The God Squad

Malo soifua!!!

This week has been pretty busy, but we have had a lot of great experiences, and some success. We have a large pool right now (pool means the group of people we're teaching), and our schedule fills up pretty quickly with all of our scheduled lessons.

On average, we've had scheduled about 4 or five lessons per day. That's a whole lot, and we're pretty busy planning for each lesson and teaching. In reality, however, at least one lesson a day falls through for any number of reasons. It's been a little frustrating because we have been trying to get each person we're teaching to set a time or two each week that they're open to meet with us. They always say they're good at a given time each week, then tell us a few days later that they're busy so they can't make it, but they want to meet with us next time! (This goes one one or two or three times before we actually meet with them.) Some lessons are great and life is peachy, but some lessons are more difficult. Haha we had one lady who asked for a Bible study with us, and she just dove into Revelation and started asking us weird and crazy questions based on very weird and different sources. It's been fun. 

It's gotten a bit cooler here, and it's remained gray and drizzly most days. Hopefully it clears up soon (Dad, I'm sure you could tell me what the real forecast is, haha). 

My ward here is kinda small, but it's really good. A lot of people here, members or not, are just really busy all the time. That's the vibe of NYC: everyone's busy all the time. Our ward is meeting in person as of about two weeks ago, so we're trying to re-fellowship members to bring church attendance back up. This past Saturday was a ward Halloween drive-in movie. A decent group showed up, including some people we're teaching. We elders helped set up, got some food as thanks, and then went home for the night. 

I've gotten along really along with my companions this past week. We play a lot of basketball to get in our exercise, plus some Monopoly and Exploding Kittens (some games that are in our house lol), so we have tons of fun. A couple nights we'll have free time from about 9pm onward, so we'll just chill and talk about whatever. Sometimes we feel kinda like college roommates when we're just sitting around a Monopoly board talking about something random. It's been great. Understand, however, we do lots of work, don't get me wrong. We are often really busy, so we don't lie around or play games a ton. We'll just have nights where a lesson falls through or we're exhausted, so we'll relax a bit in the evening after proselytizing time is over. 

(Note for Mom and anyone else concerned for my welfare while living away from home: Elder Siu is teaching us how to live away from home, and we take turns cooking foods for the companionship. I made a dope pizza with my family recipe, and it got wide approval). [In case anyone is wondering, "dope", in this context, means "exceedingly wonderful and delicious."  😁]

Finally, I'll explain the subject line. We had a lesson with an awesome guy named Ben. At one point in our call he asked us what we do during Covid, and we told him about all the work we're doing virtually and in person, just spreading the love of God. He then responded, "You guys are like the God Squad," and we all just looked at each other, got big grins on our faces, and we're just like "yeah Ben, you're exactly right." It was a kinda cool experience, and we dubbed our companionship the God Squad, and I love it. Hopefully we can keep living up to the name as we teach.

Well this week has been fun, and next week will be wild (I get to lead out in ALL the lessons and contacts starting tomorrow), but I feel blessed. God is good, and He's got a plan for us. 

Alofa tele lava atu ia outou,

Elder Hill 

Photos :

We saw some turkeys just chillin' on the side of the road 

I made a bomb pizza

Some pics of the city (two streets, one street at night, and a foggy Verrazano bridge)