Big Duck!

Como estéis?

How is everyone?

One more week down in Riverhead! It's been really cold again. And it snowed a bunch. We had soccer planned on Saturday night as an activity to meet new people. It snowed really hard. For those of you that don't know, Hispanic people really don't like the cold, which is understandable. We went ahead and played anyways in about six inches of snow even though we didn't have anyone show up. Next week were hoping for a better turn out. Everyone has cleats except me, which leaves me at a very large disadvantage... But I'm working on that!

Here the Spanish missionaries use three things to teach people:

scriptures, Preach My Gospel, and soccer cleats. :)

We started teaching Max Cruz this week! He's a really cool guy from Honduras! He is here until the fall, and then he leaves to attend Syracuse. He's incredibly smart, he takes notes during our lessons, and he has a baptism date for April 25th. He is a soccer player and is in incredible shape. Very cool guy.

We are having a blast here in Riverhead! Gotta go! Enjoy the big duck and the world fair grounds!

Yee yee!

Hey all!

Fun week here in Riverhead!

Spent lots of time working with members. Last Monday night we had a huge family night with some of the members of the branch. It was super awesome. Definitely created unity among members and some of the investigators that we brought.

Gustavo de Leon is progressing! He's one of my favorite people around here in Riverhead. I love him! He is a super humble guy that moved here from Guatemala about three years ago. It's his sisters family that wants to take me to Guatemala with them. Definitely excited to be making these kinds of friendships out here. Makes it all worth it.

We took a trip through the Hamptons the other day and saw kind of a cool car. It looks decently fast. Lamborghini aventador I think. There are some people out here that are very very wealthy.

Stake conference was this week. It was good! The leadership of the church out here is super solid. Now we just need to build the membership!

Now that it's warming up we are starting up pickup soccer games at the church! We're all really excited about that.

Well, hope everyone has a good week!

Elder Dolor

De los Estados Unidos!

Hey everyone!

Great week here in Riverhead!

Exchange calls were made this morning. Everyone in my district is staying except for my mission mom, Acosta. She's mexicana and totally awesome. She's going home/dying. 

Today we had an incredible miracle. We were hanging out at a park near Flanders called big duck park. A lady drove up and got out of her car. She did kind of a double take and asked us if we were Mormon missionaries. We said yes, and then she broke down and started crying. I asked her how we could help and she said that her daughter had broken her shoulder and injured her back really badly and was having a serious struggle with depression and general recovery. She said that fifteen minutes or so previous she had basically hit an emotional wall, put her daughter in the car and started driving, not knowing where she was going. It's incredible that she found us because Flanders is pretty far and we don't go there ever. But we gave her daughter a blessing and said a prayer. I love that as missionaries, people are guided to us so that we can help them in whatever little way we can. Hopefully I will be here when the daughter gets baptized because she has been taking lessons from the missionaries in Hampton bays. 

Guess what!? I got adopted into a Guatemalan family this week! The Deleon family! They are great. We've been teaching part of the family but the other night we had a huge family night with all of them. Apparently the part of the family that we don't teach really liked me because Cecilia told me that they would take me to Guatemala after my mission. She was really persistent in telling me that she wasn't joking, and I took her up on the offer! So here's to a Guatemala trip sometime soon!

Well, this week overall has been great. It's finally warming up here. We started playing fútbol here. I love it a lot! Definitely not claiming expert status yet, but soon!

Que vayan con Dios!

Ry

La escritura!

John 21:17-18

:)

El bautismo and some deers in our yard!

Hola como estéis?

This week has been great! We had a fantastic baptism. Hector Acevedo got baptized! The other guy in the picture is Levi Ostler, one of the church leaders here in Riverhead. He is a super great guy. We couldn't get as much done without him! He served his mission in Salt Lake City.

He speaks Spanish really really well.

This week we all got new iPads..... Yay. Moving on....

Crazy to think I've already almost got one of my fifteen transfers done! It's going way too fast here. I love it! Being a missionary is very fun. I'm excited to be better at it and have more experience.

Something I'm learning out here is that it's super fun to be really good at something. Even though it's a long time out, I'm excited to apply this new-found fire to school and stuff!

Sorry short email today because we have a lesson.... Better email next week!

Everyone send me questions about this stuff that I can answer in the next email! Give me more to write about.

Que vayan con Dios!

Ryan

Long Island!

Hola familia!

This week has been a week of driving. We drove into queens two times (about 2 hrs of travel time) and some other places a couple times. We had a meeting with some high up leaders in the church. They had lots of good things to say. But it's funny how people start to go in circles when you give them two hours each to talk. I personally think they could've rounded the same topics in about half the time but I guess that's why it isn't my job to figure that stuff out!

The first picture is me standing on a foot bridge in Rego Park right next to the main mission office in Queens. Then there's a picture through the chain link looking towards Manhattan. The super tall looking building that you can see in Manhattan is just some apt building. Definitely not the tallest building in the city. Then there's a picture of the the world fair grounds in Flushing. Just a pic from the LIE so it's not super fantastic.

We've still been teaching tons of Guatemalans. The Deleon family, Douglas, and Hector are all progressing. Hector the Colombian, is going to be baptized this week! We are super excited for him. He asked us to contact the missionaries in Queens because he wants them to go with him to teach all his Colombian friends in the city!

We had deer tracks in the snow in our yard this morning. Riverhead is always surprising us in little ways like this. We ran into a bunch of "Riverhead rednecks" this week in Taco Bell. Me and elder Durney were really confused because we both come from places where there are actual rednecks. Riverhead is pretty rural for the island, but there is a grand total of MAYBE 100 acres of farm land here. Posers. I think they knew we were talking about them so they flipped us off and drove away in a brand new challenger. It was super funny. I want to bring them home with me so they can try out the actual farm life.

My birthday was great! I enjoyed everyone's notes and care packages. I got to eat pupusas, an el salvadorainian food that is THE BEST. We also have been eating in members houses more and more. La comida de hispana is the bomb! Seriously love it. I have eaten Mexican, Guatemalan, Honduran, and El Salvadorainian food this week. I'm getting fat. It's great. I love it!

A quick thing about the branch I'm in! Riverhead branch is very small with very few people actively attending church. There are families assigned here that live in other areas of the island to be leadership in the branch.

We have a very small, very ghetto house that we live in. It was pretty gross when we got there but we cleaned it up quite a bit. I'm the delegated chef and most of the time dish washer as well. It's a party I guess. Hopefully there are some more people that don't mind being clean!

Anyways, I'm having a blast, working hard, and time is just flying by way too fast!

Nos vemos pronto!

Ry

Riverhood!

Hey all!

How is everyone?

Long Island is pretty great! The weather has been a little bit warmer but not much. My companion is the worst driver on the planet and actually got really mad at me and the other two missionaries in the car when we tried to prevent him from killing us all by giving him some instruction. Today he was about to blow a red light with full on heavy traffic. I calmly (because last time I said anything I got a guilt trip about making fun of his driving) said, "bro you got a red".

He then locked up the brakes and we didn't die, so that was good. I'm seriously tired of this kids passive aggressive behavior.

I went on exchanges with one of the zone leaders this last week. His name is Elder Durney. Great guy from Colorado! He was a super hard worker and definitely didn't mess around at all, he was also a good driver, which was nice. Definitely happy I got to hang out with him for a day to give me an idea of what intense missionary work is like.

I will definitely be pushing myself harder this week! Definitely not trusting my trainer on how hard I should be working from here on out.

Just a little too laid back. But that's okay!

We went through some rich neighborhoods last night. I'm so glad I'm a Spanish speaking missionary. Non-Latinos are jerks. I understand completely if someone doesn't want to talk to us. That's no excuse to be rude a belligerent. This is why love the Spanish speakers here.

Even if a family of Hispanos isn't interested, they will still let us in, give us something to drink, and listen to the brief message that we share for a door approach like that. Many times they will set up a return appointment with us. Overall very genuine, honest people that are very open to the Word of God. My favorite thing that they say is "Nuestras puertas están siempre abiertas a la palabra de Dios!" Love them. Especially the Guatemalans!

I got this picture taken right behind the Holgate's house. The Holgates are from Utah and are the senior missionaries in our district. They are awesome! They take very good care of us.

Tonight we are teaching Daniel and Gustavo Deleon. They are some awesome Chapines(Guatemalans) that we found in the area book as potentials. We have been teaching them for three weeks. They are on track to be baptized sometime in March.

Well, everyone think of me on my birthday this week! I think I'm gonna make myself a cake which will be awesome.

Love you all! Talk to you next week!

Ry