Another Day in Harlem

Hey Everybody
How are you all doing? I hope everybody is working hard and loving life. Here in Harlem things are pretty normal except a few strange events have happened the past couple of weeks, some spirtual and some just weird. One of which was a couple of weeks ago Elder Irvine and I were walking down the road about 8:30 at night past this huge project and we past this guy and said hi to him. All of a sudden the guy was like "Hey guys do you want some free milk? It doesn't expire till the 25th and I'm just going to throw it away, so do you want it?" I looked at him for a minute and then Elder Irvine said of course we want it. So the guy gave us 4 crates of little kid milk cartons. Apparantly he works a community center and one of their rules is that they don't keep anything past a day because they get new shipments everyday. So here we are walking down the middle of Harlem with 3 huge bags of milk cartons and also a box of frozen broccoli. We packed our fridge with the milk and for the next week or so we were living large with a huge supply of milk. Unfortunately its all gone now....but hey maybe one day he will give us more. Then another weird thing that happened, only in NY of course, was this truck filled with pies crashed into another car and pies went everywhere!!!! Elder Lawrence and Elder Garvin were walking past it right after it happened and a bunch of people were just taking the pies with the permission of the truck driver. So Elder Garvin went and grabbed like 6 or 7 pies from the truck and walked away, he didn't think anything of the newspaper photographer that was snapping shots of him with pies stacked in his arms. The next day Elder Lawrence was looking through the newspaper for a new apartment because our apartment is so old we got permission to start looking for a new one. He stumbled across the cover of the Daily News and their was the pie truck crashed on the road with a familiar looking person. He turned the page and their was Elder Garvins picture of him taking pies, hahaha we all laughed so hard and news has spread like wildfire since then. He didn't do anything wrong by taking the pies but it was just funny that they got a picture of him. Anyway so other then pies and milk thats pretty much all the crazy stuff that has happened other then a few strange appointments that I won't speak about.
Now spiritually, yesterday we had an amazing experience while tracting. We were just going along knocking the doors of this apartment building and not many people were home, but we just keep going since thats what we do. All of a sudden we knock on this one door and this older lady opens up and prettymuch lets us in as soon as we said Jesus Christ. We sat down and talked with her and she told us of some amazing experiences she has had seeing the love of the Lord in her life. She has truly seen miracles in her life and has a strong testimony of the Lord. So we taught her the first lesson and asked her to read the book of Mormon and pray about it. She accepted that and said she knows that Joseph Smith was guided by God. We then asked her if she would be baptized, she said she has already been baptized into her church but would read and pray and would find out why we would ask her to be baptized again. Her name is Ethel and she is a really great lady who will hopefully find truth through her reading and praying. Another cool experience was with a lady named Sonya who has been working with different missionaries for a couple months now. She has been reading and praying and coming to church every Sunday with a member of the ward named Marie. For some reason though she wouldn't accept to be baptized and no one could figure out why. Elder Irvine went overthere on Monday and talked with her about baptism. She has a very very strong and accurrate knowledge about the covenant and promise of baptism and really loves this church. At first she said she just wanted to gain a deeper knowledge of the Book of Mormon and see if it truly is for her, but as we continued to talk and ask questions she opened up more. We finally found out what has been stopping her from getting baptized.....She is afraid of Water!!!!! So we finally were able to address the real concerned and on Friday we should be setting up a baptismal date with her. So miracles have been happening in many wonderful ways. Well I have to go now but I love all of you and am trying to reply to all the letters I have recieved, please don't disown me if I don't reply quickly. Keep up the faith and remember that the Lord is their to comfort us whenever we need Him, all we have to do is extend our hand.
Love
Elder Shepherd