Share Your News and Photos with Elder McBride at: Samuel.McBride@myldsmail.net

Monday, April 24, 2017

April 24, 2017 Home Stretch

Hey Family,

Thanks for the updates and love this week. My condolences, love and prayers go out to the Heaps.  She'll live again. 

This last week was great. We had a huge miracle on Wednesday night. We were on our way back from a baptismal interview we had in Olmstead (I was translating for President). By the time we got out of the interview and President dropped us off at the subway station it was pretty late. On the subway after getting ignored or rejected by a couple people we were just standing there on the train when this young man gets on and stands right next to us. We felt a prompting that this man wanted to talk to us, so we started talking to him about why he was dressed up. Unfortunately, just as we started talking about being ministers for our church, we got to the train station and he was gone. Somewhat disappointed, we started heading up to the street. As we got to the top of a flight of stairs we noticed him walking really slowly and looking backwards for someone. He saw us and waved us down and said " I know you guys are good guys.  When I got on that train I felt a peace that I can't really describe". We told him that we had a special message to share with him about how God speaks to man on earth and he excitedly gave us his contact info. It was a super cool experience. 

We were assigned to help for a wedding going on in our YSA Ward. The bride went to Mountain View so there were bound to be some people who knew some people there. That's where I met the husband of one of the bridesmaids who knew Matt in high school. I have a video at the venue for you, Mom. 

Also this weekend there was another Sister baptized into our Ward. It was awesome. There are some really great things happening here in Manhattan. 

Today is my last full Pday. Starting next week they are changing Pday back to Wednesday. We will have a couple hours on Monday to get some things done so... This is going to be my last full email home. At least we had a great day today though. President invited us to come golfing with him and the Assistants. It's been almost 2 years since I have swung a golf club, I was a little rusty, haha, but so was everyone else.

Looking forward to seeing you soon! Love you.

Con Amor,
Elder Sam McBride


Monday, April 17, 2017

April 17, 2017 My Emails Are Numbered

Hey Family,

Thanks for sending some questions they are going to help me a lot. So, my companion is Elder Newbold from Wilton California which is a suburb of Elk Grove California which is a suburb of Sacramento California. He tells people he's from Sacramento. He's been out a little more than a year and has never left the city. He's pretty awesome. His trainer and one of his trainees are two of my best Mission buddies that I've never been companions with, Elder Tabor & Elder Davis.

Speaking of Elder Davis, I went on a split with him this week. He's from Houston Texas and just passed his 3rd anniversary of his baptism.  He's the coolest, I'll send you a video. We had a pretty interesting week. On Wednesday we went on a split with the Harlem YSA Elders. It was awesome, their ward covers my old area in Inwood so we got some Dominican food for old times sake and even got to see a member that used to go to my old ward but is now going to the YSA. It was a great split.

The next day we started a split with some Elders in my district. The Elder I was with, Elder Clark, is a super scout. By super I mean super. 87 Merit badges, career scout camp staffer, 7 years of counseling for the Environmental Science Merit Badge and in as deep as possible with the order of the arrow. He's a cool guy. Coincidentally half of his assigned ward's scout troop are non-members.  I smell a missionary opportunity.

On Saturday a Sister got baptized in our Ward that has been waiting for her parents to consent to her baptism for 3 years. It was a cool miracle to take part in, even though my part was little.

Elder Mackintosh will hopefully go to BYU Hawaii. He had been accepted to BYU Hawaii before his mission and had deferred. Unfortunately BYU Hawaii has no record of his having been accepted so his Mom is trying to get that figured out for him. If worst comes to worst he will go to UVU for a semester then transfer. I love Elder Mackintosh. His family seems awesome.

In other past companion news my trainer, Mike Buckley, is engaged. He's supposed to be getting sealed on May 26, but, due to some interesting, non-sinful on their part, complications they may be moving it back a little bit.

Love You family! Thanks for the update! I'm happy to hear you've had a great week!

Con Amor,
Elder Sam McBride

Monday, April 10, 2017

April 10, 2017 Hey Family!

Hey Family,

We had a pretty normal missionary week. With the new Easter video we did a couple of Missionary activities. Nothing too exciting or remarkable though. We did have a cool Stake Conference. The Stake President, David Buckner, was called as an area 70 at General Conference so we knew that a new Stake President would be called. His 1st Counselor, Colin Cropper, became the new Stake President. The General Authority overseeing the reorganization was Elder Pearson (Pierson?). He gave an awesome talk about faith. He said that in order to fully exercise faith we need to understand 2 things. We need to know who god is (what his attributes, perfections, and abilities are) and that our lives are in harmony with his will. It was pretty powerful. He said that through our personal prayers we should be aligning our will with God. General Authorities are awesome.

I'm happy everybody is staying busy! Love you! Have a great week!

Con Amor,
Elder Sam McBride

P.S. I'm running out of things to write about so... Questions would be appreciated, otherwise I'm not sure how satisfied you'll be with my emails. Sorry.

Monday, April 3, 2017

April 3, 2017 Conference is the Best as a Missionary

Mi Familia,

It's great hearing from all of you! Happy birthday Isaac & Grandma! I love you both so much. Did Grandma bring her picture frame? I sent a bunch of pictures to it today. 


Thanks for all of your insights from conference. It was such a good one wasn't it? My favorite talks were Elder Hales, Elder Costa & Elder Palmer. I loved Elder Hales' so much, he talked about simple obedience without being "selective" and how faith can be measured by what it drives you to do. I'm pretty sure Elder Costa wrote his talk with one of our investigators in mind and he said "Repentance clears the path to growth and happiness" and "nothing draws you closer to Christ like the desire to change". Elder Palmer in the Sunday afternoon session spoke about "Then Jesus beholding him, loved him" that struck a chord with me. Other good quotes from Elder Palmer were "How can I be worthy of Christlike love so that others can feel his love through me?" "Those that are hardest to love need love the most" "The Lord expects much from us because he loves us".  It was such a great conference.

We had a pretty good week. On Thursday we had an awesome lesson with one of our investigators. We had him read part of 2 Nephi 31 in his native French then pray about a baptismal date in French. The spirit was so strong! He's pondering and praying about being baptized on April 22nd. We're super excited for him!

I pray you have a great week!

Con Amor,
Elder Sam McBride



I thought I would follow Mom's example and send pictures first.  Brother Ward has a connection with the Empire State Building which gets us up for free and lets us skip the lines. It was awesome.


Selfie with our area... +a double chin.

W/ Elder Mackintosh. This is mostly his area but we cover the World Trade Center and down.

Our recent convert J---'s wife works in the American Eagle right next to the Empire State Building, so we stopped by and said hi.  I'm afraid to by normal people clothes again...

Another picture of the north part of our area.

South part of the island. Our area is East (left side of the
picture) of 5th Ave.