"Whoa! Three white girls in Flushing!" said the garbage man.

Hello family!

Hope you enjoyed conference as much as I did! Wasn't it incredible? It was also kind of cool to realize that I am adding a bucket of water to that wave of missionaries, and contributed my piece of the 300,000 hrs of service after hurricane sandy. I hope you did get to go Stephen! Going to conference really is a neat experience. I know that there are living prophets and apostles in the earth today. Amazing how their words, the word of God, can sweep the whole earth and fill each individual soul at the exact same time.

It is finally warming up! Today, I didn't even have to wear tights! (This is a feat, its been really cold still). There also are flowers that are budding up here and there. Just the other day, there was the tiniest bunch of purple flowers on the side of the sidewalk. I stopped my two companions and we just looked at it. It was tiny, but so beautiful, and wonderful to see some sign of life in this concrete Jungle.

Quick funny story: So we are now a threesome of white girls. Sis Powell and I already stuck out being 2 white girls walking around flushing, and now there are three of us. We were just talking and joking about what a strange sight we were, when out of the blue, a garbage truck drove by with the passenger exclaiming "WHOA!!! THREE WHITE GIRLS IN FLUSHING!!!". It was pretty priceless.

So yes, I do have a new companion. Her name is Sis Dean from Sacramento California. She is 19 years old and goes to BYU-I. She speaks 5 languages (Japanese, Russian, English, Sign Language and now Spanish). She has a fiery testimony and isn't afraid to talk to people. Both of my companions are "new" but I am having trouble keeping up with them. They are so good.

We had a great lesson with one of our investigators yesterday. Juan Carlos (from Columbia) ran straight from his work at McDonalds to catch the end of the 1st session of conference (The Prophet, Pres Monson's talk). He loved it, and stuck around afterward to talk to the members and have the lesson. We had been praying and working to have a lesson with Juan Carlos and the branch president, President Perez, and it fell right into place. It was powerful, and he agreed to change his work so that he could come to church and be baptized. Afterwards Juan Carlos told us how he was honored that we would set up such an appointment with the branch president, and how we knew he (Juan Carlos) would come. We hoped Juan Carlos would be there, but I know it was nothing less than straight from our loving Heavenly Father.

I Love and miss you! May God bless you!

Hermana Chipman