Good

This week was good, nothing crazy but definitely some new experiences.
The member I mentioned last week that we visited and found out she was
going through a serious Panic attack got admitted into the hospital.
So this week I got to go to a hospital for the first time in my
mission. It was also my first time ever in a psych ward. And that was
weird. But our member is doing much better now and she'll probably be
back home real soon.
       We had a ton of appointments this week and I am just exhausted,
I don't even know what to say. I'm just really tired from running
around all week long.
        Oh wait ok I did go on exchange with Elder Verhaaren up in
jersey city on Tuesday and that was hilarious. There is this area in
Jersey City called Greenville. It is like the super bad place to be.
The worst part of it is in my area in Bayonne(we don't go there very
often...) but a large chunk of it is also in Elder Verhaaren's area.
We spent a lot of time there.... I learned some things that most
missionaries don't learn until their married, if you get my drift, and
spent a lot of time walking around very drunk people. Got hugged by a
drunk guy named HD(Heavy Duty) and talked with a man that took the
name of a famous rapper instead of his own. So that was very
interesting. I then got to go onto the roof of Elder Verhaaren's
apartment complex and look over at Manhattan. Elder Verhaaren is also
my best friend out here so that made it even better!!!
         Other then that nothing eventful. Investigators are hard to
find here so we've been doing tons of work with less active's and
inactives.
        Life is all good here in Bayonne and I might get transferred
next week, so who knows!

           -Elder Anthony S. Hicks
  New Jersey Morristown Mission

New Jersey Morristown Mission Zone 3

..... I don't even know what to say....

This has been one of those weeks for the books....
Specifically because of 3 things.
The first thing that happened was on Tuesday. We decided to stop by
one of our investigators house to see if she was home. She wasn't but
her son who is a less-active member was. So we went in and started
talking to him about a lot of stuff and began to talk about a
conference talk when one of his friends randomly showed up. Our
friend, Nick, had no idea why his buddy was there but let him in and
he sat down and started talking to us. We began to ask about his
beliefs and any questions that he had about life. Being that they are
both high school boys you usually don't expect a lot of soul searching
ideas in their heads but this guy went off.... After a long lesson we
ended up covering topics from all sections of the missionary lessons
and were able to answer all the questions he had. There are those
wonderfully rare moments as a missionary when someone asks you "So
when are you coming back?" And that was one of them. The spirit was so
ridiculously strong and you could see this young man's eyes lighting
up as he felt the truth. It was so amazing and a great start to our
week.
    Throughout the rest of the week we had the usual going around
finding people talking to members and eating ludicrous amounts of
Spanish food...... But then on Friday we had Zone Conference. At zone
conference we had all the missionaries in Newark, Jersey City, and
their surrounding areas come together to have an 8 hour meeting of
just trainings from people from salt lake and from our mission
president. It was pretty good and opened my eyes to a lot. They
focused a ton on a missionary's desire and purpose, on the different
reasons we go out on missions whether it be fear, tradition, for
achievement, for purpose, etc. and it was really interested me. Every
missionary's reason changes throughout his mission. Most missionaries
leave because of fear or tradition, but soon they change to follow
purpose and Unity.
      On Saturday we had to go pick up a grill from a member to use
for a missionary party we're doing today for a missionary that goes
home this week.... Unfortunately this member lived very far away, and
the grill was in very bad condition.... So we ended up rolling this
grill 20 blocks back to our house. And by rolling I mean rolling it on
its wheels for 5 blocks and then carrying it 15 after the wheels broke
off..... Good times right(pics provided below) and then I spent an
hour last night after we got home trying to clean it as much as
possible, which didn't help much.... So if I die after today it's
probably because of eating from this grill.
       Finally we ended off the week on a low note.... Last night we
felt the need to stop by a less-active lady's house. Now this is a
lady who I've been working with since the beginning of my mission to
help her quit smoking and gain full fellowship back into the church.
She has made amazing progress! But last night we went to her house and
something was very wrong. We got in and could see that she was not
there spiritually, mentally, emotionally. She was just a shell.
Something had triggered a sever panic or anxiety type attack and we
found out that she had not slept in 4 days and had barely eaten. This
is were the spirit took over me and my companion. Instantly we were in
a mode to help this woman. We sat down on the ground in front of her
and began showing her a picture of Jesus holding a lamb, teaching a
small lesson to this woman about how tenderly Christ loves and cares
for her. We said a prayer with her and the spirit just flowed into our
bodies. All the sudden I was prompted to get this woman mind onto
something simple and happy. I asked what her favorite color was(Red)
and went into talking about how fanatic my family is over our home
college team(Go Utes) and then figured out her favorite animals are
dogs so I started showing her pictures of all my dogs and told her
some dumb stories about their different personalities. You could see
the light coming back into her face. We continued to talk about stuff
like that for a little bit getting occasional smiles and single word
responses out of her until we didn't know what else to do. Trying to
call our mission president we got no answer. We said a few more
prayers with her and got her to say one herself too. After 2 hours of
trying to help her we realized there was nothing else we could do. We
left her with one final prayer and left deciding that it was the only
thing for us to do. I don't know what has happened since then, but I
know the spirit was there and was slowly bringing her back to life. I
know that the spirit was completely guiding mine and my companions
actions. It's really hard to explain the darkness that was there when
we first arrived. It's hard to express the feelings that were felt.
But that is an experience that I will never forget...


          -Elder Anthony Hicks
 New Jersey Morristown Mission

Morning Surprise!!

  Gooooooodd Moooorrrning people who apparently still like me!
Como esta?
Anyways.....
         This week was quite different then many of the past weeks....
Monday and Tuesday were pretty normal days. Played some games with
some other missionaries then went to a good ole Spanish dinner
appointment. I....love....Spanish food...... It's really good! Then we
had the usual Tuesday of meetings and a few lessons but then something
super weird happened. So a less active member that goes to a different
Ward but lives in our area called us and asked us to come teach her
son! We were all like "Awesome we can help someone return to this
branch and teach a new investigator". But it gets more complicated
then that..... Turns out that this kid we were teaching already had a
baptism set up, which happened yesterday but I'll get to that in a
minute. Anyways so we start teaching him to make sure he knows
everything and we started rushing to figure what was going on, because
it's a convert baptism for anyone over 8 years old, so we should have
heard of it being that he lives in our area. They already had
everything set up so we didn't want to rush in and complicate things
for this already overwhelmed mom. We started talking to the mission
president to figure out what to do and ended up treating it like a
Child Baptism but making sure we put everything down as convert for
this kid and his records have to go through the missionary... So in a
round about way I got a surprise baptism this week! Crazy right? But
now to the really random part.......
    Wednesday..... So at about 8:30 we get a call from President
Taggart(Mission President) and we had no idea why, turns out Elder
Jess is getting Emergency transferred!!! Which means he is moving to
another area immediately.... Nothing bad happened just the other
missionaries got in a car crash and it was partially their fault so
they got "Red Dotted" which means they can't drive anymore. Since
their area required a car, they had to get transferred, And we drew
the short straw. So the one and only Elder Jess gets to spend the last
4 weeks of his mission over in New City and I now have the wonderful
and ready to work Elder Brooks as my companion(Pic below).
          It's kinda weird because he sat next to me on the plane out
here. We're the same age in the mission. It's kind of a make or break
time. We don't have any older missionaries to tell us what to do, no
one to tell us how to do things, or if we mess up. This is the time in
which me and Elder Brooks have to choose what kind of missionaries we
want to be. Being young he also isn't as strong in the language yet so
I've been pounding Spanish lately so I can try to be a little more
help to him. It's kinda crazy though.
      Elder Brooks is blessed though! He got here Wednesday afternoon
and since then we've gotten into contact with 4 people that fell off
the map the last few months. For some reason people just started
popping up, opening their doors, or finally answering their phones....
It's ridiculous!
       I also got to give a talk on Sunday and apparently I did good
because I had several members tell me thank you and that it hit the
core.... All I talked about was gratitude and how it can help in life
and even in missionary work....
      But life goes on. Things in good ole Bayonne are going good and
missionary work is moving!

Thank you all for being so supportive, I hope everything is going good
for you and that y'all are having tons of fun!
     Love you guys!
           -Elder Anthony Hicks
  New Jersey Morristown Mission

Conference!!!

So this was a pretty good week!
    We taught more lesson then usual and we had a miracle happen
Friday! Perry, the long term investigator that we've been teaching for
about 4 months had fallen off the map a month ago which made me really
sad of course because he is an awesome guy. So anyways, we were
walking down the street and ran into him! We said hi and he instantly
just started talking about how it's a sign. That he'd really messed up
and fallen the last little while and he really needed to get back into
church! I was blown away but we obviously scheduled an appointment for
the next day and had a great lesson with him. In related news, his
best friend who is one of our less active's disappeared around the
same time and called us that same night saying that she felt terrible
about dodging our calls ad really needed us back over! So it was a
pretty weird but much needed. Anyways that was our big personal event
this week.
    Now for Conference!!!! This is the first time that I've really
payed attention the whole time... And was obvious beating myself for
not doing that at previous conferences, but it was so awesome! I hope
everyone noticed the trend of talking about things relating to the
family, because it was kinda right in my face the whole time,
especially the part about fathers... Out here in Bayonne we see way
too often the heartbreak, the confusion, the irresponsibility, and
pride that is plaguing this modern world. To often do fathers just
walk out on the wife and children, or they simply just don't do
anything.
      I want to give you an example: A former Investigator whom has
now moved to a different state was in a tricky situation. Her and her
roughly 5 year old son lived with her boyfriend. This Boyfriend woke
up every morning ate breakfast and then disappeared into the city to
do no one knows what, not even his girlfriend. He would then return at
around 11 every night. Neither had a job, and the woman did not speak
any English and had no friends. She spent all her time raising this
boy alone.
         Being that I don't speak Spanish, during our lessons with her
I would play with the kid fighting superhero action figures, making
Lego cars, and driving monster trucks around their small table. This
is where I saw the effect of the "father's" absence. This child was so
excited to play with someone, his mother mentioned that he
occasionally asked when we'd come back so he can play with someone.
Then every time we had to leave this child started getting sad and
pleaded for us to stay longer. Though I could not speak her language I
could tell when the woman talked about her boyfriends absence, she was
somber, and not happy in any way. It broke my heart to see this kid
this way. It made me angry to see a "man" who so readily left his
family every day for no gain except for his own.
       That conference talk was very meaningful to me and all I could
think about we're all the broken families we see today.
      The leaders of Jesus Christ's church are true prophets, seers
and revelators. Listen to them. Go back and listen to the talks again,
because you can find something to help and guide you in all of them.
      I love you all so very much! Keep being awesome and keep on keepin on!

P.S. Remember that German is the Celestial language... Just sayin.

           -Elder Anthony Hicks
  New Jersey Morristown Mission

Got New Sunglasses

5 months already! And Happy Easter!!!

Well hello everybody! Welcome to the weekly update!!! Today we'll be
discussing things both spiritual and temporal, both dumb and
intelligent!
 So to start its been a weird week. We've been having a really hard
time getting a hold of our investigators especially the last few
weeks. We finally got into contact again with Janet and scheduled an
appointment with her and was promptly stood up.... Ahhh yes... It's
great.
So that's been really annoying. We've had to move on from a few of my
solid investigators from when I first got here which was sad, but
hopefully missionaries in the future can reach out and prove more
helpful to those people.

So for the spiritual. We had this crazy lesson Monday night. I've been
trying to get to this persons house for 3 months now and they finally
decided to let us come over. The mom is the niece of our Branch
President who was the one that referred them to us. Both parents are
inactive members and their daughter is not a member.
   Sorry, random information.
The lesson! We showed up and it started off really awkward. We didn't
know what to say especially after they talked about leaving the church
and going to the Catholic Church when the daughter was first born.
After that they kept trying to feed us empanadas but we had just ate a
gigantic meal at a members house right before. So the beginning of
this lesson was all wrong, their baby was screaming, there was a weird
children's tv show play in the background... But then Elder Jess asked
"what is it you actually believe in" and it got the ball rolling down
the hill at a hundred miles per hour! We found out that the daughter,
Alice, had been going to an I depth catholic school and so she was
deeply confused about the few things she did hear when they came to
the LDS Church 2 twice. Her questions specifically fell towards the
plan of salvation and Repentance. The two best and most powerful
things you could ever expect in a lesson started to happen. One being
the powerful "Logic nod" and the other being the wonderful power of
the Holy Spirit. Now to explain the "logic nod".... Have you ever been
explaining something to someone that contradicts what they know and
all the sudden you see their eyebrows perk up and they go "Oh.. That
makes sense..." As they begin to nod their head along with what you're
teaching! That is the "Logic Nod".... Then of course the spirit! That
was one of the most powerful lessons I've been blessed to be a part
of! The dad wasn't paying too much attention but both the mother and
the daughter were on the edge of their seats nodding along and asking
tons of questions! It's also one of the first times during a lesson
that I was practically getting screamed at inside my head to "TESTIFY
YOU IDIOT!!!" THESE PEOPLE ARE FEELING IT!!!" Exact words I'm pretty
sure. So of course I did, and it felt so powerful and amazing!

So ya that was a pretty cool experience....

Anyways there are a ton of newbies in my zone after transfers last
week(I'm still in Bayonne) out of the 10 companionship a in the jersey
city/Union City area only 2 or 3 don't have a fresh off the plane
greenie. It's pretty funny to look back and see that that was me only
5 months ago!

And holy crap I've been out for 5 months already!

Happy Easter!!! I've decided that out here Easter is the only thing
the Catholics got us beat.... We  only had like 25 people show up to
church! What's up with that? It's Easter!! Isn't that supposed to be
the Sunday when people who never go actually go!!???!?!?!

Anyways... I hope you guys all had a great Easter. Stay awesome!