Sister Layton In New York: What a Week!

What a week.... I'm still living the d r e a m.

Ok I'll start with a cool story.

Church was canceled yesterday -__- church canceled as a missionary is the worst! We had 4 peeps planning on coming for their first time! So Saturday night we got a text from Bishop saying "church canceled tomorrow due to bad weather." There was supposed to be a bad storm Saturday night. I thought "yeah whatever, it's not even going to snow." Well, I woke up Sunday morning and not to my surprise there was absolutely no snow on the roads or sidewalks. I said to Sister Ewell "why would Bishop feel prompted to cancel church if God knew it wasn't even going to snow....." It didn't make sense to me

Let's flash back to a few days before.

J, our BFF, has been struggling with faith. It was all very sad because we love her to the moon and back. you could literally see she was on the verge of giving up. She didn't want to go to church the next day. I must explain that when Jessica prays she doesn't ask for blessings. We've been trying to change that. She believes in prayers of thanks and thinks she shouldn't ask God for blessings. She doesn't like to ask because "he's already given her so much and why should she ask for more?" We keep telling her to ask for specific blessings to strengthen her faith.

Anywayssssss. Sunday evening we were driving to a lesson with J. I had a silly thought pop into my head and said sarcastically "J, Bishop didn't feel prompted to cancel church because of the weather, did he? He felt prompted to cancel church because for the first time ever you prayed and asked God for a blessing......... You asked God to cancel church! You're the reason church was canceled, aren't you?" It was a joke when it came out, but then she turned to me and said "well, yeah.......... I did. How did you know I didn't even tell you!"

Moral of the story, God answers prayers. And he loves J. Btw she gave me permission to tell that story and wants you all to know she feels like an idiot because she asked for church to be canceled of all things. Hahahahaha.

Oh, we had sisters conference this week! Strange, seems like that was years ago. I drove us and the Hermanas for like 3 hours to The mission office in Rego. Yup, I drove in the city, it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected. Sisters conference was SO COOL. it's so nice to see all my favorite sisters together in one place :) especially sisters Peterson and Barkerrrrr! I missed my ASL homegirls.

For PDAY we went to A and L's house. They live in a huuuuge mansion that was built in the 1800's. ITS SO CUTE. The people who built it were loaaaded. They gave us a house tour and it has everything from a photo-developing room to a maids attic, to a carriage house, to a SECRET TUNNEL THAT GOES TO A SECRET ROOM THAT WE JUST DISCOVERED WHEN THEY TOOK US ON A TOUR. We were all flipping out! oh man it was so legit and so creepy. We found on old dusty mirror and old furniture in that secret room! There's tons of ancient books, pictures, letters, and random things from the original owner in the house! And the wallpaper is to die for! I love old houses hahah. L and A showed us how to do pyrography. It's wood burning art. I made a hummingbird :) best pday EVER.

On Tuesday... Oh my gosh it was the worst experience of my life! We went to see a former investigator. She had died, so that was sad. We were walking out and a guy yells "hey!" We walked to himself and introduced ourselves.... I tried to get a referral from him.. He had snot coming out of his nose lol. He told us about some mental disability he has. We were about to part ways, so I held out my hand to shake his hand and say goodbye. Hahahaha he grabs me, gives me a hug aaaand kisses my face! And the snot on his face got all over my cheek! I was like ohhhhhh myyyyyy, and I gagged the whole rest of the day.

I'm happy, warm, and safe. My testimony is growing every day. And through real-time repentance, I'm changing everyday. I'm grateful I have a firm foundation of the Prophet Joseph Smith and the restoration of the church. The truth that Joseph was a prophet seems to be EVERYONE'S stumbling block! Ah well, they'll get over it as they read the Book of Mormon.

I love Bayshore. We are soooo busy with our investigators. I feel like I'm starting to connect with them! We've been freakin out cuz so much to do and so little time to do it! I love that our day is fillllled with teaching appointments. I LOVE teaching in English. I love the loft.

I have no idea how to find new investigators here, but somehow we found 2 this week! #prayerworks. I had a cool experience on Saturday night. I wanted to know if there were, in fact, people in Bayshore prepared to accept the gospel. I prayed for a good 20 minutes while scrolling through my area book to know who, if anyone, in the area book was ready. Well, I received an answer as clear as day that there ARE people ready. A few people stuck out to me and I'm stoked to look them up this week!

Pray for us to be able to set more baptismal dates this week!

Love you all!

-the real Sister Layton IV

This weeks pics:
Sistah petersonnnnnn! My girl.
Jessica and the hummingbird I made today with the wood burner.
My cute companion sister Ewell!

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