Great week!

On Tuesday we went on exchange with the assistants. I had a blast with elder Follett. Elder Follett and I came into the mission together and he was trained in the same area so the first 4 and a half months of our missions were around each other. So it was good to reminisce on the good times, we went ham and got a lot done!

On Wednesday we got juked and we hadn't seen Marlene in a while, she also hadn't been picking up the phone. We stopped by and she was home! She let us in and we started talking. She has been going through the hardest trials I have ever heard anyone going through. She started crying and said she knew that God would help her through. We gave her a blessing, it was the most beautiful blessing I have ever heard. She was definitely looking forward to the temple. 

On Saturday we got to go to the temple with Marlene! She loved it and DEFINITLY needed it. After she said, "I feel so light inside!" Sooo good to hear.

On Sunday, Anna, Monique, and Sheryl came to church. Anna and Sherryl are doing so well and it looks like they are going to get baptized on the 9th of April.   Monique came for the fist time this week. She is someone who we contacted our first week or two but lost contact. It turns out she lives 3 doors down from Marlene and got interested when she saw the change in Marlene. After church we went to Marlene's house and had a lesson with her and Marlene. It was sooo good. We went over the gospel of Jesus Christ. At the end Marlene said the closing prayer, in it she said, "I am so grateful for my 2 new sons, and the miracle they have been in my life, I pray that they stay safe and bring many souls to you." I love her sooooo much.

On a lighter note! Today was "March Madness" the mission split up into 2 huge groups and got together and played basketball. I was in the one that met up north. We split up the teams and my team balled out! We won all the round robin games and then went undefeated in actual tournament! Had a blast!

Shoutout to Marlene and dinnie for making elder Trask and I homemade fried chicken!

It was a really good week here in Paterson  First things first, Marlene got baptized. She is sooooo cool. I am sure she is going to be solid for the rest of her life. We met with her the day before and she had just bought new shoes for her big day. She bore an amazing testimony afterward. Picture at the bottom. Cool stories, we got fed by 2 random people that we knocked into. First we knocked into a Dominican, she and her son were super cool, we ended up teaching the plan of salvation to them both, at the end she made us some Morir Soñando! Seriously my favorite drink in the world. There are sooooo many people from the Dominican Republic here in New Jersey, and I love it because they seriously make the best food. A few days later we ran into a nice Spanish speaking lady who couldn't speak ANY English but she made us come in and eat, we shared a video in Spanish after, it looked like she really liked it haha I don't know Spanish, I took sign language in high school. Picture of food at the bottom. We found this super cool women named Sylvia. She is the coolest person. Miracle of the week was pretty cool. We were trying by people who we worked with in the past. Elder Trask was like, "let's go knock on that door" we knock on a door and this guy named fabo answered the door, he speaks mostly Spanish. Turns out he is a loooooong lost member from the Dominican Republic. He has been through a ton in this life. He came to the Spanish ward and he loved it, he got up and bore his testimony.  Great week!  Love you all! Elder McOmber