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Hi Fam and Friends!
I was asked to give some details about Syracuse, which is great cause this week really wasn't that exciting anyway, haha.
There is one ward for all of Syracuse and a Singles Branch, which both the Elders and us cover. It is really cool being able to work with other missionaries so closely, gives some variety to the area. Elders cover the West and South side of Syracuse and we cover the East and Northern parts of Syracuse. I guess Sisters used to cover all of Syracuse but they split it and gave the Elders the more ghetto areas, altough a lot of area's we cover are pretty sketchy, westside is worse. Even though we only cover half of Syracuse, it is still a good chunk of ground to cover, we split it into 4 area's A,B,C,D to make things more organized with investigators and such. My companion this transfer has a GPS so we are using hers and I let Fayetteville sisters use mine this transfer since they don't have one. Fayetteville is in our district, so it's pretty close. Last transfer we used the GPS everyday, you really can't get around without one unless you have a map in your hands or have lived here for a consecutive long amount of time. The roads here make absolutley no sense, there is no organization with the streets like out west. Some intersections are 5-ways, yeah it's weird. The roads are weird and add to that NY drivers makes things pretty interesting driving here. This transfer I am the one driving as opposed to my first transfer when it was my comp driving. Although Sister S. says that when it starts to snow she's driving, which is fine with me, haha, she is from Colorado and has experience driving in snow as opposed to a desert rat like myself who has no snow driving experience, haha. There are no mountains here in Syracuse, but there are a lot of hills, tons and tons of hills! There is a lake but its just outside our area, Onondaga Lake, in the elders area. As far as nationalities go, I can't tell you what the main nationality of Syracuse is because it is incredibly diverse here. There are people from all over the world here. It's really quite amazing. I have met people from Italy, Congo, Mozambique, Germany, Bosnia, Somalia, Sicily, England, France, Hungary, China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Cuba, Mexico and many more. Like I said, I can't pin-point the majority nationality. It's far too diverse to even try to guess. Syracuse is a college town, Syracuse University is like the ASU of Tempe here. Although their mascot is orange, not like the fruit but just the color, lame for such a prestigous school. So that's Syracuse in a nutshell.
This week has been a looong week, and it wasn't super eventful. Highlights, taught several lessons and picked up 4 new investigators, which is super cool. 2 are sisters, and then two other people. Thankfully, we picked up so many new investigators cause we had to drop several people this week that we either lost contact with or moved and they didn't give us their new info. It happens, but at least we have some new investigators. Now this week we only have 3 baptism dates, we dropped the family that we were teaching for reasons stated previously. It really is sad because they were progressing along so well, we call them almost every day and no one answers. It would take a miracle to get in contact with them again and continue teaching them. I suppose that is how people get weeded out from the sincere ones and not committed ones. I truly believe that if they were really ready they would have called us back by now and kept in contact, but it's all in the Lord's time.
So this transfer is almost over, thank goodness. I feel like this transfer is longer than my first one, so much has happened in this second six weeks that it feels more like six months. Pretty soon it will be General Conference time, I can't wait to hear from the prophet and apostles! As a missionary I feel like General Conference is almost better than Christmas.
I know that Thomas S Monson is the true and living prophet of today and that through Joseph Smith, Jr. the true gospel of Jesus Christ was restored. I know that Heavenly Father wants all of His children to have the chance to recieve the gospel of Jesus Christ. I know that as missionaries it is our callling and duty to gather those lost sheep. Heavenly Father, at the end of the day, really just wants His children to be happy. The bottom line of the plan of salvation, and gospel of Jesus Christ is all here for our happiness. With so much knowledge of the gospel at our finger tips, let us not be weary in spirit when there is so many wonderful things in life to be thankful for and strive for. I have a firm testimony of obedience and work. I know that as we do our best and be obedient that we will recieve the promised blessings from doing so. May each of us do our best, and be the best we can be to the climax of our ability.
-Sincerely,
Sister Gifford
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