Ellipticals

December 10, 2012

Dear Familia,

So this week has been pretty interesting. We found out on Tuesday that although all six of us in the district are staying together, our district is changing. They moved the AP's to Far Rockaway. So there are eight of us here now. That move was mostly made because they want to start a new system here that they have implemented in a few other areas (Bushwick and Jamaica (about a month after I left)). It is called an elliptical and it is a very different style of missionary work. Essentially all of us in the area work in the same small area. Our area right now is particularly small because we can't work in any flooded areas, so it is about 10 blocks by 2 blocks for the next couple of months.

We are working down in Arvern by the Sea, which is a better off neighborhood. It seemed really weird at first but the more I think about it the more it makes sense. At first I thought people would just be getting sick of us because in an area so small people's doors are going to be knocked like two or three times a week, and I'm sure there will be people getting upset. But the purpose of the elliptical is so that we become a presence in the community -- people see us and instantly know who we are. But more than that, we are supposed to get much more involved in the community, doing a lot of "outside the box" things. Find more service opportunities (that one is easy here), host family nights at the church, whatever we can think of to get as many members of the community involved in non-threatening ways until they start to open up a little more. It will be a weird transition but it will be a lot of fun. It sounds like they are going to be moving the church down to this neighborhood in a few months and that will open up a lot more things too. We only started working in the elliptical last night for about two hours. We worked in our own area most of the time last week while they were still figuring out exactly where they wanted the elliptical to be and what kind of activities we would be doing.

It really is a miracle with this neighborhood though. It is right on the beach and did not get flooded. Everything on each side of it got hammered but somehow this one little area was untouched -- the only middle to upper class area that was untouched on the whole peninsula. These ellipticals are supposed to be in those kinds of areas so that we can get more of what President Calderwood calls "anchor families", people who can actually strengthen the branch rather than just add to the numbers. These are the people that very few missionaries have really worked with pretty much ever. So this is a big shift that is in these stages going to be more just planting seeds but in a couple of years, the harvest will be great. Once the flood damage is all taken care of and people get their lives back in order, we will be starting an elliptical in Belle Harbor as well, which is where most of the service was done, and there will be a huge harvest there. I am really excited for this.

So this week we still had a few more service opportunities. On Tuesday we went somewhere where they just said they needed help getting a fridge, washer, and dryer out of the basement and that was it. We figured that it would just be an hour tops for Elder Bush and I. When we got there we found out that the fridge was made in the fifties. They built them pretty solid back then. Thing weighed a ton. Plus it wouldn't fit out the door unless we took the fridge door off. All we had was a crowbar and hammer and on the solid metal frame of the fridge it wasn't doing too much. Then we were able to borrow a screwdriver from some utilities workers that came in to check the gas lines and we were able to get the door off that way. The door alone was a good 30 pounds. So we finally managed to get that out and moved on to the washer. Now the washer was a different kind of struggle. It wasn't as heavy but it was bulkier. It also wouldn't fit through the door so we took the door off its hinges (normally we would just take out the door and the whole door frame but these ones were also metal, nice) and long story short after some more door removals and heavy lifting got it out. Then the dryer. We had to just give up on that because it was bigger than the metal door frame and so there was no way to get it out.  All in all it took us about two and a half hours. Blegh.

Then Wednesday and Saturday we went back to the house we were working on last week to finish bleaching the basement. By the end of Saturday it was a gas chamber in there. You walk in and instantly your eyes start to water and your throat starts to burn. It's a lot of fun. But we should be finally done with that one. We will go over sometime this week just to make sure the mold is gone but I think we are done with that. And she keeps telling us to come back when everything is sorted out so she will become an investigator before too long here. So that's good.

As for your questions, it is still mostly in the 50's and 60's down here but I don't expect that to stick around much longer.

Sightseeing isn't too available right now, and Manhattan is not available ever for sightseeing for us. For the Christmas activities around here, most of them will be more like benefit concerts and things like that. We will be doing a Christmas concert down here and in a few other areas.  The daughter of the person that I said was a child star will be doing a concert that a few thousand people are supposed to show up to. Some missionaries might also perform in it but we will likely be going whether or not they do. It will be good to support the community that way, especially our potential investigators.

The Christmas concert we are doing is organized by the mission with mostly missionaries performing but also some members. There is still a lot of talent here even with the loss of Elder Sterling.

I haven't heard too much about what we will be doing for Christmas yet. Some members have given us loose offers so we will have to see how that goes. 

 I think that's about it.

Love you all,
Elder Pearce