2.17.2014

Happy (belated) Valentines Day! Love you guys!

Thanks for the package you guys sent! It made it here on Wednesday. A lot of people at church liked the tie and it was kinda nice to have some treats... We've heard a lot about "Trader Joe's". Do they have that store in Utah? We've heard a lot of people raving about it lately and they are building one about 1 block away from our new apartment! Should be sweet!

First things first, TRANSFER CALLS! Elder May and I are staying the same. WOOHOO! We are pumped! Elder Bybee is still up in Malone, which is the area next to Massena. It's crazy, he hasn't left the "North Country" since a meeting we had one month into his mission. It's crazy to think that he's about to hit his year mark! I also found out that Elder Sedgwick got transferred from Lowville to Binghamton, which is right next to Owego. I was a little sad about him leaving Lowville already, but I'm sure it will be good for him.

So this upcoming week is really exciting... Because we are moving next Monday! The apartment complex we are moving in is in a way better location! As of now, we live in East Syracuse, which does not have many bus stops... In order to get anywhere, we have to go to the bus hub in downtown Syracuse (about a 40 minute ride on the bus), wait for the next bus to come in, then ride it back up to DeWitt or Jamesville (normally a 30 minute ride). The new apartment is about .5 miles away from Shoppingtown Mall, which has it's own bus hub. The area we will live in is going to be a lot better for working. East Syracuse has a lot of older families and older folks who are nice, but not super interested. DeWitt (where the new apartment is) has a lot of younger families. We've made it there every once in a while and have had good luck with finding nice, young families who are interested in learning more. DeWitt is also where we have to go to shop, so we'll be really close to all of the stores. All in all, it's going to be a good move. I just don't look forward to moving.... That's never much fun. But the apartment is nicer (it's a two bedroom!), the location is a lot better, and the Landlord LOVES us. We gave him a big copy of the LDS King James Bible last week.. We had offered it to him as a joke because of a Headquarter referral that fell through, saying we didn't want to carry around the big Bible all day, and he said he would love it! It was pretty funny.

We also have been working really hard to get everything figured out for the blitz. It looks like things are going to work out pretty well! We are getting a lot of members that have signed up to help and we are figuring out the missionary situation. It looks like we will have 10 missionaries and 10 members at each 2 hour block, so we will have 20 people total! That's pretty impressive. We'll be able to get out there and hopefully find a lot of people in a relatively short period of time. It should be great!

The past week went well. We had a cool experience last Monday. We went with a member to try a potential named Pat, and we had a good chat with him, but that night didn't work for us to share a lesson. Instead of having the member just drop us off at home, we had him drop us off at a random neighborhood we had a potential in. The potential was nice, but couldn't meet that night, so at about 7:15 we had the opportunity to show our faith and find someone to teach! We said a prayer asking for direction, then went to a road to knock all of the doors that had lights on. The first door we knocked, a really nice guy came out and talked to us for a little bit. He's an active Methodist, but he said he really respects what we do and how much we sacrifice, and that he would let us come over another time to share our message with him. It was a really good experience and we'll see what happens when we share The Restoration with him! Further down the street, we found another guy that said we could come back another time. It was cool! We then ran to the bus stop and caught a ride back home at 8:10.

We also had a "Zone Training Meeting" where all of the missionaries in the Syracuse Stake came together for a training. That went really well. We had great discussions on "Studying, Pondering, Praying, and Preach My Gospel". It went really well and I learned a lot about how we can utilize pondering and prayer in our scripture study. It was fun to get to see a few missionaries I hadn't seen for quite a while too!

The weather hasn't been horrible out here, but we did get quite a bit of snow (for Syracuse area). We probably got in between a foot or two of snow in the past week. It's been manageable, but I'm ready for Spring! It sounds like some of the southern states and the coast has gotten ice and had a lot of problems, but Upstate New York knows how to handle it's snow pretty well.

If I forgot anything exciting from this week, you'll probably be able to read about it on Elder May's blog!   We seem to forget little bits and pieces of our weeks, but when you put it all together, you can see the big picture. :)

I love you guys! Thanks for all that you do. I'm grateful for your support and examples! It means a lot to me.

-Elder Hussey