Sister Bain in the Big Apple: 2017 03/20 "Blizzards bring blessings!"

Hey y'all 🌻

I hope you had a fun week in the warm weather. I looked at the weather in Utah and while it was 70 degrees there it was 20 degrees here. Yay. We were hit by a HUGE snowstorm on Tuesday. It was INSANE. But! We saw awesome miracles that day. Everyone was home!!! Trudging through all the snow and being wet all day was A BLAST......and it was definitely worth it! Blizzards bring blessings! (I hope the Gurney's had a nice time in the storm too😉)

I am so excited for ROOMIE!! She's such a rockstar. She should apply to Juilliard and move to NYC hahaha she'd like it here. But. NAU is sooooooooooo lucky to have her!! Way to go, Rooster!!❤

Transfers are this week and GUESS WHAT!!! I'll be staying in the Manhattan 1st Ward with Sister Jacobsen ❤ I am so so happy ❤ AND!!

Guess who couldn't go to church yesterday because we were locked INSIDE our apartment. Yeah. 4 Sister missionaries in West Harlem. Sister Jacobsen and I leave first because we have 9:00 church so we prayed and I unlocked the door, we went to leave and IT DIDN'T OPEN. The deadbolt was BROKEN. I climbed out the window onto the fire escape to find out that it was way too rusty and didn't reach the ground so we'd basically have to jump off the window ledge to the sidewalk. NO WAY. NO THANKS. So we yelled down to some guy on the street to ask him if he'd go to the front of the building to get the Supers number. When he came back he gave us the wrong number (even though we gave him chocolate and a Restoration pamphlet) sooooooooooo that didn't work. (DON'T ASK WHY WE DON'T HAVE THE SUPERS NUMBER IN OUR APARTMENT. IF WE EVER NEED HIM WE JUST WALK DOWNSTAIRS TO THE BASEMENT AND HE'S THERE.) We called Sister Larsen in the mission office and she found the Supers number for us. We FINALLY got ahold of him and he gave us the number to the locksmith. We called the buildings locksmith and he said that he'd come help us at noon. He was really put out that we needed his help because it was his day off and everyone should be at church." YEAH NO KIDDING. So noon came. 1:00 came. 2:00 came. 5:00 came AND HE STILL WASN'T THERE. (My happy mood had disappeared by this time OBVIOUSLY.) The locksmith FINALLY came at 6:00pm !!!!!!!!!! He tried to drill at the lock for about 30 minutes, then he said there was nothing he could do. He went upstairs to our neighbors and asked them if he could use their fire escape to get onto our fire escape so he could get into our apartment, but all of them said no. (Go figure. Literally all our neighbors thought he was trying to break into our apartment and rob us. Also, he didn't really speak English so nobody understood what he was trying to do...) So he came back and told us that there was nothing he could do for us, and HE LEFT. (But wait. It gets better.) The 4 of us were sitting there brainstorming ideas of how we were going to get out of our apartment and the buzzer rang. (Someone buzzed the apartment from the downstairs doorbell. You can't just walk into buildings in NYC.) Nobody EVER buzzes our apartment, so we thought the locksmith had come back! Someone rang the doorbell on our door, I yelled "hello?" through the door and GUESS WHO IT WAS! Our friends at NYPD. 😂😂 one of the officers said "Please open up the door." And me, innocent little Sister Bain, said "Uh sorry....I can't do that. The door is broken." 😂😂 Someone had called the police because they saw the locksmith drilling on our door and "a suspicious person" asking people if he could go inside their apartment to use their fire escape😂😂 The officers were TICKED that the locksmith AND the Super were just going to leave us locked INSIDE our apartment. They knocked on our neighbors door and OF COURSE he so willingly and graciously let the officers use his fire escape so that they could climb over to our window in our bedroom. They made sure that we were okay and that we were safe. They stood outside our door for over an hour waiting for the locksmith to come back and get us out. NYPD is the best. Anyway. We CLEARLY didn't make it to church.....but we're finally free and all is well. We just have a nice hole in our door where the locksmith drilled the lock out. Hahahaha YAY. I love that. We also have the Supers number saved in our phone and written down on the fridge. It's all fine. I know that Heavenly Father was protecting us!!❤❤ I also read all of Helaman and half of 3rd Nephi yesterday so that's cool.

ON THE PLUS SIDE: MARVIN WENT TO CHURCH AND STAYED FOR ALL 3 HOURS WOOHOO 🤗 (HAHAHAHA when your investigators go to church and you don't) We had a lesson with him over Skype this week (thank goodness for technology) and we read part of Alma 32 with him. I've had so much fun seeing Marvin's little seed grow. He always says that we're his sunshine--helping his testimony grow 🐣🌷☉ I love in Alma 32 when it talks about diligence. The Lord tells us that we can't just sit around and wait for the plant to grow. We have to get up and WORK. We need to read the Book of Mormon, we need to pray, we need to attend church, we need to serve those around us....as we are diligent in keeping the commandments and doing all we can to water and nourish our testimonies, they will grow! Yes, we do need patience in the Lord's timing, but we can't just sit there and except wonderful things to just HAPPEN to us. We need to do our part ❤ Put forth the effort and miracles will come ❤

Good things are happening in Manhattan, NY. I'm grateful that I get to be here and I'm grateful to be His missionary. I'm grateful for MY FAMILY ❤❤❤❤ and I hope you all have an amazing week FULL of missionary opportunities 😚

I love you!!

Be bold. Be courageous. Be honest. Be truthful.

Love always,

Sister Bain 🍍