Somos misioneros para de mudo

For those of you who don't read Spanish, the subject line means "we are missionaries for the deaf". For my friends who are serving Spanish-speaking right now, don't judge my attempt. Serving in New York City, which has cultures and languages from all over the world, by far the second-most common language to English here is Spanish. Pretty much the entire top of the island of Manhattan is Dominican central, and large parts of the Bronx and Harlem have heavy Hispanic populations as well. Many of our investigators and members live with Spanish-speaking family, so we in the ASL program have had to pick it up a little. Luckily, Elder Holloway can actually kind of carry on a conversation, so we aren't completely stuck when dealing with these family members.

The weather dipped a bit this weekend and we even got a dusting of snow on one night. One of those nights we were walking around the Bronx in about 40-degree weather -- I had my coat and beanie and gloves, and my Alaskan companion only had the beanie and gloves. He takes great pride in showing the world that he isn't from around here. As we walked, one woman who knew who we were and what we did stopped us and tried to offer him her jacket right off her back. They went back and forth a bit warmly, but he didn't accept the jacket, claiming he was fine. Some Alaskans and their pride.

The elders from the South mission had a baptism on Sunday, but other than that, nothing much else to report.

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

Bonus: Ryan sent me a short separate email with this library selfie, "Thought of you when I came."

Keep your phones to yourself!

Really nothing too significant happened this week. I do love my district of four that I'm with, and my companion and I get along well. Life in the big city is going alright.

As I may have mentioned in previous emails, NYC subways are an interesting place. Sometimes the ride is relatively quiet and boring. Other times beggars, preachers, solicitors, or performers interrupt people's Facebook scrolling and sometimes get a reaction. Sometimes people just do weird stuff, like when some guy tried to get my companion to play Candy Crush on his phone. He didn't talk at all, just kind of showed him the screen and tried to offer it. Maybe he was wanting to trade it for his iPad, I don't know. Like blood streams that connect the whole body together, so does the subway system keep NYC alive -- which means the good, the bad, and the plain weird all flow together.

Life in the branch has its twists and turns, but the branch is still alive and not doing too bad. We just had stake conference this week, and Elder Worthen -- an area seventy and BYU President -- presided and gave wonderful talks.

The funny thing about our work with the branch is that we haven't had a branch mission leader for a year and a half, so the branch president is filling in for that. We just really don't have any other qualified, stable members that don't already have other important callings to fill it right now. The branch council also really hasn't been super involved in missionary work, so that makes things harder. And, even though we do fill in sometimes for classes, talks, and the sacrament, the branch is capable enough to run Sunday meetings without us taking over, so that's good.

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

Spring is here

Well, at least it is here in NYC. After a very mild winter, temperatures have lifted, and this morning I went without a jacket and was a little warm with the bright sun. Hopefully the rest of the city will start shedding their thick coats and boots soon as well.

This first week back in the city with my original companion has been a bit rough, but we move forward and do all we can. People drop appointments, and a couple of good potentials found recently have fallen through. We are also exhausting the grand list of deaf contacts I organized a while back, so we are looking for new ways of finding. But, the two of us get along really well, as I knew we would, and that makes things better.

I love how in New York one can see things such as a half-eaten banana in the grocery store, a tribute to a chicken etched in the sidewalk, and a guy rolling weed on the doorstep of the church on Sunday. All these things and more have I seen just this week. The other elders mentioned they saw a half drank gallon of milk in a mini-mart, and the list goes on. Just keeps things interesting.

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

February pictures

Pictures Ryan sent home from February 2016

Ryan and his companion Elder Arines

Captioned "The sight every missionary dreads" (the occupants are returning the Book of Mormon and asking the missionaries not to come back)

It got really, really cold (and unless they were out disobediently late, this would be at 1:24 in the afternoon!)

A member's daughter drew this for Ryan and his companion

Ryan with Richard Perkowski, who Ryan baptized last May during his previous time in Newburgh 

Newburgh, the area Ryan left this week

One eternal round

This past week in Newburgh has went well. Elder Arines was called to be a trainer, and then upon finding out that one elder isn't coming to the mission any more, was changed to be a follow-up trainer. This means the companion he is getting has been here for six weeks, but isn't through the training process yet. Also, the people we have had actual lessons with have been still fairly receptive to the things we are teaching, though others we have tracted or contacted have not. One guy even ordered us off his property the instant we set foot on his driveway. Even still, the work progresses.

Now, since Elder Arines is getting a new companion (and another companion on top of that, so they are forming a trio), you may wonder where I am in all of this. Well, the answer isn't really that hard, as I really only have one other place to go -- back to NYC! That's right -- I've been out for 19.5 months and only had two areas -- NYC, Newburgh, NYC, Newburgh, NYC. This time, I am back with my first companion -- Elder Holloway. The other ASL elders now live in the South Bronx and cover east Manhattan and east Bronx, and Elder Holloway and I cover west Manhattan and west Bronx. So far each companionship has had free range of really both boroughs, but now we have set areas. My companion is a true friend of mine and true to the work, so I am excited about the work we will do.

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

Wind, rain, and snow

The whole week has been full of that at various times. Luckily, we were still able to accomplish the things that the Lord wanted us to do.

Some people have been asking me what we do for service up here. We have two planned service projects a week as a district -- helping at a food bank and one at a nature museum and trails. Recently, we have also been helping one of our investigators clean up her property, as neglect has cluttered it with all manner of trash and old stuff. We are helping her slowly throw away stuff and make the place look nicer. In part due to our service to her, she has been a lot more open to our message, and is accepting pretty much everything. She is scheduled to be baptized on March 26.

Our other main progressing investigator is also set to be baptized on March 26. He is the boyfriend of a member and is trying to find a church that was better than the one he grew up in. He came to our services on Sunday and absolutely loved it, and is feeling that this is the right direction for him. We are looking forward to his progress.

I'm staying warm, and I hope you all as well (except those of you in Arizona right now who don't know cold)!

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

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