Aloha Everybody!!!
I am sitting next to a sister from Hawaii so I was insprired to start my letter a little bit tropical, even though their is nothing tropical about the weather here in Harlem. The days are gray and rainy, and the ground is covered in slushy snow and puddles are literally everywhere. The only good thing about this kind of weather is that last Preperation day our zone went to central park and had a huge snowball fight. It was insanely fun and I even got buried in the snow. We left central park wet and cold but very happy, then we got to warm up by preaching the gospel that night. Marvelous things have been happening this week, for example we found 1 new investigator and have 3 or 4 appointments set up with potential investigators. So basically I am really happy with the way things are going here in Harlem. Elder Irvine and I have been working hard and putting our best foot foward, haha last night we even got into an apartment while tracting, which has never happened!!!! The lady who let us in is named Betty and she was so happy that the Lord had blessed her with a new church to go to, because of her knee she can't go to the baptist church that she used to go to. Hopefully we will be able to meet with her more and I'm sure we will see her at church. We have been meeting a lot of great people as we have been walking the streets of Harlem, they are super cool!!! The other day some random guy was walking past us and said Jesus loves you, so I backtracted and talked to him. He talked about how we are all children of God and we need to love each other, if we don't truly love each other then people won't be able to see us as servants of Jesus Christ. We must let Christs image become part of our countenance. Through these past couple weeks I have been working on having more charity, which ultimately is the pure love of Christ. It was kind of cool to have a random guy teach us for a change and I truly felt the spirit as he spoke to us and encouraged us to be more like Christ. He wasn't interested in hearing our message but I was pretty happy with the message that he shared with us. Throughout these weeks of doing my best to become more Christ like I have seen a huge difference in how the work goes and every other aspect of my life. We have been able to find a lot more people and the lessons that we have are much more spiritual. Last night I was teaching a lesson on the Book of Mormon to a member and her daughter-in-law and grand-daugther, and I felt the spirit testify to me that the words in Moroni 10:3-5 were truly inspired by God. I felt the sincereity that Moroni had when he wrote those words and how truly amazing they were. I know that if we try our hardest to become more Christ like then we will see blessing in our lives and miracles will happen. This probably isn't the first or last e-mail that I have or will write about becoming Christ like but sometimes we need to learn things a lot more times then just once.
Sharon Grant probably won't be getting baptized this weekend because we lost contact with her, she won't answer her phone calls and won't return our calls. The Pennsylvania Elders said that she wants to be baptized into the Harlem ward but has not expressed that to us at all so we don't know whats going on. Please keep her in your prayers because she progressed so much that we would hate to lose her. Please forgive me if some of you write me letters and i don't respond for sometime it is really hard to respond to all the letters that I get but I am trying. When your living in New York City often times you get really side tracked and unorganized so please understand if you don't recieve a letter from me super soon.
I love all of you and hope you are all doing wonderfully, I love to hear how your all doing and whats new in your lives. Please if any of you are going on a vacation to somewhere tropical please take pictures and send them to me, I need to see the sun soon or I might go crazy, in fact I may have already gone crazy..... who knows muhahahhahahah.
Seriously though please keep me updated on whats going on.
Love
Elder Shepherd
P.s.
Here is a list of things that I have learned in Harlem
1. Jesus loves everybody
2. We are very blessed to have all the things we have, some people don't have anything.
3. If you are not black DO NOT go into a store called african paradise, especially if your a mormon missionary.
4. If you choose to randomly talk to random people on the street about God and Jesus, be prepared for anything... literally anything.
5. After a long time Ambulance sirens, car alarms, and gangster rap music become soothing sounds that help you fall asleep.
6. Roaches are tough, but not as tough as a shoe. Atleast not anyones that I have met
7. Mice are smarter then you think
8. The Book of Mormon is true, no matter what anybody says.
9. The Harlem 1st ward is probably one of the most diverse wards in the world, not even joking.
10. Fire escapes should not be used as balconys
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