It's a New Day

Malo Soifua!!!

Today on the Elder Hill Show:

 ** Got to meet President and Sister Holmes, and they're fantastic!

 ** Don't ever be a book collector. Just.... don't.

 ** A guy gave us $100, and we got some of the most expensive sandwiches in Manhattan

WARNING! LONG EMAIL BELOW

So Tuesday was the Mission Tour with the Holmes'. We got to meet Pres and Sis Holmes as well as their son Patrick, who got home from his mission like three weeks ago. They each shared powerful insight and testimony about the work of the Lord, and about the nature of Pres Holmes' call to be president here in NYC. By the end of Pres Holmes' talk, we were all super fired up and ready to get back to the grind haha. We also got to sing for the first time in a large missionary meeting, which was great (we stood to sing "Called to Serve", something I've never done with other Missionaries before, and it was incredible). After the meeting, we got pictures with them, grabbed some snacks, and went back to our areas.

(Also, Quote of the Mission award goes to Pres Holmes with his greenie fire: "It's a new day. Let's get to work". Love that man already.)

On Wednesday, Elder Wall and I went to help our member friend Darryl pack some boxes into a U-Haul can and move them to his new apartment a few streets away. We loaded his van without mich issue, and we brought everything over to his new apartment. The catch? He lives on the FIFTH FLOOR, with NO elevator, and he had a couple dozen boxes of books, comic books, and records (vinyls). Needless to say, it was not enjoyable. The humidity added about 10 degrees of temperature to the air, putting it well over 100, and we were all getting kinda dehydrated. By the end of two hours ish, we had finally gotten all of the boxes upstairs and into his apartment. Elder Wall and I went home, took cold showers, and got dressed for some meetings that we were running late to. So yeah, sooooo much fun.

Thursday, however. Thursday was fun.

We had exchanges with the Chinese Elders, and I went into their area with Elders Call and Frank. We had plans to go street contacting, but it was raining hard, so that didn't happen. As we were walking home, a guy stopped us on the street. We said hi, and we learned that he's Tongan, he has a bunch of family that are members of the church, and he has mad respect for missionaries. He's also the head of security for Tyler the Creator (a famous rapper), so that's kinda dope. I mentioned that I speak Samoan, and I spoke a little, and he lit up. After our fun conversation, he stopped us as we were leaving, pulled a $100 bill out of his pocket and said "here, go get a good dinner." We tried refusing, but he insisted (Polys and their darn charity 😆😂).

After some thought, Elder Frank suggested Katz Delicatessen, a world famous sandwich place right here in Manhattan. We walked over there, and after waiting in line for a bit we each ordered their famous pastrami sandwich. Lame just say, it was flipping good. First off, it was HUGE. Like I was struggling to keep it all in the sandwich. Second, pastrami is really good, so that sandwich was BOMB. Our total came out to about $87, so that was wild 😂 (it was about $27-ish per sandwich). Definitely the most money I've ever spent on food, but definitely was one of the best sandwiches I've ever had in my life.

Mafaufauga faaleagaga: I thought I'd share an interesting analogy about faith that I once heard:

Faith is like flipping on a light switch. Before you flip the switch, you don't KNOW that the light will turn on, but you hope it will. Because you hope it will, you act without knowledge, and you flip the light switch. When the light comes on, you now have a knowledge that the light does work, not because you can see all the intricacies of the electricity and wiring, but because you can see the light, an evidence of your faith. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, hope is a noun, and faith is a verb. Faith is acting on things that you're not sure about. It's about making choices and taking chances that you have hope will work out. We are never actually expected to know anything about the gospel for sure before we go back to Heaven. We are just expected to hope that it's true, and act like we believe/know it's true. When we do that, the windows of Heaven will be opened, and we'll receive more blessings than we could ever imagine.

Long email, sorry folks. God is just so good sometimes.

Alofa tele lava atu ia outou,

Elder Hill

Ata:

• Pastrami sandwich at Katz Delicatessen (ft. Elders Boyd & Frank from Chinatown)
• Me with Pres & Sis Holmes
• Selfie of me literally dying in the heat/humidity
• Some cool pics from our apartment rooftop on Sunday evening (no fireworks though 😭) (including the ESB, the Google building, Hudson Yards, and the skyline in front of the Hudson river)
• Cool video of lightning