November 4, 2015 It's Always an Adventure in New York

Hey Family! Seems like Halloween was a bunch of goofy fun as usual.  Halloween out here is super weird, all the kids still go out trick or treating but, instead of knocking on doors where people live, they walk down the avenues and trick or treat at the businesses. It's super goofy there were literally thousands of kids and their parents dressed up in Halloween costumes walking into barbershops, stores and restaurants swarming the poor employee whose job it was to hand  for the day. We only had one group of kids knock on our door all night and they were systematically knocking whole floors at the same time and then swarming any door that opened. It seemed to be working pretty well, every kid had a ton of candy and there were some adults following them carrying full sacks as well. Smart Kids, they must've done a bunch of buildings because they were flying.

Other than Halloween we had a pretty good week, we're trying reallyhard to work with the members right now, because there's a ton of "less actives" and part member families in our ward. The vision is to bring people back to renew their covenants and create Eternal families by completing part member families. It's a tough task, but nothing feels better than helping somebody find their way home.

We're having a really cool Pday so far. President approved for us to get taken out to lunch by a family friend of Elder Mackintosh's family. He's a nonmember so president was very supportive. His name is Immanuel Kelly, he's actually kind of famous. He made it pretty far on the Australian Xfactor and has a pretty cool story, you should look him up, super interesting guy and a crazy interesting life. He was found in a box in Iraq with some really serious physical disabilities, then he got adopted by an Australian woman and is blessed with a beautiful singing voice. Crazy. Other than that we did some extra grocery shopping last week so that we could have time to go down and see the MET.

The cheesecake turned out well but, we ended up not making it until Monday. We really didn't do to much for Halloween because our roommates had to weekly plan and Elder Mackintosh is kinda sick and he wasn't feeling very well on Saturday. So I watched Elder Holland talks, it was a good night. It was scary for the first couple of weeks but, then you just get used to figuring out how to communicate, I hope I'll be a pro in the next year and a half. As for the other questions I don't really need much, I don't have any warm socks yet so I'm gonna need some of those and my iPad case is falling apart but other than those things I don't really know of anything else yet. I'll get back to you once it gets cold.

This next week's going to be pretty cool, Elder Mackintosh and I got invited to a special MLC up in Scarsdale with Elder Donaldson from the 70 tomorrow. We don't really know why we got invited, but it should be awesome. And we have Zone Conference which is always a blast.

Sounds like you guys had a pretty busy week back home. Good luck Dad with the new job! Cole keep being a beast, don't burn yourself out keep that fire. Ike keep doin you stud. I love you Mom, I appreciate everything you've done for me. Have a great week.

Con Amor,
Elder McBride

A friend from our home ward's sister, who lives in Manhattan, found Sam and sent this picture.
Made our day!  What a small world!

Walking through Central Park to get to the MET.

It's Fall. I bet you're so jealous Mom (I am)