Elder Erik Rockin' Rochester: Life's swinging hard but I'm swinging harder

Happy Halloween

So our p day got moved off of Monday and onto Halloween. And our hours to work were moved from 6-9 to earlier in the day so we can stay in our apartment for the evening.

This fall is so disappointing because the trees turned so slow that there are trees that are barren and trees that are still green and all the in between. But now Its dropping in temperature.. real quick. I believe it snowed in buffalo today.(I was in Rochester because my companion was at the temple)

This week we went with the downtown Elders for a day. I was with Elder Samhammer who is from cedar city/Enoch area of Utah. I was with him for a day during the beginning of my mission in the GVB which is the YSA for Rochester and Palmyra. The first thing we did all day was knock a few door before a appointment and the first door we knocked on was a man that came out and sat with us and we spoke for a hour. After getting to know him a little it was quite clear he was ready for the message of the restoration. He was a talker but he seemed to get a lot out of it but in the end he didn't really understand the importance of what we shared. He is open to them coming over again though. His name was Al.

We visited several people in the hospital this week. (Our area has three or four hospitals) we gave a blessing to a man from the Lockport ward named Mike. We also visited a recent convert from a different ward in our stake in a mental health ward. While we were waiting to see her some crazy lady was talking to us until she found out we were Mormon. She proceeded to yell at us to go away and yell at people not to talk to us. The reasoning that insane people give for the things they think is really interesting to hear.

We were then told that the recent convert didn't want to see us. We later found out from her missionaries that she says no one told her people tried to visit...

We also tried to find a less active in the veteran hospital but he wasn't there anymore. We met a nice Jehovah's witness while we were there though.

We are meeting with a less active named Edwardo who only speaks Spanish. His girlfriend Marianella speaks English and Spanish though. She believes that the church is true and we are trying to help her progress towards baptism. (Lets hope I get a Spanish speaking companion) we met with them twice this week. Edward fed us Cuban food on Saturday which was amazing. He is a really chill guy. Elder Vizcaino helped him translate for his lawyer earlier In the transfer.

They both came to the Halloween party that the ward had on Friday evening.

That same Friday evening, before the ward activity, we got invited to a spaghetti dinner thing at some Catholic church by a former investigator that we had never met. But we were planning on trying to contact her this week so it was cool. It was really weird and no one talked to us except a man named Tommy. The lady who invited us, Dorothy, was In the kitchen the whole time. We were then late to the ward party.

This Saturday we got up and did service at 6:30am for a member in his backyard. We dug some holes for ivy plants and then cleared some grass and that was it. It was great weather.

We went to ward correlation at the ward mission leaders new home. The Krebs are our ward mission leaders and they remind me a lot of my cousin Josh and his wife.

When we left their house it was raining. It proceeded to rain all day. All our appointments fell through and so we had a good time in the 50 degree rain. We got screamed at by some homeless guys after I was going to buy them some food but the owners wouldn't let me because the two guys have been doing this for weeks and harassing their customers and things. I tried to talk to the guys but the younger one started screaming profanity at me so I just walked away and he followed me and yelled at me for a few minutes while I waited for a bus. I could tell they were faking it from the start but I wanted to see how far they would take it.

Other then that I found a used 9mm pistol shell on the side of the road on Baylie ave.

The Bishops wife made me a cake which was really nice of her.

This Monday it was about 40 degrees all day and incredibly windy. We helped a elderly lady clean up her house and after we got out of her house it was pouring and still super windy. We walked for about 25 minutes to Wendy's where we took our dinner hour we were soaked all the way through after a few minutes. We waited for a bus for half an hour to take us up to the sisters area so we could steal their car for Elder Vizcaino's temple trip today.

That was my week.