Monday, October 27, 2014

Email, Monday, October 27, 2014

It was another tough one this week, needless to say Satin is working at full throttle and does not want to let up, by the end of the night i just want to sleep, its physically draining, spiritually depleting, mentally exhausting, work, when you have stuff planned and you are ready to go with a lesson and they cancel, not because they don't want to have a lesson, but either their family is over to morn the death of a family member, because someone got in trouble, so they live with someone else in a completely different area, not with members either so getting missionaries over now is pretty much impossible. I want to say, i want to give up, but i know that is what Satin wants me to say, but it was just draining, then people just tell me all of their problems, which i do not mind, it helps them, but the only time away from all the troubles of the world, is with my guitar at my pad, practicing for anything, it has always been a release for me, i miss my guitars at home, not sure how they are doing, :P but i got mine here, which i enjoy playing! Which reminds me, in the upcoming weeks a video will be posted of a sister and i doing a duet of a song that she rewrote the lyrics to, the song 'falling slowly' and we will be posting it on FaceBook so keep your eyes peeled for it! Its crazy how your talent expands dramatically while you serve the Lord :) its sweet! Oh, EVERYONE needs to get the app DuoLingo to learn another Language, and then find me and follow me, and i will follow y'all back and we can all learn together, i defiantly recommend it! Email me your user name, or just look up 'danbuf' that one is mine :)

And thus another week has gone by! Press forward, siga adelante, les amo! 
Yall are awesome, stay that way, 
Your missionary in the field!
Elder Daniel Buffington 

Okay pictures
1) we made dinner, and these are plantains done right :) like a chip! Or a french fry! Combined
2) the senior couple that lives in the same building as us made cafe rio! I was stuffed, they use coke not dp, which is wierddd but it looks pretty,



Tuesday, October 21, 2014

Email, Monday, October 20, 2014

Hello how are yall?! 
Im doing well! Would someone please tell me who is telling the weather to be Bi-Polar? Its cold this morning, but tomorrow it wont :P  the temperature needs to make up its mind :P but this week was a lucha (si la lucha es real) besides a few experiences that make this week worth it all! So we had a fist lesson with a couple, the wife was the one in our potential list that answered and asked us to be there Tuesday to teach her, her husband, and her sister, supper exciting! So we get there and the sister couldn't be there, all good there, :) but we taught a sweet lesson and committed them to the 16th of November for their date of baptism, and they accepted and told us they wanted to first attend church, and have more lessons before they get baptized but accepted the date as a goal!! Yayyyyyy!! But yeah, our other investigator, Johanna couldn't be baptized this past Saturday so praying that we can establish another, she is ready, but we are seeing miracles! Saturday was a miracle day! So we had a street sweep talking to some interesting people, one of which had some interesting theorys about how no one was going to return to Heavenly Father, cause we are all sinners, so we talked alot about the plan of salvation, but on to the cool point of the day.... We went to go knock on doors and we found a nice building, so we tried, but there was no way in. Sooo we ended up crossing the street to a more sketchy building, and got in so we knock building from top to bottom so the top two floors were filled with scents of weed and annoying dogs barking, then on the 5th floor, we knock and everyone that we talked to wanted us to come back, so we have 5 different lessons set for this next week, super exciting! They all are families! Im super excited for tonights lesson cause the father almost let us in but the wife didnt want to cause they were eating food, but he shown interest. And the pictures for this week is in the next place i want to serve, Brooklyn, bushwick, :) its scary at times but people are alot nicer than you think, but this is a warehouse of studios, this one is super cool,  its walls are just a big graffiti attraction, and inside these are make you feel like you are in manhattan but really your in east NY Brooklyn, there are a couple that are nicer than others, The reason we were in Brooklyn is cause we were helping with Operation Shepard to find all their Less actives, we were helped by a huge Biker gang, they were super nice to us, we also met some sweet people, 
It was weird to see white people... 

But thats the news for the week, went by quick, we are seeing blessing

Your Misionero 
Elder Daniel Buffington 

So i was re reading and the pictures part didnt make sense, the inside
of the studios are super noce and classy, like manhattan but as soon
as you walk in to a Hall your back in brooklyn.. That sounds better

-Elder Bufí (Buffington)-



Monday, October 13, 2014

Email, Monday, October 13, 2014

Hey yall! 
    I just want to start by saying i love yall! And these next three months are gonna be crazily blessing filled! And it already has! Okay soThursday we had presidents interviews, which i look forward to, but some interesting stuff is happening, so to begin with, i am acting as district leader with my companion, so i go to leaders meetings with him, and we had a combined interview, i have never heard of this before... Have yall? Well we also have in this mission whats called 5-5-5, so our yearly goal is 500 baptisms - 5000 church attendance - 500 RC/LAs to the temple and we only had 300~ 3600~ 200~ ish last year so we were stunned by this, right now we need 260 baptisms our highest mission attendance was 4200~ and we have somthing like 450 RC/LAs to the temple, so president has our combined interview and writes up the wards goal, 5-8(meaning 8 returning to church)-5 and president asks us how many people are in the borders of Rego Park 2, we reply "a lot" and he then asks us, how many are spanish, we reply that most are spanish, he then looks at the numbers on the board and says from all of these i dont think these are the lords numbers, so he told us to pray with great faith, and to seek how many people for each category the Lord wants us to find, baptize, re activate, and take to the temple, and our original quarter goal was 2-2-4, when we prayed we discovered we were holding ourselves back, and our goals for this quarter is 5-7-8, which when we saw this we got nervous but then we got fired up and we have a new investigator this week, and we have a possibility of three more this week, but i testify that the adversary is working his hardest right now, and it is sooo apparent, it is so true that the family is under attack, and we all need to hold fast to our testimonies, we all need to do a self check and reinforce our testimonial fortresses, but i also know that our father in heaven is working just as hard thru his missionaries, (us all) oh, go watch Meet the Mormons, today if possible! 
We saw it at transfer meeting, way gooooooooood, sooo  i had a experience on the train, and i was shocked but it was still awesome, there was a man on the subway, i sat across from him and looked around me to find someone to talk to, i saw him looking at my tag and back to me, so I engaged him in a conversation asking about his book he had on his lap, he kind of ignored my question and requested that i look up Acts 18:9-11, before i could pull my ipad out to read it, supposing it to be something rebuking me or something another along those lines, (something (spiritual prompting) thing then pressed me to read it then and i was curious) but before i could get to it, he got up came over leaned down and conveyed the lines paraphrasing "be not afraid, but speak, for the lord is on your side, no man will hurt thee." Told me that im doing a good work, Then he shook my hand, told me his name and walked off the subway saying god bless you. I barely got to say thank you, Pretty epic hu? But yeah, we are seeing tons of tender mercies, and we are looking everywhere for people, oooh another scripture i recommend for every missionary, is Mathew 7:7, it is meant for missionaries, we have it written on our mirror, 

Crazy stuff is going down, and im soooooo excited for it! 
Yall are the best family ever! And pst, yall should do the family reunion when i get home in july ;) just saying..

I guess thats all, till next week, 
Elder Daniel Buffington 

Oh! Wait why is my writing red, is it red to yall? What is this?????!!!!! 
Well cant figure this out,  this just randomly changes....
Ummm 
Oh look pictures! 
Pic one and two is the before and after pf making agua panela 
Pic three is of Mangu! A Dominican dish of mash potato styled plantains and summer sausage yummmmmmmmy, (only when eaten together) 
Yeah
Okay ill leave now :)



-Elder Bufí (Buffington)- 




Wednesday, October 8, 2014

Email, Monday, October 6, 2014

Hey! 
GENERAL CONFERENCE... THAT WAS TOTALY WICKED!!! -young boy on trike from the incredibles
Well i must go backwards in the week cause well thats me, okay ...conference was indubitably (yes i know big words and im working on more) amazing and i found if you go humble and prepare yourself to learn from every talk, you will learn, thank you President Uchtdorf, i loved that talk from him, i want to get a copy of the ensign from this and study it for next conference but also i took elder Hollands talk seriously and gave blood between sending session and priesthood (new york blood center is high tech, they have these strip thingies that they use to take temperature) (they complemented my veins :) #BigVeins) priesthood was awesome of course, we got home at 10:45 it also didn't help we caught the wrong subway and took a scenic rout.. Butttttttttt anyway :P and then sunday morning was cold and only got up to 61! Brrrrr (meanwhile in TX its ~100°F) 
Nothing really exciting happened this week, all of our investigators are good, OH thats something! So one of our investigators has a pastor life long friend, who told her that we believed that Joseph Smith was god, (but she told us it confused her cause when we taught her to pray it was to Heavenly Father in the name of Jesus Christ) soooo we are confident that she is deciding for herself what is true. 
But besides that all is well, my companion and i had a ummmmm interesting experience, so we were heading away from the church when we find this girl sobbing walking up the street going the opposite direction then we both stop (#sentimientosdelespíritu) turn around and ask her if she needs help, she is probably 10-12 ish and through her sobbing said yes, that she didnt know where she was, and she needed help finding her home, so we got directions and started on our way to the place she was meeting her foster mom, she is from long island, that was her first week there, soo we were getting closer and i kept thinking about you mom and how you would have acted, i thought it sooo clearly and i could practically hear your voice saying calm down its all okay, weird but we got here there and she remembered where she was, then we went to our lesson, :) another epic day and serving the people of NY, remember the lady that was struggling? We dropped by to fix her computer again... She doesn't understand pop ups, through her broken english, too funny :) but i stuck some church hymns on her computer that are beautifully arranged into guitar instrumentals, and she has texted every day sense thanking us for the music cause her son likes it, (and it invites the spirit into their home) he thinks its cool.. But yeaahhhhhh that is all for today, i might send more pictures :)

Till next time, stay classy, and real
Elder Daniel Buffington 


(Note from Crystal...Only 2 pictures were attached...but you can see what he meant to send : )
Pic1) dominican plate- rice, spaghetti, and chicken in a weird but yummy sauce
Pic2+3) we had lunch at a LA part member families home, and one of the sons is a sue chef so he made this, not sure if this is considered Mexican food, cause thats where they are from...
(Mashed potatoes had nutmeg)

-Elder Bufí (Buffington)- 

Pic 4) i donated blood, finally! It was supper quick, like 4-5 minutes, but yay!
Pic5) Saturday morning conference breakfast!

Pic6) okay so i got probably 75 or so of these, and this talk touched me alot, and made me think, am i a good son (both to my earthly parents, and to my heavenly ones)? Brother? Friend? Or as another well said quote askes the question, "Am i my brothers brother?" Im trying as hard as possible to be, im trying to make yall proud, as well as serve the Lord, be peoples friends they never had, and save families and their eternities... It isnt hard, but yall make it worth it, your never ending support is an inspiration to me, and serves as a catalyst to my 'fire' to work... I love each and every one of you! Never forget that you are loved by me, and your Father in Heaven! 


ElderDBufé