July 15, 2015 Another Week Down

Wow I feel like I just wrote yesterday! 

After I emailed you last Pday we went to the temple (we get to go once a transfer cycle). While we were getting in the elevator, an older man and his wife walked in behind us, turns out it was Elder Zwick of the 70. He was super cool.  Elder Buckley asked him a question one of our investigators had about whether or not general authorities receive any kind of compensation for their service. He was super open about it and told us that its a lot like how missionaries live, where we get a basic amount for food and necessities and then get reimbursed for special expenses like traveling. He made sure to explain that it "wasn't even close to enough to live off of" solely but it does cover the extra expenses of serving as a general authority. We then had him in our session and in the locker room after we ran into him and our brand new Mission President talking. What are the odds?

Our new President is awesome by the way. We had our new Missionary meeting last Friday up in Scarsdale at the chapel and he just comes off kinda like that guy from Parks and Rec played by Rob Lowe always super super positive and energetic. He's super well read and spiritual though, he talked about the apostle Peter, complete with like 5 scriptures, for an hour, off the cuff. He said he wasn't even planning on talking about Peter but he just felt like he needed to. Our zone has 1 on 1 interviews with him on Monday so next Pday I'll tell you how that goes.

To answer your questions about how my companion is learning Hebrew and Greek. He told me that he had a couple companions who didn't really want to do much so he ordered a couple books that teach how to learn Greek and Hebrew enough so you can read the Bible in the language it was written in. To be completely honest, I don't know where he ordered them from and I'm not sure it's allowed but, it has helped the work.  We have a baptism scheduled for the 25th because of it haha. He's learning Greek now all on his free time before bed and studies, and during extra meal time. I think my head would explode if I tried to do that.

Our zone is the smallest zone in the mission. It is literally the size of a full district with 12 missionaries. Our zone only covers about 50 streets from 155-205 which if you go check out the map, It's super tiny and really thin, especially considering the rest of Manhattan only has 2 more zones Mid Man (Aka Harlem) Zone, and South Man. There are areas the size of our entire zone in Harlem. But for a Spanish Missionary this is the best place to be because most of the people here are Spanish speakers. The three Spanish Elder Companionships are the only ones who have specific areas.  The Spanish and English Sisters and the English Elders cover the entire zone. It's a pretty interesting set up because it's reversed compared to most other places in the U.S. the Spanish speakers cover a big area with English areas inside. It's a super cool place to start.  One of the AP's Elder Gore started in Inwood, too, and he said it was one of his favorite areas.

Elder Buckley and I are having some good success here. We got a ton of New Investigators which was really unexpected because we didn't even really tract we just randomly ran into people and the one time we did
tract we had some awesome people open their doors. A few miracles too. We went to look up this little kid who said his family would be interested, but when we knocked he wasn't there, but an old lady opened the door and said he lived in either 6f or 5f, so we decided to try 6f first. Their door was already open so we started talking to this lady who was really open to our message. Turns out she wasn't related to the kid, but she was just praying for God to help her find a way to make her life better. A serious miracle because it wasn't even the right apartment but since we didn't understand the old lady we went to it on accident. We have a follow up with her this weekend we're excited.

It's so great reading your emails every week.  Thanks for keeping me in mind. I'll try to send some pics today even though I don't have too many because we've been so busy I need to get a selfie Elder Gallego took yesterday.

Con Amor,
Elder McBride

This is Washington Heights. A massive Dominican guy carrying a snake.

This little part of our area is called Castle Village.  It's weird
because it's like super ghetto and then around 183 it gets super nice on the West side. That's the GW Bridge.