Como Tu Ta!!!!

I cant believe its been a week already, I swear it has gone by in the blink of an eye, but my body and the fact that I am (surprise surprise) bone tired will beg to differ. It has been such a great week!

Im here in NY, living in Harlem and just having a good ol' missionary time! My companion and I couldn't be more spastic all the time about everything, you would never guess we're as tired as we are. The area we are serving in is for the Harlem 3 YSA ward. Its crazy cause we are "whitewashing" (aka starting a new ward) this whole new area, plus we are the first missionaries to do it and obvi we're sisters too, booyah! It has been such hard work! We cover from 125th all the way to the top of the island, which for those of you who are unfamiliar with Manhattan that's about an hour subway ride from top to bottom. I dont know that I have ever walked so much in my life, but its great. My comp and I are just getting things started in this new area and getting to know the memebers and investigators who are here. It is the most amazing thing! Everyone has a story and a reason as to why they are here in the city. You have to ask everyone cause the reasons vary from "just kickin it with my fam" to I live in the Trump Towers and am a young high executive for XYZ or whatever company, talk about all walks of life huh?!

So what's been going on you ask, well this last week really was just tracking the boundaries and getting to know our new area. Though I am serving in English speaking I have been hurriedly learning Spanish cause I basically live in little Dominica. Everyone I contact thinks Im Dominican or Panamanian and just instinctively responds in Spanish, so rather than rushing to find my companion who was pulled from a Spanish mission, I am just learning so as to save everyone the trouble. I have got to say that I have never learned Spanish as fast as I am now (b/c you know I've tried multiple times and haven't been so successful), its incredible. I absolutely love the Dominican culture, they are such great people, and dont think I haven't gained like 500lbs eating their delicious food, mmmmmmmm! Its just crazy, everyone we are teaching is Dominican and they are such a riot! We are teaching this one woman who moved from the DR about 6 years ago. She is an architect and is so rambunctious! Every time we talk to her its like fireworks going off. She is darling, loud and speaks Spanish soooo fast. I just love her cause whenever we go over she has this great list of questions for us as well as a table spread of traditional Dominican food, its absolutely the best. Aside from her we have a few others we are teaching. It was so crazy how I found this one young man. So we were walking back to our apartment and had arm fulls of stuff. We see this guy hanging out on his porch and we just walk by. As we move closer to our apartments I turn to my companion and tell her we have to turn around. As I said that she was like "you're talking about that guy on the porch, yeah?" Haha, she felt it too, after justifying that we should drop off our things first we begin to walk some more towards our house and I just couldn't do it. I tell her if we dont do this now, we fail! So we turn back around and find this guy who obviously saw us walk by the first time. I explain to him "I know this sounds crazy..." but in short I had to turn around and talk with you. It was such a blessing and you could tell that he was touched by what we had to say. Man the Spirit is real! And that is just one example of how I have felt the prompting this week, its nuts.

Anyways as many of you know yesterday was my birthday and I am so happy it was, NY is just one of the greatest places to spend number 25!! Whoa, 25 eke! NBD, so I woke up and was attacked with Silly String and my roomies and comp decorated my desk and sang me happy birthday. It was so sweet. We had so much to do so we got going for the day. We had Mission Conference for the first half of the day which was so great. We talked a lot about the Ammon and Aaron chapters in Alma and D&C 84:88 and chapter 100. It was so uplifting and the reality is, those verses are seriously ones to live by. After that we had some appointments and stuff to handle, but come dinner time we decided to find some delicious birthday food! We stumbled upon WholeFoods which was the best idea EVER! As we were in the store Sister Child kept arguing with me about how she was going to pay for my food. Because we are broke missionaries I insisted that we both just pay for our own and fake like she did. Anyways we run into this member who of course addresses us like "sisters! whats going on here?" so we get to know him a bit then go on to explained that we were just out and about for my birthday, and good thing we did cause he showed me to some delicious Indian food he found. Jackpot!!! Anyways, we go on and grab some desserts to top off our dinner and head out, naturally still arguing over who's paying when out of nowhere, Brother Matthews (the member we just met) comes out of nowhere and with his ninja like reflexes swipes his card first and pays for our food! Holy monkey! He was in and out like a flash. Im pretty sure people around us though he stole something based on our reaction. Haha, what a champion! It was a great day full of service and fun.

Im sad I didn't get to spend it with all of you but Im so happy I got to spend it here. Thanks for all the wishes. I love you all so much!! Being here just continues to remind me how much our Savior loves us. He finds ways to succor us in our greatest times of need, I know this because not only do I see it everyday, I live it! He love us, dont think He doesn't cause He does, ha!