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Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Snow!

December 1, 2019

Hola everyone! And Happy Thanksgiving!! This week was pretty interesting for me, because my companion, Elder Stanford, was sick! He had a fever of 102, and also had a problem with his tonsils. So Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday we went to the apartment throughout the day because he was told to rest. While he slept, I cooked, cleaned, studied, and just tried to stay productive. But when he woke up, he insisted on still going out and teaching people! What a trooper! He was in a lot of pain but he did well, and we were able to get a lot of people taught.

We had plans for dinner on Thanksgiving with a member named Gustavo. But the night before, he cancelled on us! We were SO SAD! But we were told to contact the mission presidents wife, Sister Teuscher, if we didnt have plans for dinner. Somehow, she found us a family to eat with, which we were VERY GRATEFUL FOR! The family we ate with was so amazing! They were just the nicest people ever, and thanked us for serving missions and told us that we are their heroes. And the food was phenomenal! I said this last week in my email too, but latinos KNOW HOW TO COOK. I dont know what they do, but its magical.

Friday was also magical. We had exchanges! That means we switched companions/areas for the day. I went to a place called Rego Park (which is also in Queens), with Elder Vergara. He is really cool and we have so much in common! It was just an amazing day. He is from McAllen, Texas (Elder Booth from my district in the MTC is serving in his home ward!). He is also the Zone Leader so I learned a lot from him. Anyway, Elder Vergara and I have a LOT of similar interests, and we ate a bunch of food, but we also worked super hard. He walks faster than anyone I have ever met. Like... I cant even explain how fast he walks. We were walking through the mall because it was a shortcut to another street we needed to go to. But we forgot that it was BLACK FRIDAY. It was insanely busy, and Elder Vergara was walking so fast and disappeared into the crowd and I lost him! Haha it was really confusing and scary but after a few minutes we found each other by the exit. I dont recommend Black Friday in NYC. I wasnt even shopping, but it looked scary. On our way home at the end of night, we were both super hungry, so we stopped at a bakery to get some food. We picked out a few things, and when we got to the end of the line to pay, someone else payed for our food! That is VERY rare in New York City! The guy that payed for us wasnt even a member of the church, he just likes missionaries. We gave him a Book of Mormon and got his phone number, so Elder Vergara has a new person to teach. It was really cool, and really rare! We were super happy! ALSO, we were very far from home and needed to take a bus, but we just barely missed the bus by a few seconds, and saw it driving away. It was probably a 30 minute wait for another bus to come, and we didnt want to wait in the cold. Luckily, my whole 3 months of Track practice came in handy, because I chased the bus down for a few blocks and caught it! Elder Vergara was behind me and threw up because he just had a donut from the bakery. It was hilarious. Anyway. It was a good day.

Our plans for Sunday night got cancelled, and our only option was to go out and knock doors. Theres a thing called "prime time", which is the time that people are most likely to be home and willing to talk. That time is 5-9 PM, and we arent allowed to be doing anything else except for teaching during that time. So, at 5, we started knocking doors. Unfortunately, it was SLEETING. I have never even heard of sleet before, but apparently its like snow, but more solid and more painful. We were outside for 2 hours, getting pelted, and getting rejected by people. We were so cold and wet! We eventually decided to go subway contacting so we could get out of the cold. We went up and down on the subway for a few hours, without a destination, with the purpose of talking to people. It was much warmer and dryer, and we were able to talk to a lot more people. I met some super awesome people, and shared videos about Light The World with people on the subway! It was so much fun! My favorite people I met were 2 teenage girls from Norway, here on vacation. Their accents were awesome and it sounds like their home town looks pretty much where Frozen takes place.

Thank you so much to the people that sent me letters this week, both physical letters and emails! I got them and loved them! Thank you for reading my emails too! Love you all so much!

Elder Webster

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