Bitter winds and warm rains

Weather patterns have continued to be rather interesting this past week. My mom told me while we were experiencing -20 degree wind chills, AZ was getting 80. After our weekend of brief utter cold and some snow, yesterday brought 50 degree heavy rains. One member told us because of the rapid change some of his pipes burst, and so did his neighbors. Weird stuff happening.

On the missionary front, the work is still going well. We recently began teaching the boyfriend of one of our active members, and it has been going well. He has real intent, and we are checking to be sure that it is more geared towards changing his life rather than to be more aligned with her. He hasn't really been Christian for a while, so teaching has been a little more challenging, for example, we had to clarify the difference between resurrection and reincarnation about five times. But at the end of the lesson when we invited him to pray, he finally accepted after some prodding and explaining. He was nervous that he would mess up, but as he prayed, he really opened his heart, and the Spirit was there. He is set to be baptized on March 26.

Otherwise, we are getting more records straightened out like I did in the city in the deaf branch. Bishop has a stack of envelopes that were sent out to all people on record in the ward, but these ones came back, so we get to look them up. Some have been looked up before, some even many times, so I am personally trying to make good enough records so that missionaries after us don't have to waste time doing them over and over getting the same result. All sorts of fun.

Just a little more info about the church, (sparked by Dad's question). In my mission there are four stakes: New York (the island of Manhattan), Westchester (the Bronx and some of Westchester county), Yorktown (more of NYC and the Connecticut part of our mission), and Newburgh (which covers everything in the mission west of the Hudson and and everything in the north part east of it). My zone is the Newburgh zone, which covers five units all west of the Hudson. There is another zone that covers the other half of the stake. Everything here is in the country with a few larger cities dotting the land. The West Point Branch is becoming a ward on Sunday, though I have heard that the stake is generally starting to decrease in active membership, which is sad. In this area we are fortunate to have both an English ward and a Spanish branch, whereas everywhere else in the stake I believe has Spanish groups in their wards and branches. Oddly, I have been in both of the only two districts in the mission without sisters -- this one and the ASL district.

Elder Ryan Turner
New York New York North Mission
American Sign Language