in Staten Island for a reason. We haven’t been able to find new investigators but we have been blessed to strengthen and reactivate less actives. People here are surrounded by the fast paced, depressed, overwhelming aspects of life. But the wonderful message that we as members of the church can share with them is that life can be full of joy, peace, and hope!! I know this because that is how my life feels. I love the life of a missionary!! I love studying for 3 hours everyday. I love being so busy that we forget to schedule time for lunch and dinner. I love serving the people here. It’s amazing how much faith people have when sometimes they are left with so little. I love my Savior. And I know He Lives. I love all this and more because I know the gospel of Jesus Christ is true and exists on earth today. I know it’s true because I have been able to experience it’s teachings by living it. And because I know and live the gospel (not perfectly but patiently) I love the gospel with all of my heart. I love repenting. I love praying and try to have a prayer in my heart continually. I love the Holy Ghost and know it is only through the Holy Ghost that what I say can have an effect on people. I love the Restoration, the Plan of Salvation, the Commandments and the Book of Mormon, the Atonement and I love the person I am becoming. I am becoming forever changed.

Just a few fun things that happened….last p-day my companion and I toured Staten Island a bit and took pictures by the gigantic turkeys and also saw some cool monuments of forts used in the Civil War. Fort Wadsworth? I think that is what it was called. Anyway it was pretty sweet! We also had a “Street Sweep” which means all the missionaries in our zone met at a church in Brooklyn and walked the streets handing out flyers for free English classes and church services. Why English classes? Well, because the streets are full of Chinese people!! Everywhere you look there are Chinese markets, Chinese writings…it’s crazy! So I learned how to say “free” in Chinese and tried to hand out the flyers but I’m pretty sure the people only took them because they thought I sounded funny haha It was great!!

Another fun thing this week was that one day when my companion wasn’t feeling well I took her to a place called “soup man”. It’s based off of the soup kitchen on Seinfield!  And it was delicious! We also had a couple in our ward make us dinner and then give us the grocery bags and said “Go Shopping” which meant we could fill our bags with anything in their pantry. They wouldn’t let us leave until they were full haha. What amazing people! Our fridge is full of meals from the loving ward members. We are hoping to gain their trust and serve them as much as they serve us.

So, Brandon Fenzano is going to be baptized May 5^th! I can’t believe it’s already May!! I’m really excited for Brandon and for his family. His mom is less active and has just started to come back to church. She was burned 2 years ago and also suffers from arthritis and diabetes. But her testimony has strengthened when a bishop would visit her in the hospital and read scriptures to her while she was in a coma. Dad, I know you would do the same and I want you to know your influence on the ward will bless them for years. So it’s been 10 years since she’s been to church regularly and now that she is coming back her son is getting baptized. She is a faithful and wonderful example. Especially to her husband, who is not a member but has started to open up more with us and is beginning to be more friendly to the missionaries. We are praying and hoping that he will also have a change of heart one day. Of course, all in the Lord’s timing.

My trust in the Lord has become such an anchor. I know the Lord is the one performing this work. He is just blessing me to be His hands, mouth and servant. It’s only when I forget or let Satan distract me from remembering why I am here that I get down. But without fail, the Lord’s arm of mercy is always extended. I have set goals and I am striving to repent and change everyday. I want to bring the light of the gospel into as many homes as will allow me to. I want to live with God again and live with my eternal family (which includes all the people her) in happiness and peace. And I know it is through the Atonement of Christ that this is possible.

God Be With You Til We Meet Again, I love you all   Love, Sister Meyer