Media Referral Madness

Heeeellllooooo Everybody!
So this week was pretty back and forth as usual. Elder Jess was still
pretty sick on Monday so we had to miss a magnificent Spanish
dinner.... Man do I love Spanish food now.... So that was sad but on
to the title of the email...
      Media Referrals, namely the ones for Bibles are the bane of my
existence though can be funny at times. For those who don't know, a
media referral is someone who in some way ordered a Book of Mormon,
Bible, or church video that the church gives out for free.... And the
genius is that they just have the missionaries deliver it because we
have stockpiles of that stuff sitting in our apartments, and we can
use it as a finding opportunity. Bible referrals are annoying because
most of the time it's just somebody wanting a free bible because
theirs was lost somehow, and they rarely want to talk to us, they just
take the Bible and the shut the door in our face.
      Anyways the story goes... We've been receiving a ton Bible
referrals lately and the usual thing is us trying to figure out what
to say to keep the door open for a second longer. But we had one that
was way out at the end of the peninsula in an area that I'd never been
before in Bayonne. We get up to her apartment and she lets us right
in! Crazy right?! We start talking to her and find out she's an
Inactive member looking to re-activate herself and wants all the
lessons taught to her, and she wants her fiancé to listen in on the
lessons too.
    Other than that we had a cool lesson with a part member family in
which our President explained the Priesthood to the member's husband
right before we gave her a blessing for her first pregnancy.
     Yesterday at church was funny. After everything finished we
walked out side and there was a huge parade for St. Patrick's day
going on. So everyone left from church and just sat in the parking lot
and watched the parade. So that's cool.
      Side note I got my iPad screen fixed...... It's really expensive
and it made me very sad.

Thanks for all of your support, I hope you guys are having fun with
life or at least surviving it.
   Love you all!
           -Elder Anthony Hicks
  New Jersey Morristown Mission

Good Morning Bayonne Followers 3-14

 So we had a really weird week. Almost chaotic in a way because we had
no idea what to do...

We had the most frustrating p-day on the planet. Let me tell you that
missionaries are the worst planners surrounding logistics in the whole
world. One of the missionaries in our zone had to go to a city an 2
hours away to get his license. And his companion is a foreigner so
neither could drive. So another companion ship had to go in exchange
and take their car all the way out there. The annoying part is that
our zone is already low on cars because we have the most walking areas
in the mission and we had a wreck recently that caused us to have even
less. So minus 2 cars everyone is stranded at this chapel in Union
city and the only missionary with keys to any of the rooms is on his
departing missionary temple trip or something.... We finally got to
borrow the zone leaders can to go to a couple stores and we end up
driving around the whole peninsula, almost every store we wanted to go
to was closed... It was a rough p-day.
Other then that our investigators lately have not been responding....
Let me tell you people, if a missionary calls you or texts you, please
be polite enough to at least acknowledge the message with any kind of
response, it makes our lives much less stressful.
      Good side of things, we had a really cool lesson with a member
asking about the Free Masons. Super weird stuff but I learned a lot.
I'm glad my companion was there because he knew a ton of the answers
to her questions!
     I also had to go to another all day training on Friday and it was
actually pretty cool. We had to do a pretty funny role-play that I
think was really helpful, especially for any of the missionaries right
off the plane. All the Elders and Sisters sat in two lines facing each
other. Then one on one we all had to explain the Law of Chastity.
Super awkward but the whole exercise was on breaking the ice and being
confident in the teachings so that it isn't awkward. If you don't make
it awkward it won't be. Our mission pres also bore a super strong
testimony on working with people to get to baptism and helping them
realize that they don't have to be perfect after baptism. So, pretty
cool.
       Elder Jess has been super sick for the last 2 days too, so we
can't really leave the house for reasons that I don't want to
explain..... He's better today but it's been annoying the last bit not
being able to leave. We couldn't go to church either! Between stake
conference and him being sick I haven't had the sacrament in 2 weeks!
It's killing me!!!
But not a ton of luck with our investigators this last week, lots of
member work. This next week is gonna be way better because we're not
gonna lose 3 days of time in our area and we already have a bunch of
appointments set up. I'm looking forward to it!

   Here's a cool muddy truck we saw on our way back from Morristown.

Food, Glorious Food!!!

This week was interesting.
To start our week was a little slow. We got juked on a lot of our
appointments, leaving our week pretty empty. Not to mentioned that we
lost a whole day and a half of time.
Because I am still a Newer missionary I had to go to Specialized
training in Morristown last Friday and also this Friday. This includes
first off the hour drive out there... Then 6 hrs of meetings and
trainings with a lunch hour in between and then an hour drive home.
Not to mention that we had to sleep over at another missionary's
apartment in Union city because of scheduling issues.... It was all
kind of an annoying situation. Oh and I shattered the glass on my
iPad.... Fun times I'm telling you. Missionary work is awesome,
missionary meetings and logistics... Not so great.
      For the good side of things we put another investigator on
date!!! Her name is Janet and she is super stinkin excited to learn
about he Gospel, we had a couple setbacks because of surgeries but
she's all in now. Her teenage son is a member and he has been helping
us to teach her and explain things to her and it's super cool. Funny
story that goes along with that. Before we went to her house we were
at a dinner appointment with a member family. The food was good but
there wasn't a lot of it, so afterwards Elder Jess and I both were
pretty hungry but we decided we had to stop by Janet's house before we
retired for the night because we hadn't heard from her in a week. We
showed up and were welcomed in though she was freaking out that her
house was slightly messy. As we began to talk about the Gospel her
Boyfriend proceeded to order a pizza... For each of us..... And it was
a very dense, heavy pizza. Trying to be polite I tried to finish this
whole thing.... But it just wasn't gonna happen. Just before I reached
puking point and with the food baby kicking I gave up.... It was the
first time on my missions that I had to tell somebody that I didn't
want more food! And it was really good food!!!
   Anyways, We also had stake conference this week which was cool
because it was the first ever stake conference in the new Liberty Park
Stake!
Other than that nothing super cool or exciting that I can remember.
I'm not sick anymore, so that's nice.
Thanks for all your support and love. Stay awesome and spread the good news!
           -Elder Anthony Hicks
  New Jersey Morristown Mission

Helllooooo everybody!

So it was a pretty normal week, not much to tell about it. No crazy
experiences besides Sunday but I'll get to that in a second....
The annoying part of the week though, I have been pretty sick the last
few days... Especially saturday. To the point that we spent most of
the day at home trying to recuperate and not die.... It's been great.
And all the Spanish members of course have been advertising the
Miracle drug known as Vicks, which is supposed to cure all diseases
apparently. But anyways, sickness sucks, and now my companion is
starting to catch it...... Fuuuuuuunnnn......

Sunday was crazy at church though. We showed up and found out that we
had to teach the Young men/Young Women class, the Gospel Doctrine
Class, and Priesthood.... So I winged a pretty good lesson on the God
Head which apparently blew their minds especially the Recent Convert
who was helping me teach. While my Comp taught the Gospel class. We
then had to teach a lesson all about priesthood to all the men in the
Branch. It was mentally exhausting to come up with 3 lessons on the
spot like that.

Anyways missionary work is awesome, our investigators are doing
alright though they can be very frustrating at times.

Sorry there wasn't more to this week. Just pretty simple and my brain
is to clogged with sickness to remember anything farther than 24 hrs.

Love you all and keep on being awesome.

           -Elder Anthony Hicks
  New Jersey Morristown Mission

Here is a funny picture of 2 stolen bikes.