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)- 

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

Email, Monday, September 30, 2014

Week one transfer 10 (uh oh... Double digits)

Transfer calls came in, and i am staying with Elder Trujillo for
another transfer! Yayyyy so he will have been with me longer than any
other companion!  Super fun but this week was super fun and helped me
grow!  We did quite a bit of "spur of the moment" service, helping in
tiendas is always fun! We did a wide variety of things, from
organizing very unorganized jerseys to dusting off cans of food, i
have to backwards in the week to get stuff right so okay Sunday,
hermano Sarmiento found a baby bird struggling our side, so he brought
it in gave it some water and named it Domingo (Sunday) let it hop
around ward council and then let it outside and it was much better,
(meet Domingo in pic three) we had FOUR investigators and THREE less
actives come to church!! And one investigator and two LA is a family,
the son has a daughter and oh my goodness she is precious and
defiantly a choice daughter of God! Francisco was talking to me about
how when she is with him, every Sunday  morning she is the first one
awake, and goes around and wakes everyone up, okay she is four, and
she wakes up and she is the main reason they get to church on time if
comes to church at all! (And mom told me about when i was younger i
would cry through church) then after church the was a family baptism
of Four! And another Baptism!! Sooooooooo awesome! Three hour service
with food at the end, awesome but tooooo long haha.  Saturday we had
the mini mission (picture one has our visions goals and plans for the
day next to the board from left to right is Aldair (Albert of
Albertico) juan pablo (pablito) and Miguel (chontaduro) ) was way
awesome! And met sweet people.  And that night we were blessed with a
beautiful sunset behind the skyline, (pic two)  as we went to a lesson
to one of our investigators we taught about patience and after ward
she told us about a food so she goes around her tienda and brings two
full bags of groceries to the counter and just gives us them, and
tells us she is going to fast all day Sunday (she is needing her
business to be successful) and attended sacrament meeting! So we felt
bad cause she gave us all this stuff, i took my last dollar of my
monthly lot and gave it to her to buy a cocoanut, so she tells us the
only way they are good is if they have milk in them, (gotta remember
this) so we go and none of them have milk O.o soo we are like well now
what? So she grabs one, and chucks it on the floor busting the coconut
open revealing a black inner where it went rotten, so she tells us to
start breaking the rest hahaha so we sat there breaking about ten
cocoanuts to find any good ones, there were three which she gave us,
she was laughing at us trying to break cocoanuts on the floor,
especially when one of them couldn't be broken, so we all took turns
throwing them at the ground till it broke she was laughing quite a
bit, so it all ended with high spirits!  and transfer calls that night
too... But i think that has been the only big exciting thing, I'm
getting more confident in Spanish, i want to be fluent by the end of
my mission, it is one of my many visions for the mission, after all
the mission is a Microcosm of my life (i know big word right?)

I love yall!
Stay classy
I have less than ten months :(
But i still got more than 9! :D

Every day i am reminded about how our Father in Heaven loves and gives
us tender mercies every day, its our choice to recognize them, also my
hidden treasure for yall is in Ether 12:27 (Scripture Mastery?)

Till next week,
Elder Daniel Buffington

Ps

THANK YOU ALL FOR EVERYTHING, MY BIRTHDAY WAS THE BEST EVER!! MY LOVE
IS ALWAYS HEADING TO YALL, REMEMBER THAT!


<3<3<3<3<3<3<3

Email, Monday, September 23, 2014

Well it is Monday again and i guess craziness has been going on at

home, hope dad is okay, but this week was good :) nothing too drastic,
but these pictures tell great stories,
Okay the first one is a HUGE SUNDAY and the "lil ol skinny fella" aka
the thorn or elder Bottomfield he is a senior missionary, and he took
the entire zone to five guys, and then to this place for one of these!
Man so much suggggrrrrr hahaha they are great and they are leaving for
home in a week! He is awesome and loves to teach us how to manage
money, $5 a day for food and i will never go in debt, he prides
himself of his debt freeness..

And the second one is the stake service day at far rock away, super
fun, took a tree out with only another missionary and i, with 2 spades
and a saw, and after we finally got it out, we walked around carrying
it around then finally ditched it, then i shoveled some sand to take
back to the beach, found a quarter and a bracelet too :) nothing fancy
of course, but still beach finding hahahaha after that we all re
mulched about 200x5 yards of ground, so from 10-2 we worked hard and i
got a lovely burn (why didn't i get the german gene of nice skin?)

And its Boda time! This is the family of columbians i taught a while
ago with the zone leader, the family Maldonado was united by marriage!
Yay! Next Sunday they are gonna be baptized soooooo exiting! I love
that family! They are soooo good! Their other son isnt in this
picture, but he has a hairstyle of one direction xD ill send a picture
of my companion and i with most of the youth in the next email,

We have the best youth in the world.

Email, Monday, September 15, 2014

And thus ends the twentieth year of the rein of Elder Buffington jajaja

Hollllllaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
So this week was good, unfortunately i am now unable to use the teen
computers at the library anymore :/ but hey, next year i will be
home.. Thats weird..
(PLOT TWIST)
This week Santiago was confirmed! Yaayyyyyyy! And we did our first
planned service in a long while! We helped our investigator olga open
her shop! It was fun and we had empanadas for breakfast! The poster we
made was gonna be for 9-11 street sweep, aka finding activity, but it
was canceled cause it was overcast aallll day.. And the zone leaders
thought it was gonna rain, but anywho,
As always, my spanish is slowly improving, the area is pretty great! I
personally cant complain, i love the people i teach, i dont want to
leave, and i keep finding reasons to be here.
This week climaxed at the home of a member, we were asked to a members
home cause her computer was acting funny, so we go and we turn the
computer on and it worked perfectly fine, so she feeds us anyways and
talks to us, and then starts to break down crying telling us she is
planning on going to the bishop to find a ride for her son so she
could 'take a break' from church, she also told us that she was
contemplating over dousing, all because of stress that she has been
having and she wanted those feelings to go away, during her crying and
telling this to us i am begging (in my heart) for her not to do this,
and praying about what to do, and all i could think of is one line
ringing through my head, "i love you" i knew it was what i felt during
times in my life that i had hardships where heavenly father would
whisper to me those sweet words... So i bore, probably the most
powerful testimony i have ever shared, about how much our heavenly
father loves us all especially her, and that she isnt alone, as much
as she thinks it, jesus christ has felt what she is going through, and
then i felt a strong prompting to tell her about blessings, and that
she could have one if she truly wanted one, after a pause she asked,
(i felt her humbling herself to ask that question, which i have never
felt something like that before that moment when she used her faith to
humble herself) and so we had to wait for her brother to finish in the
bathroom so we wouldn't be interrupted, she just stood there and
smiled at us, and told us that she could see the auras around us, and
kept thanking us, after her brother came out of the bathroom, we
blessed her, after i told her that her computer malfunctioning was no
coincidence (i think if the adversary has a catch phrase, it would be,
"it was just coincidence") that heavenly father wanted us to be here
at this time to talk to her.  She then told us that she was going to
call a guy to fix it, but she felt to call us instead, (yay for
nerdyness and being computer savvy)
That is the highlights of this passed week (not week passed)
I love y'all!
I know that i am supposed to be in this area! And i know our Heavenly
Father works in... Peculiar ways and it would be remiss of me to not
share these stories of my mission to y'all, maybe it will help someone
that follows the blog.. Who knows, i think about y'all often, be safe
and remember we have, contrary to other religions, guardian angleS!
Yes more than one, i testify of that!

Your son, brother, and forever friend
Elder Daniel Buffington

Ps pictures includes pics from the Brooklyn Bridge and Ecuadorian food ::)))))))

Email, Monday, September 8, 2014

Week 4, transfer 9, month 13,
Why cant i have the ability to slow time down :/

But this week was great! Full of interesting stuff,
First, we had mega zone conference!  We did a musical number, the song
lyrics of joseph smiths first prayer to the music of that and come
thou fount of every blessing, it went well, and the conference was
Super good, and spiritually and physically filling and what i mean by
physically filling is picture one, yes, that is a full chicken cut in
half, yup, pretty sure we broke the word of wisdom ;) haha there were
left overs soo we now have quite a bit of chicken in our fridge for
this week :)  but i learned alot and we we were given a challenge to
give the people we teach, so i want to challenge yall to it :) call it
the scripture challenge, first and for most pray, ask to receive the
answers to the questions in the chapter i will soon give you all, okay
so i want to give yall a chapter, Mosiah 2, okay now that you have
this, i want you all to read it, now on a piece of note paper, write
your thoughts and feelings of the questions 1)how can yall find peace
and joy? and 2)how can your family be more happy and united? Okay now
that you have your answer, pray again, ask to know if you missed
anything if your answer was correct, okay now that you have done this,
go back and read the chapter again, revise your answer and correct any
mistakes, now once you have this, pray again, once you have done this,
let me know what yall have found, this processes will take maybe 2
hours, so find and block off two hours for this, :) then challenge a
friend to try it! ;) #testimonybuilder!
Okay so then the second really big thing is sunday, picture two,
Santiago was baptized! Such a awesome service! We played you raise me
up, guitar/clarinet instrumental and it went well :) after the baptism
and While we waited for them to dry up, we had all the attending
members to write on a piece of paper ,that we provided them with,
their testimonies, and a short message to support Santiago, was super
cool and we gave him a big stack of papers to read later on, i think
he enjoyed it :)
Then we found out it was sister elizabeth martinez sunday! So we
quickly made a awesome card, thank goodness the sisters are creative
here and has cool paper, and wrote on it and got there to surprise her
with the card and a song, the same one we did for the service cause
she couldn't make it, but her daughter made great food but we had to
take it to go pic three, but we shared a message with them about
family history, (i showed off moms hard work ;) the fan chart we have)
and the daughter is interested in it, i don't think she is a member,
but she has a adorable daughter, that is four years old, loves to sing
frozen, and loves my magic tricks (thank you Ben for teaching me, i
have become super good at it) (i surprise adults with it too hahaha)
soooooooo that is pretty much it for us, we love yall (my comp and i)
Thanks for everything yall do! Next time i write i will be a man ;)
meaning no longer the awkward teen/adult,
I love yall so much and am rooting for yall!
Thanks for everything once again, i am blessed with a epic family, ;)
the best in the world

Yalls truly
Elder Daniel Buffington

Ps.
How to become a TRUE new yorker
-get pooed on by a pigeon (x) unfortunately
-jump a 'turn style' ( ) not yet,
-get in a fight  ( ) unless its a verbal one where there is only one
agitator that wants to bash
-fall asleep in the subway (almost) llllooonnnngggg day, and no one
was on the train, and it was winter :)
-cry on the subway  ( ) unless crying cause your laughing so hard then yes

Almost there but yet soo far

Email, Monday, September 1, 2014

Hello and get readdy for a crazy week, i will probably get a ear full,
or a eye full if that makes any sense at all, buttttttt here we go...
Well i had a interesting week, im super excited to share it,
Okay monday, to start the day we went with two youth to a gym, (first
time in a while for me haha) and worked out, needless to say i was
sore till Friday... We went to chipotle, which is like a moe's to what
i understand, pretty good and a huge burrito, after we were invited to
Applebee's for a elders birthday, my comp and i were stuffed already
so we just went for moral support, we just got a drink :) it was fun,
we (a bunch of missionaries i am friends with and i) are going to
celebrate my birthday with a tradition from flushing, 5guys, large
fries and a drink, yummmm it will be super fun, but here comes a fun
story, tuesday..... We had district meeting, which afterward we had a
late lunch, then we left for a appointment, as we left i felt normal,
just my cough but nothing out of the ordinary, we were heading towards
corona when i felt like i had a bubble in my stomach, kinda like a
burp that wont come out, so i felt like this on the m train to catch
the 7, so we reach the platform, and i lean against a beam, i started
feeling a little more sick, i offered a silent prayer to help me feel
better, but i started feeling worse, the train was starting to pull up
when my hearing went away, but not completely, the train stopped and
everything was getting fuzzy and i started becoming dizzy, i grab my
companions shoulder and told him that i couldn't go on, so we started
to call the district leader, but we couldn't get them, so we called
the zone leaders, to request a emergency exchange, we make our way to
the wall slowly, im pale and stuff is getting supper fuzzy and hard to
focus on, i feel a hand on my shoulder grabbing my shirt to help me
along to the wall, i m pretty sure it is my companions hand, so i
reach the wall and im starting to fade, so i squat down, cause in my
head im freaking out a little cause the ground if filthy, there are
people everywhere, and i dont want to go to the hospital, after a
little bit of this, i slowly come to my senses, or become conscious
one of the two, and i start to feel better, i stayed there cause i was
drained from it, so the zone leaders find us and we exchange and i go
home, i rest for a while, and we try to leave and do some work, so we
visit a less active guy, he is about my age, and when we got there, he
informs us that his brother and sister just left of a base ball game,
so we chat with him, and it ended up being a lesson, and a realllly
good one too,i guess we had to be there, so the lord had a little bit
of fun, so my companion and i have a inside joke of i almost died on
the 7train haha and that night we were talking about it, the hand that
grabbed my shirt when we were going to the wall wasn't him, but he
also told me that when we were at the wall, he was holding me up by
the strap of my bag haha fun stuff... Well that was about it for the
super exciting time of the week,
But something else super duper awesome, is that Santiago came to
church today! So he will be baptized next Sunday!  How awesome is
that?! Im supppper excited! My companion and i are gonna play you
raise me up by josh groban,
and oh! I was reading in the book of mormon, Helaman 16:7 to be exact
about this epicness, okay so Samuel the Laminite was up on the wall
preaching and prophesying to the Nephites because they were being
wicked, even more wicked than the Lamenites, so the Nephites start
tossing rocks and shooting arrows at him, but because he is a Ninja
and was on the Lords errand he was protected by the Holy Ghost, so
when the people saw he couldn't be hit they were going to grab him,
but this is where stuff gets fun, he "cast himself off the wall" okay
now wait, your trying to tell me he just jumped off the wall all willy
nilly  (view pic one) and managed to get away...  he has to be a
parkour master/Ninja, soooo change of plans, i want to be like Samuel
and do parkour too while preaching the restored gospel! Hahaha i cant
wait to jump down a fifty foot wall like its nothing :) (i know i
know, yall are saying to your selfs, it is just a picture Daniel, it
was only like 12' (i am imagining myself like Dagget in Angry Beavers
when he is a secret agent from the near future, and he uses a
grappling hook to cross a 12" fence that is about 3' long :) good
times and that is how i would probably look, baybe replace the HUGE
bow tie for a regular classy tie, and a name tag) but it is still it
is EPIC!) And i wish i could be like him :)

Okay the other pictures, picture two is another peruvian dish (from
las sierras (the mountains)) the one the other day was from the coast
Picture three is a lady from brazil! So elder vi, this lady and i had
a tri lingual chat, i spoke portuguese /spanish, Elder Vi spoke
spanish, this lady spoke English spanish and portuguese! Haha wayy fun

And we are doing two musical numbers in a week :) one for the baptism
Sunday, and the other is Thursday for mega zone conference the
fourth... Im anxious for it but all good

Well i think that thats about it!
I love yall! And am praying for yall! Im so glad that we can be
together forevers!
Your son/brother/friend (unfortunately yes forever haha )
Elder Daniel Buffington