Creative Mission

Family and Friends,

 

As far as outward success goes, Elder Heagren and I have seen absolutely none of it. It has been a very baffling time of my mission. I feel like I have really hit my stride as a missionary. I can speak the language decently well, I am very (perhaps overly) comfortable with talking to strangers, and I have developed a sincere love for teaching. But after all we can do, we are seeing no lessons to teach. Its really weird. The zone as a whole had one of the best weeks i have seen on the mission. there were a lot of very solid people at church from all the other companionships. But the mission goes on. Nothing can or will stop Elder Heagren and I from working ourselves to the ground.

 

The mission is taking really cool strides in how we work with the people in New York City. We have been doing a lot of service here in woodside with the districts of english and spanish missionaries working together. There is this woodside icon named Dave Rosasco that is kind of the vigilante of service here. He goes around painting over graffiti and planting and cultivating the flowerbeds in his free time. So we have been working very closely with him to make Woodside a prettier place. This has caught some attention and the New York 1 news station came and interviewed one of our district leaders. Also, we have been doing flash mobs as a zone on the trains. Our entire zone of missionary will dress up as regular people and get on a subway car together. One missionary will start singing a childs prayer and more and more missionaries will jump in until there is an entire chorus of seemingly random people in the train singing a primary song together. It is soooooo cool!! After we finish singing the train errupts in conversation and all of us get to talk to most everyone on the train car. Talk about an ice breaker haha.

 

I am thoroughly convinced that mine is possibly one of the most creative missions in the world. The work is just amazingly different here. But that is why I love it. At times it can be very tough, but I really feel like all this has been refining me. I absolutely love the mission. It is very strange to think that there are only a few more of these emails left for me to write. Time is just all out of whack for me right now haha.

 

Well, I love you all. Here's to a great week!!

 

Love, Elder Hogge