Starting to feel like a missionary!

orale!!!

Dad

yes, it's so nice having people to teach haha i finally am starting to feel like a missionary.and yeah our mission president is super smart and super spiritual.. sometimes i don't understand how he does it. but i'm so grateful for him. sooo yeah, i just wear the same suit every day haha i have two pairs of pants, so i mix those up, but yeah. same thing every day. i think i'm gonna by the other one soon tho! there's an H&M in manhattan where they sell full suits for 89.90   and they sell them slim, which is what i want . so whenever i go to manhattan i think i'll be buying a new suit! haha me da riza imaginandome a ti parado enfrente de tantas personas traduciendo con cara de zombie! haha i bet you did awesome. did they pay you good? and i'm sure you enjoyed your trip to california! did you go on "soarin' over california" ? i know how much you love the sensation of flying.. haha i'm trying to figure out what to do for my birthday.. my birthday is actually on the next transfer day, so allllll of the missionaries are gonna be together. i could just throw a huge party... we'll see! but i'll for sure have the sisters make me a cake.. they make pretty good tres leches, i'd be down for that! haha 4 weeks away from break.. that kinda sounds like a long time, but it goes by so fast. i can't believe i'm almost at 7 months. time flies. dile a mis abuelos que les mando saludos y mucho amor de regreso!

Mom

I'm doing so good :) our investigators are doing sooo good! i'll update you guys in a bit. pero si, yo se que tengo que practicar mucho! especialmente porque creo que voy a entrenar un misionero nuevo empezando en el dia de mi cumpleanos, y cuando averigue que soy mexicano va a esperar a que yo sepa como hablar perfectamente! no pressure.. haha but i will be okay. dominicans call plantains "platanos" and they call bananas "banano" or "guineo".. weird right? and just for fun, i'll let you know that they call oranges "chinas" but anyways the mangu was really good! i liked it.. we ate it with salami and fried cheese and onions.. the usual dominican stuff. elder vasquez says hi to everyone! he has almost been out on his mission for a year.. he hits a year on the 28th of this month! and no, he doesn't live in mexico. his family lives in new jersey! so he didn't have to come very far. NO haha i don't miss bethel. that was possibly the most boring place in the world. the only thing i liked about it is that we played basketball every wednesday. other than that, i don't miss it. haha my pants do NOT stand up by themselves.. i will be taking them to the dry cleaners very soon...aww man i don't know how i'm gonna be able to sign for the package!! i don't know what time the mail comes.. i'll see if i can figure out where the post office is and see if they can tell me anything about it. i'm sorry you're sick :( have you received a blessing yet? elder vasquez has been feeling sick the last couple of days too, its no fun! i hope you get better soon mom.. as for me, my immune system is proving me right once again. it's official, i'm a beast haha i feel so good. i haven't been sick, and i think it's gonna warm up soon, so i don't think i'll be getting sick at all. no worries! what do i want for my birthday? jeez.. that's a super hard question haha I HAVE NO IDEA! my ukulele. except right now we're not allowed to have them in our apartment. lame. uhmm.. maybe some money to buy some hats? i've realized that asking for stuff while you're on a mission is hard. because whatever you get, unless it's food, you have to carry it around with you haha so i don't know. just send me whatever you want, i'm really not expecting anything big!! and for your other question, we have a subway, mcdonalds, and burgerking right by our house, so any gift cards to any of those places would work!

now. for the rest of the story.

this past week has been awesome. in particular with our investigators. first let's talk about yobanna. she's 17, she's got an attitude, but she loves having us over. she's the one who is getting baptized on saturday. so we had an appointment with her last saturday, and she juked (she wasn't there).. which is bad because we needed to help her prepare for her baptism.. so we were a little frustrated. so we called her saturday night to see if we needed to pick her up for church and she didn't answer. so we called sunday morning. she didn't answer. so we were super frustrated and decided if she didn't come to church we were going to have to move her baptism back a couple weeks.. so we prayed and then went to church. we sat with our other investigators (whome i will talk about in a second) and then i looked to the back and saw yobanna.. i was soooo happy because she depends on us to go pick her up for church, but without us saying anything to her she came and she payed more attention than usual.. so that was good. then we had a lesson with her after church and invited her to a fireside to meet our mission president and she came and was telling everyone she would be getting baptized on saturday so we were happy to see she was excited. but when we took her home her mom was super mad and started yelling at us this and that and a bunch of nonsense and said she didn't want yobanna to get baptized and all this stuff soooo we didn't know what to do. long story short, we prayed a lot, we went back to yobanna's, she had her baptismal interview, and we talked to her mom and she's willing to let her get baptized. we're so happy! and she wants me to baptize her, so i can't complain about that :)

now, for patricio and teresa (other investigators) they are awesome!! from mexico, they live together, but they aren't married. they come to church every sunday and they pay attention and they love it and they ask perfect questions during our lessons and we love them so much.. we invited them to be baptized on april 6th, and they've been thinking about it. i'm sure they'll say yes. but for them to get baptized, they have to seperate or get married. sooo yesterday we went over and taught them the law of chastity. we told them about eternal marriage and families, and then invited them to get married. teresa totally wants to. patricio is thinking about it. but i honestly think they'll say yes. i'm so excited for them! i mean, nothing is for sure, but i think they will and i'm super happy. so yeah. that's been the highlight of my week haha

other news, my back has been hurting a little, i don't know why. it kinda feels like the back spasms i had when i was a senior, but not nearly as bad. i just hope it doesn't escalate to that point because that would be terrible! another funny story, we had a new investigator that lives in the other missionaries area so we all went to her house so we could hand her off to them. she wasn't there, but her daughter was. so we started talking to her and found out she plays volleyball.. vasquez looked at me and said that i play volleyball.. then she looked at me and said i was cute and then kept talking to vasquez. then he asked if we could come back and if she would be there to listen to us, and she said she'll only listen if i was one of the people who came back hahahaha nonsense. i thought that was funny. goodness, i love you guys so much. i hope everything is going well with you guys, cuz everything is going well with me :) miss you, take care of yourselves! and mom, get better!

Zazuetaaaa

ps. i got two new nicknames in this ward. instead of zazueta they call me "se suelta" or "se azota" haha mexicans these days!

New Address

Pa

our week was pretty good! we are actually only teaching a couple and a young woman.. but soon we will get more! a lot of our work has been with less actives and helping them do FHE and come to church and things like that.. we visit a lot of the members in the ward too! the girl we are teaching committed to baptism, she'll be getting baptized on the 23rd, so next saturday! i'm excited.. the couple that we are teaching had something come up, so we haven't seen them in over a week.. no bueno! but we are going to their house tomorrow so hopefully we can get them back on track. don't worry about the pages from the book, do your thing haha your work is more important.

Ma

Yesss now i'm with my people haha i don't know that much spanish.. i feel like it was better when i was here the first time.. i just know that it's mofongo, not mojongo! haha i've actually never even had it.. but i think it's something with plantains? not really sure. tonight i'm gonna eat mangu for the first time, which is another dominican food made with plantains. i'll be sure to let you guys know how it is..  also, arizona is crazy! haha i can't believe you guys are colder than us! that doesn't make sense.. haha i know, i think i bring the trouble.. i'm just going to have to warn people next time i get transferred so they can prepare to get hit with who knows what.. i'm patiently waiting for my package haha no worries, i ain't trippin!!! elder vasquez is from celaya, guanajuato! we haven't had any baptisms yet, but we will get some on the way! i hope..

okayyy my turnnn

so. everything is everything. meaning everything is good! i'm meeting more and more of the members and they love me and my companion because we speak fluent spanish haha we have an unfair advantage, and i'm grateful for it! we are still working hard and staying busy. our mission president has really been focusing on re-activating less active members and said they are of as much importance as new converts, so we've been having a lot of lessons with less actives members and it's going really well! we have fun. me and elder vasquez are getting along really good, so we don't have any problems! the other two that live with us tho are completely different, so they struggle a little bit. good thing the mexicans are there to lighten the mood haha you guys ask about the blizzards. they're not fun. not here in NYC! we got a lot of snow, somewhere between 6-12 inches. which would've been fine if i was in connecticut, but here in new york city the snow SUCKS. there is no space to put it.. cars get buried when people plow the snow.. the other day me and my companion helped push like 7 cars out of there parking spot and we shoveled a few sidewalks too.. and the snow turns black and gross since its the city.. and then we got the kids having snowball fights in the middle of the street. crazy! we were walking right in the middle of one and some little 12 year old kid was like "STOP THROWING SNOW! WE GOT PEOPLE WITH SUITS ON OVER HERE, WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU!" hahaha it was so funny. it was good to know he had our backs. i haven't bought my suit yet.. i  think i'm gonna buy it the next time i go to manhattan at a store called H&M.. they have them for like 100 bucks.. and i wanna get a skinny suit and they sell them there. so i think i might wait a little longer. we'll see! i haven't touched any of the money you deposited .. as promised haha i'm so sorry i forgot to give you guys my address! in the NYC public libraries we only get 45 minutes to use the computer before we get kicked off.. so i logged out and forgot to put my address, and i tried to log back in , but it wouldn't let me because i used up all my time. i'm sorry! 

my address is:

The King Of New York

811 Walton Ave #B6

Bronx, NY 10451

sorry.. forgive me :) also. today is brisa's birthday! can you tell her i said Happy Birthday Please!  that would be great. soo yeahh..i don't really have anything else.. i don't really have any big news, other than i've never been so happy for a day that is 42 degrees. haha i'm out here in a T-shirt it feels so nice!!!! new york has changed me. i hope everything is going super good with you guys. I miss you all so much. tell everyone i said hi, and let people know my address ! Los quiero y extrano muchisimo. cuidense!!

Zazzy

I love to be back in NY!!!

 I love being back! My Ward is awesome. we are Concourse ward. lots of dominicans. 

mostly dominicans actually.. in my side of the bronx, there are 2 spanish wards and 1 

english ward. its kinda funny! Elder Vasquez is so cool tho.

 

.WE'VE HAVE BEEN WORKING SO HARD!!

we have 3 people who we think are ready to be committed to baptism.. so 

next time we see them we are definitely gonna be inviting them. but yeah. Elder 

vasquez is from Mexico! so we're two mexicans, we both speak fluent spanish, and 

everyone in the ward loves us haha he's 26, almost 27. so he has a little bit more of 

life experience than i do.. and his spanish is better than mine because he came here 

when he was a teenager.. but we get along super good and have been working super 

hard! it's the first time on my mission where we've been too busy to knock doors.. 

we just have a ton of appointments! we hope to keep it this way.. 

i have to tell you guys that i am so lucky to be in THIS mission. You guys know what 

preach my gospel is right? our book that helps us know what to teach and how to teach 

it? well the guy who wrote preach my gospel came to our mission and trained us on 

how to be better missionaries and all this other stuff and it was INCREDIBLE. 2 out of the 

3 guys who run the missionary department were there helping us.. that was why i couldn't 

email on wednesday, because my zone got the training on that day so we had to change 

our p.day! and then yesterday all of the zone leaders in the mission got to come and receive 

the training along with some other missionaries, and i got chosen to go again.. so i got 2 

full days of training.. and what they showed us was so simple but so powerful and just 

changed the way of thinking for all of us who were there.. so the night after the first 

training, our zone committed 7 people to get baptized.. in one night. 7! thats a lot! at 

least for our mission/area. and the next day we got two more.. and i think by next week 

me and elder vasquez will add another 3.. we are praying! but it was amazing. the head 

of the missionary department right now was actually the mission president in mesa, so i 

talked to him a little while about our stake and stuff.. it was cool! but yeah.. i'm doing 

so good haha working hard.. loving my ward. and dad, you going out with the missionaries 

is paying off because now i have someone coming with us to almost every single 

appointment! so thank you ha ohhhh also, my area is super small compared to my last 

one, but it's awesome. and yankee stadium is literally like 2 blocks from my apartment.. 

so if i walk down the street i can see it.. pretty cool right? so yeah. i don't know what 

else to say haha I love you guys so much.