Fun Facts About NY

(Cami wrote this in a letter home)

I meant to write this in my weekly letter but forgot!

Here are some fun facts about New York:

1-  EVERYONE is terrible at directions. Here’s how they usually are:

“You’re gonna go down the road. Then you’ll turn left (where?) then you’ll see a big building that’s brick (okay that narrows it down) then you’ll turn right. Then you keep going, then you’ll turn left (where?) and you’ll pass a white house with a lot of cars. Then you’ll turn left (where?) and our house is the one with the big yellow mail box.”

Everyone identifies their house by the mail box. And no one uses street names.
2-  Everyone just kind of throws their junk on the curb with a sign that says “FREE.” Usually the sign is gone before the actual item is gone.

3-    Everyone sits on their porch and none of the men find shirts necessary.

4-    Everyone says goodbye by saying “stay cool” or “stay dry” or “stay warm.”

And that’s New York! I’ll be in Owego another 6 weeks. Yay!

Insanity

This week was seriously insane. The most bizarre  stuff happened to us! It was so funny!

Monday: 

- Our toilet stopped working. It wouldn't exactly....flush. And when it did, it'd fill up to the brim. Sister R and I would stand there, flush it, watch it rise and say, "No....no! Noooo!" It never over flowed, thankfully. I tried plunging it a good hundred times and it didn't work. Finally our solution was to flush it over and over again until it worked. Somehow that managed to fix the problem. 

- We went to a super, super ghetto car wash. We pay our 7 bucks and start driving. Now, it wasn't on a conveyer belt, so we just had to coast on through. A few seconds pass. Nothing. 

Then it happened. 

It randomly spat water at us. And it startled us so bad that Sister R accidentally pushed the gas and sped forward a little. So now we're sitting in the soap section. Nothing's happening. So we move to the drying section. Again, nothing's happening. So Sister R's like, "This is stupid. We're going." 

We start to exit, when this screen pops up and says, "Stop." 

So we stop.

"Back up." 

Um....okay. 

So we back up. 

Then it tells us to stop, and pull forward. So we do!

Then it tells us to stop and back up again.

We did this process probably about...oh I don't know. Four or five times? Just backing up and pulling forward over and over again until finally Sister R said, "OKAY. IS THIS SOME KIND OF JOKE?!" And we left, with our car STILL sopping wet, and it looked a whole lot dirtier than when we first went in. 

Tuesday: 

- After a not-so-lovely chat with a less-active family, we went back to our apartment. As we're climbing up the stairs, Sister R stops and says, "Um....how hard are you praying right now?"

......"You left the keys in the apartment." 

"Yup."

Our door was locked. Fantastic. So we go to our landlord's door and bang on it, hoping in vain that he's still there. No one answers. We try the neighbors. Again, no one answers. So we call the Mission office and explain the situation and ask for our landlord's phone number. They give it to us, and we call to hear....

"This number has been disconnected." 

Fantastic. 

After leaving a note on both the landlord AND the neighbor's door, we decided to look at the list of local people that we wanted to visit. 

.......twenty minutes later we were done with that. 

(on a side note, I thankfully had taken my sunscreen with me!)

Well it was around lunch, so we thought, "Mine as well grab something to eat." 

And that's when we realized we had left our wallets in the apartment. I had two dollars and sixty one cents floating around in my purse.

Fantastic.

Anyway, I'm still not sure how we filled the time, but thankfully we did. Our dinner appointment called us and said she'd meet us outside the courthouse and pick us up for dinner. We start walking to the courthouse, and then....a downpour starts. 

By now the chorus of "dear to the heart of the shepherd" is running through my head. 

"Out in the desert they wander, hungry and helpless and cold." 

I was really hungry. 

During our dinner appointment, our neighbor calls! We answer it and she says, "Do you guys have a crowbar?" 

"Um...we could borrow one. Why?" 

"Well the other Mormons who used to live here locked themselves out all the time. But they'd use a card to slide through the lock. I don't know how to do that, but I can probably use a crowbar!" 

"...does the landlord not have an extra key?" 

"Nope." 

"Awesome."

Our dinner appointment loans us her crowbar and drops us off at the apartment. We didn't have time to run inside before our teaching appointment, so we sprint down the street, crowbar in hand (we even took one of the sketchy streets because we had said crowbar!)

After our lesson we get home....and somehow our neighbor had managed to use that card-through-the-lock trick and got us in! Hurrah! 

Lesson learned. 

Thursday -  

We carpooled up with the Elders to Utica for special training, where we got to see all my MTC buddies! This was the first time I experienced intense homesickness since getting to New York. Why? Because the ENTIRE thing was just farmland. And cows. And horses. And farmland. I was seriously suffocating in farmland. Finally I was like, "I miss living in a city.......SO much." But we played a game with the Elders where whenever we passed some sort of farm animal we'd stick our head out the window and yell, "HEY COWS" or "HEY SHEEP" or my personal favorite "HEY LLAMAS!" and however many turned towards you is however many points you got. 

I lost. 

Friday - 

After seeing all my MTC buddies, having an awesome special training meeting, eating ice cream,  AND spending the night at my MTC companion, Sister J, and her companion's apartment we headed back to Owego where we had a dinner appointment. We ate chicken. Said chicken may have been sitting out for a while.

Saturday -

My companion and I got sick from said chicken. We spent a lot of time in the bathroom that day. 

Our landlord also got married to the love of his life! Apparently they're moving to California....but they're still going to be our landlord....from California. Okay then. 

The best part was they had the reception in the apartment above us. It was curfew, so we're walking up the stairs to our apartment when our neighbor says,

"Oh hey, you can come upstairs and say hi to them if you want!"

"Oh it's actually curfew so...."

She just stared at us. And I was thinking, "why does she look so confused?" 

Then I realized that we're two adults living on our own....and we have a curfew. I didn't really want to take the time to explain this so I said, "Like your shirt. It's cute." and went inside.

Sunday -

Still sick. I was laying on the couch yelling, "CAN WE JUST CALL SISTER WIRTHLIN BECAUSE I NEED A MOMMY CAUSE I'M SICK!" then Sister R said no and to take a pill. 

So I did and I felt better.

And guess who came to church! Our investigator and the lady with the donkeys! We went over to say hi to the lady who owns the donkeys and she showed us a birthday present she got - it was that picture of Mary riding the donkey while she was pregnant with Christ. She talked about how pretty it was!

I love my mission :)

I'm sending a few pictures from Special training, including one of Elder Taylor and I. The story behind this is: the photographer timed it perfectly where we were both talking. We looked at the picture, looked at each other and said, "....and let's let it be."

Happy Fourth! -- Kind of

Hello familia!

I am absolutely loving New York :) Except the humidity. I still don't like the humidity. But this week was a lot more busy than last, thankfully!

  

We'll start with this lady we decided to visit.  She has three donkeys, three cats, and a bunch of chickens. She lives in the middle of nowhere but she says it's still too close to civilization. So we visit her, and she's showing us her donkeys. As I'm petting one, we have this conversation: 

Me: "So how long have you had these mules?"

Her: "THEY'RE DONKEYS."

Me: "Ah!" *I literally jumped* "Sorry! Donkeys! How long have you had the donkeys?" 

Her: "....are you a city girl?" 

Me: "Yeah, I am." 

Her: *pats me on the shoulder* "You poor thing." 

Won't make that mistake twice. Still don't know if she ever told me how long she had had the mules...er...donkeys. 

  

Now we'll backtrack for a second. Our investigator set a baptismal date for August 3rd! We were SUPER excited!

So then Sunday comes.

Oh, Sundays. The best and worst day of the week. 

One of our investigators came with her niece to church. We gave her a tour and showed her around. We show them around the church, then sit in the chapel. Church it about to start, when who walks in?
The lady with the animals. 

Woah.

She gave us a BIG bear hug and sat down next to one of her friends in front of us.

Guess who didn't come. 

Our investigator with the baptismal date. 

So Sister R and I are like, "Oh no. NOOOOOOOO."

But church was GREAT other than that. It was awesome. 

Anyway, so Sister R and I run over to our investigator's house to make sure she's okay. And she lets us in and says, "Oh yeah I was just feeling really sick! I was so sad I wasn't able to make it to church. Thanks for stopping by!"

Phew. 

So things are continuing to go well with her, and I hope they continue to! It's weird how much my love for others has really grown since I've come on my mission, and I absolutely love all the people I have met here!

Anyway, things are good here in Owego. I absolutely love my mission. And there are bunnies everywhere! And deer! 

Hurrah for Israel ;)

-Sister Stimpson

ps - The other day we were eating at a investigator's house. She gave us her homegrown fruit, homemade bread, homemade something wrapped in a homegrown leaf. Then I look outside, and I see the mail lady delivering things by HAND. AND the newspaper boy walking around with a big old fashioned bag. I'm like, "I FEEL LIKE I'M LIVING IN THE 1920'S OR SOMETHING." It's awesome!

The end. 

Happy Monthaversary!

Yeah I can't believe I've been out a month! And I can't decide if it's gone by slow or fast! Crazy! But I've enjoyed nearly every minute of it!

This week was pretty uneventful. But I had some great "journal moments." Well that's what Sister R and I call them. 

We'll start with Ralph.

I don't know if I told you guys about Ralph, but when we moved in there was a note taped in our closet that said, "Ralph. A good spider. Please let him live. Brush him twice a day and feed him many flies. - Elder L." And it had an arrow pointing to a spider. We kind of freaked out at first, but the spider never moved. So we're like, "Okay. We can deal with a spider that never moves. We'll grant L's wish and let him live."

Then the other day, we were chuckling about Ralph, and we took a flashlight to go check on him. 

That's when we discovered that Ralph's a girl.

And Ralph had many, many babies. 

But here's what I don't get. What kind of spider just SITS there? Ralphina, and all of her children, were just kind of sitting there. Not moving at all. But still. Baby spiders. NOT OKAY. 

So we freak out, and Sister R runs and grabs mildew spray and just starts spraying them. They all start scurrying, and then...they died. All this time I'm standing in the background shouting, "THAT'S IT. THEY'RE DEAD. I''M GONNA KILL THEM." Sister R: "I'm killing them right now, relax!" "I MEAN THE STUPID ELDERS THAT LET THAT THING LIVE." 

But we just killed the spiders instead. And I have since moved on. It was a golden moment of my life.

Also my bad luck with cars continue. All the streets here are pretty narrow. One day we were at a stop light, and a semi goes to turn onto the road....and took too wide of a turn. They were coming STRAIGHT at us! So I'm freaking out and thinking, "This is it. This is the end. I always knew I was gonna die by car wreck. And this is it. Goodbye, world. Goodbye." 

And then Sister R backed up and we drove away and I kind of wasted a worry.

Wasted a worry?
Maybe.

Not much has happened this week! It's rained a ton, and our investigator came to church again! I've also eaten a lot of pizza.   

We went on exchanges this week, and we go to a member's house for dinner. It's an elderly couple and three of there friends. They were all pretty old. The dinner was seriously like the scene from "While You Were Sleeping." They were all talking about completely random things at the same time. Like...three conversations going on all at once. And my companion and I sat there and didn't say a single word until the very end.  Food was delicious, though. And I may or may not have almost tipped over their china cabinet. 

Let's go with may not have. 

But it didn't happen! don't worry! 

Anyway, I love you all so much! Church is true :)

-Camilla