8/7 Transfers

Well today is the day for transfers everyone! I have been reassigned
to a new area in East Brunswick with an Elder I am not familiar with
named Elder Bailey. I'm super excited but also deeply saddened to be
leaving Plainfield!
I'm especially sad to be leaving my beautiful mini me companion Elder
Brinkerhoff but he gets to train a brand new baby missionary, I'm so
proud! (Tears in eyes)
This is my sad face below. And then a picture of me and elder Marz my
District Leader when we were on Exchange. And then lastly a video from
after a ridiculous rainstorm.
If you want to know more hit me up!
Have a wonderful day!

7/24 Hello!

Well hello all my people back at home! Just a quick update is all I
got right now! The work here in Plainfield is moving surely but
slowly. We've finally gotten into contact with a few people that we
hadn't heard from in a long time!
My big announcement that is super cool though is that the lady I
helped get to Baptism back in Clinton, Robin, just recently got
engaged to the first member that we introduced her to... there is more
to the miracles surrounding them meeting but that's for her to tell.
But it's super cool that I got to be directly involved in helping
those two meet up and bring them together in the church. They are
preparing to get married in the Temple and I am overly psyched!!! I'll
provide a picture of them below so you can see. Awesome!!
Other then that to explain the pictures we got to do some karate with
a few other missionaries and one of our cool members here who is an
Instructor.
And then lastly that is our picture from the meeting we had with Pres.
Hess when we first met him.
Hope you all have an absolutely wonderful week!!!

 

 

7/10 Pics and a vid

7/4 Happy America Day!

Happy America Day!

6/12 Sorry, I'm back now.

HI everybody, I apologize for my hiatus from writing the big weekly
email. I just didn't want to bore you all with the weekly ins and outs
of Missionary work. But now I've got stuff to talk about! These last
two weeks have been eventful for sure!

To start we had our big giant missionary conference last Monday for
the summer. It was weird too because it was President Taggart last
conference. Two weeks from now well have a brand new mission president
and it will be weird for sure. The other huge thing to mention is the
awesome temple trip I was privileged to go on. It was super epic and
deeply spiritual. The temple is awesome! You should go all the time.

Funny story for the week. Yesterday in church was an experience. So to
start off sacrament was normal and all the talks were focused on the
Law of Tithing. Sunday schools from my end of things went as planned,
we got to teach the young men and women's Sunday school about the
priesthood and that was pretty funny. Then during opening exercises of
priesthood, the second counselor of the bishopric asks for any
visitors to stand up and introduce themselves. Immediately without
hesitation this big classy dressed guy stands up and in a southern
accent "I'm Professor......... And I'm the whistle blower... (Insert
several political topics that I had never even heard of before
here).... That investigation was a sham! And it should be
reopened!....." As several of us are trying as hard as possible to not
bust up laughing the bishop gets up and just states "We will not argue
politics in the house of the Lord!" This guy this whole time is
walking up and down the aisle like he's giving a lecture and just
turns towards the pulpit "Well why not?" The Bishop restated himself
and the "Professor" walked out of the building..... So that was funny.
It goes even further in Elders quorum when after the Teacher finishes
summarizing a story a general authority told he looks at me "Elder
Hicks could you give us the meaning of all that now that I've
half-a**** that story?"... Probably my favorite Sunday ever. It's good
to know everybody isn't perfect.

Well everybody as per spiritual stories for the week I can't think of
anything very large besides the mission conference with President
Taggart. In essence it was his last training and guidance to us all
and it was amazing. It was such an experience to see their final
testimonies of this work. They'll be sorely missed for sure.

PS I'd love to get you all the video of the cheer my zone did at the
conference but I can't save it off of facebook.


                      Elder Anthony Sleigh Hicks
                  New Jersey Morristown Mission

Here is a bunch of Pictures

5/29 My Minny Me!

Well hello again on this fateful Monday morning!
I hope Ya'll are having a dandy time wherever doth art.
So this week was pretty fun! We did a lot of different things. The
theme of this email though is how awesome my companion is. I don't
joke when he is my Minny me. I even had him take a personality test
and he got the same thing as me. Now he is my "Minny" me and not my
twin because I weigh 70 pounds more then him.... We are too much a
like and it's causing problems. We got distracted and spent a good
chunk of time the other day talking about politics and got carried
away. I am training him to be the new me once I'm gone in the mission.
I refuse to be forgotten.... Muuuahahahaha
But anyways our new area is going great, the members are pretty sweet.
We've been mostly trying to find new investigators to teach but it's
all good.
No crazy stories this week or anything super duper spiritual. Just the
usual, but I'll try to do something crazy to talk to you guys about
next week!

                      Elder Anthony Sleigh Hicks
                  New Jersey Morristown Mission

We killed a spider.....

5/22 Plainfield, USA!!!!

Hello all my people that are still out there listening... somewhere.... in the lost netherreaches of my memory. How are you? That's great to hear! I'm doing great too.

So this week was awesome! Elder Brinkerhoff (Boise, Idaho) and I put in a lot of work this last week trying to understand our new area. We got "Doubled In" which means that both of us are new to the area and there were Sister missionaries there before. All I'd Like to say is that this ward is AWESOME! In the first 3 days we were here we got fed three times by the members which was awesome, Thankyou very much everybody, that made it for us. It also helped that My New Jersey Mom Sister Wimmer put in a good word to all her friends in this ward to watch out for me and Take care of me and my comp.... So we've been doing really well here.

Sidenote: Our apartment is HUGE. Like super huge, we have two bathrooms and it's the first apartment I've had where I have to yell at my companion because if we are on opposite sides we can't hear each other when we are talking to each other across the apartment.

Elder Brinkerhoff is sweet! We get along super well and he's like a miniature version of myself. Except maybe a little less bitter and sarcastic. He's pretty young in the mission though so it's an opportunity for me to teach him a lot because I'm an aged old man.

Here are some pictures from my last week in Englewood that I didn't get a chance to send last week.

Hope you all have an amazing week and that you enjoyed the snow because it was stinking a 100 degrees on thursday and Friday.

 

 

We pulled out a second shopping cart, this time in only 2 hours...

 

 

5/8 Nerf Wars, Broken Backs, And Feelings Expressed....

MuWell hello again my weekly readers!

     This week we have a few great Highlights! To start from the pictures below!

Starting from the bottom, the last few P-Days to make it more fun for our zone we've been trying to come up with fun activities and stuff so people can relieve stress better. We had a Nerf War! and it was awesome! we played capture the flag and zombies. Growing up my whole childhood with Nerf Guns I don't think I ever had as much fun as I did last monday. It was a blast and everybody loved it, even the sisters!

     Next picture up was from our community service on Wednesday! It's at a nature preserve clean up place in the middle of our area. It used to be an old dump 100 years ago and they've turned the whole place around in the last several years. A couple weeks ago when clearing vines off of trees we found next to a small creek this shopping cart. Or at least all we could see at the time was the wheels sticking out of the mud. Elder Layton and I made it our mission this last Wednesday to finally remove it. After 3 hours of digging through mud, redirecting the creek, clearing water from the pit we were digging, and ruining our backs, We finally got it out! 

     Side note, I could barely walk the next morning because my back hurt so much.... and I may or may not have shifted my hip out of place for the 4th time.

     And then for the last picture, the one directly below, let me describe.... After a long planing session that we were super confused and not sure what to do and my companion said a snarky remark to me. So I wrote that on the board and gave him a lesson on my feelings towards humanity! Muahahahahah