Hotter than a Box of Rocks

Wed, Jul 22, 2015

Hey Everybody,

It's been hotter than a box of rocks out here. The thing about the city is that the heat doesn't just come from the sun up above. It gets you from all directions! You can feel the heat radiating up from the pavement and from the buildings as you walk past. The humidity doesn't help either. I think God was trying to teach me to not complain this week though because every time I wanted to complain about the heat we would pass a Muslim lady completely dressed in black with the black head covering and everything revealing nothing but her eyes. After seeing that I was like, "Well ok then. Cram it Elder Jo. Yes you're wearing a collared shirt and tie, but at least you don't have to wear one of those." I'm gaining mad respect for the Muslim ladies out here.

Last P day was one of the more exciting P days of my mission. Elder Wallace’s sister sent a list of movies filmed in New York City, so we went around Manhattan seeing the sites that have been in movies. We ran around getting selfies with every site we could even if we hadn't seen the movie. I have pictures of me with stuff in movies from Ghostbusters, BIG, The Day After Tomorrow, Godfather (I haven't seen it mom. I promise.), Home Alone 2, Spider-Man, and a bunch of other places that I'm too lazy to write out right now.  Good times.

My favorites were seeing the famous Plaza Hotel from Home Alone 2 the one that Macaulay Culkin stayed in when he played Kevin.

"I'm going to give you to the count of ten to get your ugly, yella,
no good keister off my property.." #HomeAlone2

We went to FAO Schwarz the Yuuuge toy store that is in Home Alone and Big and a ton of other movies. It was actually the famous toy store's last day in business at that location, so it was crowded. There were news reporters everywhere and huge lines. Elder Wallace and I got asked to be interviewed by a news reporter when we were there, but we didn't know if that was Kosher so we had to turn em down. 

You wanna hate? Have a nice time.

Then to top off the day we went and ate at Joes Pizza Place which is the Pizza Place that Peter Parker worked at in the Spider-Man movies. It was a pretty good slice. The only bad part is that I expected Tobey Maguire to feed me my pizza out of the palm of his hand and that didn't happen at all.

I went on a companion exchange with my roommate Elder Michia. Elder Michia is from Argentina. I love going into the Spanish program on exchanges! After that split with Elder Michia I have now gone on enough splits in a Spanish area to total one week in the Spanish program. That doesn't mean that I know how to speak the Spanish language yet. That just means I'm really good at saying "Si" and nodding my head and calling myself a gringo. It was a good time. No rice and beans were eaten in the making of this companion exchange.

Me and Elder Michia

Elder Wallace and I were knocking an apartment building the other day. We were having no success. The only person that had answered the door the whole building was a Muslim man that we couldn't even communicate with because he only spoke Iranian. We literally got to the last door and knocked on that thing and guess what? Nothing. Nobody answered. Just as we were about to walk away a woman came out of the elevator and was super friendly to us. We started talking to her and she said that she has a Nephew who is serving a mission out in Utah! She was saying that it must have been a sign that we showed up. She invited us to come over to teach her and her boyfriend. She promised that she would feed us too :) God always pulls through, even if it's last minute.

Two of the coolest girls named Daniella and Joy
who moved from our Ward this week.
Youth like this give me hope for the youth in the Bronx.

This gospel is incredible. I know we hear that as members of the church all the time. The gospel can fix and improve parts of our lives that nothing else but the gospel can. #TeamGospel

Elder Tyler J Johanson