Dill pickle sunflower seeds......

Monday again! They just keep coming. It's the only day of the week that I sit in my bed for an hour right after I get up and get the kids off to school. With my laptop in hand I wait for the "Hey Mom" to appear on my screen. It's the best part of my day. Today I got the hey but nothing else.  It took forever but he finally sent another message mid afternoon. The internet crashed, THAT made for a long day! Luckily, I was able to respond while he was on the computer. So.....it was a GOOD day!


Hey Mom!

I did leave because the internet at Newark library crashed but I'm on now so I'll finish writing ....
No I don't need anything. I'm good! Actually, I wanted to ask you if you could send dill pickle Spitz sunflower seeds. They don't have those around here. Also, I don't want you to send it because they have it here but see if you can't find Aloe Saliva drink. It's really odd stuff but it's quite good if you get the right flavors. It's like Aloe Vera nectar and the pulp and it's not overly expensive either. Another good drink I found was called Pear J and Orange J. I forget the manufacturer but it's probably Jamaican. 

So this week was medium slow... we didn't find many investigators to teach and all our appointments were falling through. Something about the combination of the cold and the superbowl weekend just killed our success. But we still have our investigator Amanda to keep hope in. She is awesome. Westernia actually moved... to Maryland. Her dad regained custody over her and so she moved back there :( But we'll be getting her new contact information soon so hopefully missionaries over there can pick her up. Rough stuff. But we'll move on.

We had a good day! Just finished basketball/dodgeball and so we'll be going back home soon. I don't really have much to write about... One thing we encountered this week was a lot of intoxicated people. Drugs and alcohol will mess you up! It was annoying because not only would our lessons be near worthless but then we'd go to appointments afterwards and everyone thinks we smell bad. We met this kid named Hassan who we talked to about agency. To preface, they are a lot of so-called (conservative?) Muslims in this area and I don't know why but it is really popular. Kinda like the hip thing to do. It is annoying because I don't think we're allowed to teach Muslims without getting permission and many people know that. So when we street contact, they'll throw out a "I'm Muslim" so that we'll leave them alone. Sometimes it works, but sometimes I'll get fed up and just attack them with questions. Usually they trip over words and they have no idea what they believe in. It's funny because even I probably know more about Islam than most of them do. Anyway, we met Hassan and his friend who are Muslims. Hassan didn't know much about it but his friend did and you could tell that his friend Rasheed often had to cover for him. We continued to get to know them and taught them about the Restoration and they totally grasped it. The next day we showed up to Hassan's apartment and he had no idea who we were. I don't know what he had taken the day before, but that made me mad! So we had a little throw down about how he needs to stop taking drugs. The lesson we had with him was about agency, like I said, and he just kept blaming his addictions on the fact that "everything happens for a reason". That's a pretty popular saying among Muslims. So we asked him when he was going to plan on stopping and he said "whenever God wants me to". So we really laid it down that God does not control his actions. If he want's to quit he has to do it himself. He really had no idea that there was such a thing as agency. He just thought God made his decisions for him. Now I sure hope he grasped that. Crazy things people believe in!

One funny thing that happened this week is we found 4 move in members, and 3 of them by our own efforts. Kind of randomly, actually. So, first we found the Falana family, which was a street contact as we were leaving an appointment where we had met another new move-in member who had called us to come visit her. The Falanas had recently moved from Irvington but didn't tell anyone about it so they weren't attending church. So that was like a 3 in 1 find there. Then the day after we were teaching Amanda, and since she has no male in her home, we have to teach her at the door. Her neighbor walked by and saw us, but didn't say anything. She later asked Amanda if she was meeting with missionaries and Amanda told her yes. Somehow, Amanda helped the neighbor, Sis Fournier, to rekindle her desire to return to activity. I think Sis Fournier told us she had been inactive for nearly 2 years and during that time she moved from New York to East Orange. We scored 4 new members this week, and each one of them seems pretty solid on coming to church. We only had 1 come to church in East Orange but the Falana family went to their old ward in Maplewood to meet familiar faces. So I guess that was like 3. 

Lastly, I wanted to ask if you knew Elder Tate Cowley's email address. I met another elder who is big into golf who lived in Boise, near Eagle, and thought he might know him. So I wanted to ask if they knew each other. It's nice to have some deec golfers in our zone... someone to relate to. Elder Thompson is the bomb! He's really funny and he still stays quiet but I get along with him really well. He's way smart too. So sometimes, not that I am really much of a philosopher but, we'll have deep doctrinal discussions. He created this genre of jokes that he calls resurrection jokes, which are basically jokes that you would only get if you had a good understanding of the resurrection. Pretty funny stuff. 

We're doing good. I'm learning a lot. Thanks for all the stuff that you and Dad are sending me! I appreciate your support. Hopefully I'll get time to write home soon. Interesting things are becoming more commonplace so it is hard for me to think of things to write about. I got both of your packages - thank you!! We needed sharp knives so that was much appreciated. I don't think I need anything else.

Have a great week! I love you!

E. T. McLain


*I love how he starts his letter with "No, I don't need anything" but he WANTS his Spitz dill pickle sunflower seeds! That's my golfer.