Locals

It's weird when you've been in a place so long you've become part of the community. We can't walk down the street anymore without running into someone we know, whether an investigator, member, the guy that own's the place that makes the really good pastillos, or one of the countless other people we've gotten to know just talking to people on the street. They know us here in the South Bronx! We're their local Mormon Missionaries, and whether they're interested or not, they own it! We're both famous and infamous, depending on who you ask; "had for good and evil among all [the Bronx]," but either way we're part of it now.

So we've had another busy Boogie-down Bronx week! We've been running all over the place. We helped a member who is moving in from New Rochelle. He's rennovating the new apartment before they move in and I got to steam all the walls to peel the gross sixties wallpaper off. It was great and I got covered in ancient wallpaper glue!

We started teaching a guy named B*. We've known him for a while but we had our first sit down lesson with him and he seems solid! Elder Unice and him really hit it off because they both love the TV show "Supernatural." So each time we see him they talk about that for a while before I'm able to steer us into the lesson, but hey, he likes us now.

We also started teaching a woman named T*. Her real name is TM*, but she said she doesn't like it, so she goes by T*. She asks so many questions we can't keep up with her! All good questions though. She also seems like a solid new investigator.

I had a really sad moment yesterday. We got on the 2 train to go up to 174th Street and I ended up being positioned across from the cutest little boy with a mess of curly hair and his mom. He couldn't have been more than four years old and she couldn't have been more than twenty. He was staring at us really hard. Two strange white guys who were dressed the same, who can blame him? So I started staring really hard back. Pretty soon we were taking turns making faces at each other. He was puzzling himself trying to copy my cross-eyed face when I noticed he had a good-sized bruise on the right side of his face and a fairly new scrape with it. Then I noticed his mom had a bruise to match and bruises all up her arm as well. I've seen plenty of other women with questionable bruises and witnessed more domestic violence than I would like, but it hurt more having just made a funny connection with her little boy. I prayed really hard for those two.

I can't end on that note though, so here's something happier:

P* came to church and loved it! For sacrament meeting, we cleverly lead her to a seat right by the seat Ruby always sits in and hey hit it off right away! They stuck by each other for the rest of the day! She's right on track for her baptism at the end of the month.

All else is going well. The Richards Family is doing great. Ruby's doing great. I'm doing great!

Talk to you later!

-Elder Samuel Burton