Ripples

The other day, we were walking down the street in Harlem and a guy
started calling calling out in our direction, "Joseph Smith! Joseph
Smith!" Immediately, our guard is up and our minds are racing. Who is
this? Is he crazy? Is he wanting to argue with us? Or is this just a
good teaching opportunity? These questions tend run through my mind
multiple times a day. So the guy walks over and he has a big smile on
his face, which makes me hopeful. He clasps his hands together and
bows, saying "Brothers! I am Joseph Smith. Good day to you!" Then he
walked away. So I put a checkbox by "crazy" in my mind and we continue
on our way laughing.

But today I'm going to be with a man who's name actually is Joseph
Smith! Ray Smith, from Poughkeepsie, is going to the Broadway show,
Finding Neverland with me. (His full name is Raymond Joseph Smith.)
This is the one and only Broadway show of my mission! I'm super
excited! I'm especially excited to be going with Ray as my companion.
He's one of my favorite people in the world.

Anyway, the work has been good this week. We're still working closely
with Alex as he continue use to strengthen his testimony. Dwight is
still having some reservations about being baptized that we can't
quite pin down. Oscar, unfortunately, is starting to become rather
unreliable, though he always texts us telling us how eager he is to be
baptized and reminding us of his baptismal date, though we keep having
to move it because he's not meeting with us consistently. That's
frustrating, but I'm sure he'll get there eventually.

So a few weeks ago, something funny happened that I think if forgot to
mention in my email. Elder Richards and I were walking down Ninth
Avenue and suddenly we here someone call out "Elder Burton!" We turn
and see a yellow taxi has come to a dead stop in the middle of the
street, much to the annoyance of other drivers, and Will Cosper is
dodging traffic to run over to the sidewalk. You may or may not me
mentioning Will Cosper from when I was in the YSA Ward here. He was a
less active member we were working with. It was great to see him! I
really liked working with him. Since my time in the YSA Ward, he has
been officially reactivated. Yesterday he had us over for dinner at
his apartment and took us to get gelato afterwards. It was great!
Talking to him, I could tell his knowledge of the gospel has grown a
lot over the last several months.

Also, I may have forgotten to mention that Zachary, Rhonda Cady's son
in Poughkeepsie, was baptized a few weeks ago! He wanted me to come
baptize him, but unfortunately President Smith didn't give consent to
take a train up for the baptism.

So from my encounter with Will Cosper and hearing about Zachary's
baptism from Rhonda over Facebook, I've gotten to learn about some of
the future effects of what I've done in past areas. It's cool to know
that there are these "ripples" that I'm not always there to see. It
gives me hope that maybe there have been other good things that have
come from the work I've done that I don't know about.

Well, that's all for this week... Wow, I guess I'm only going to be
sending one more of these emails. AAAAAAHHHHHH! That's a strange
feeling. Well until the next and last time, love you all!

-Sam

Picture: We found a selfie machine in a subway station, so... Haha.
Sorry, that's pretty lame, but it's the only photo I've got from this
last week.