Hello family and friends:)
What a wonderful
week.
I have
realized that you guys cannot be with me here as I serve this mission, and because of that, I have attempted to describe the daily life here
in Harlem with some of the events that have taken place over the last
week. It is long. It isn't just an email updating you on what happened, but rather a little book of my experiences and feelings this week. :)
I love you
guys!
HARLEM - Apartment.
Wake up. Pray. Exercise. Study. Pray. Eat. Pray.
Leave,
feeling uplifted and feeling energized with what we learned in the morning. Walk down the stairs. Open the doors of
the apartment and out from our
sanctuary into the dark world...then you hear yelling. Spanish and English. English you wouldn't understand.
Dirty, uneducated and with drunkenness or
anger. Look to the left. People who look
like they have walked through the desert without water and food for years laying on the ground. Out cold. A lighter,
with homemade blunts filled with
weed. Empty syringes lay worn out on the sidewalk. Blood filled pricked scars on their arms. Older and
some fresh. Selling their future
to substances. Cart filled with bottles and bags full of clothes.
We walk by, put a Book of Mormon in their cart as they are deep within the sleeping spell of the after effects
of the heavy drugs. The grand hope
we have for the small possibility of complete change.
As we
walk, we hear the yelling off in the distance. We walk towards the main road. Smells of rotting meat dwell
within the air and fill your
nostrils until it rubs you the wrong way. Turn the corner. Liquor stores all on the left filled with people who
want to forget their reality. People without homes lay all over the sidewalk. Yelling in slurred Spanish and English
affected by the effects of their
drink. Brown bag in hand. Bottle in the brown bag. No life. All hope is gone. African Americans
yelling, arguing in altered English.
Continue to walk towards the train. Little venders (street meat) on the street corners.
People come up and start yelling at us, trying to open our bags. Screaming at
us about Jesus. Jump at us trying
to scare us. We don't move. They eventually, with an impulse reaction, walk off and continue to yell to the
invisible voices in their
heads. Many people walking with a drunken spirit possessed within them, all talking to the members of
their family that they have
created over the years from so much drug use in their own minds. Exchanging sanity, progression, and the very
point of life for temporary
satisfaction and indulgement.
We walk
down into the train station. The train comes. We take it. Everyone looks at us.
Get out at our stop. People rushing. We hear yelling. Louder than before. We walk up onto the main
road. More delinquents. African
Americans dressed in robes with swords, professing that the devil as we know him doesn't exist, but rather how
instead the devil
is the white man -- just waiting for Jesus to come and tell them to kill us. They start yelling at us over the
loud speaker. Everyone can hear.
They start filming. Asking questions. Yelling furiously. We keep walking. Humid. Hot. You breathe
and it feels like you are
holding your breath. That feeling exists literally physically and emotionally
as you walk the Harlem streets not knowing what is going to happen next. Walking through a sea of people.
Nobody is smiling. If you are
smiling, you are either drunk or have something up your sleeve.
We walk into project grounds. Big reddish-brown
buildings shaped like an X, all placed in
one area. Five or six of them all together.
Walk onto the grounds. No Caucasion Americans anywhere. Everyone staring,
wondering what we are doing there. People
smoking and drinking. Cops stand
watching, stationed throughout the projects. They watch with memories
and regrets of not being there when
previous murders have taken place.
As you walk by the fence, there is an old antique bicycle all painted in white, symbolizing a young family member’s
death. Next to the bike is placed
holy candles with money, and with a rosary draped around the neck of the bike with a picture of the
young person who was murdered due
to something gang related. Their name flees away as the candles burn down to the end. The meaning of life to
these people, fleeting away, means less and less the more their loved ones are taken from the earth.
Basketball court in the middle of the projects.
People stare as we try to find the
right project building. We enter. Smells of rotten meat, pee, sweat, mildew, and weed all enter your nose at
once. You hit the elevator button.
Nothing happens. We wait for ten minutes. A bell rings every time the elevator changes floors. Finally
it arrives. It opens. All the
smells go away, except the intake of pee increases. Old pee stains on the wall of the elevator. Fresh pee
puddles on the ground. Walk in.
Squeeze in with too many people. They are dressed in almost no clothing. You say hi how are you? They look
and say nothing, as if we are not worthy enough for them. We exit out of the
elevator on our floor. The smell
of drugs envelop our noses and then enter the brain. We find our door, knock it. No answer. Arguing
and strife mixed with music. Dark
music. People see us knocking, come out the door and rudely ask us what we are doing and who we are. We tell
them. They say nothing, just slam
the door. You hear muddled cursing as they walk back to
continue what they were doing. (Isn’t it ironic that the most successful people treat other people like they mean
more to them than themselves, and, well...these people...treat others
like they are less than
life?...like they are kings who demand all the honor themselves?...sorry, just thoughts.)
We knock. They come to the door. "¿Quién?"
(Who?). “The missionaries.” They open. We enter. Finally in the safe haven of the members home. You can see
our skin as our shirts become see-through
because of the amount of sweat. We
sit down to beans, rice, and chicken -- all cooked in loads of corn oil. As we eat, the sweat drips into the food.
Eating your own fluids twice.
Drink water just to sweat it out, just to eat it again. We eat until our stomachs feel like a time bomb just
waiting to explode as they bring
out more and more food. We eat, trying not to offend their quick offending personalities. We thank
them, talk with them, learn of
them, and then share scripture with them. We hear gun shots in
the near distance. Sirens approach. Almost unnoticed because of how frequent you hear them. As the world turns darker,
we try to turn together to God.
They become family. They become your anchor. You become family in Him. We end with a prayer, asking us to be so different
from the world outside. We go
hoping to be filled with His strength because we know there is no way we can do it on our own.
We exit. Elevator...waiting. Ten minutes later,
the elevator arrives. That familiar
smell of hot, elevating pee. The elevator beeping, sounding like an EKG as we pass down the 20 floors, counting
the floors as it would a person’s heartbeat.
We exit the building to see cops everywhere.
Someone killed in cold blood. The
same way they were conceived is the same way they are taken out of the world (with no meaning). People watching as
cops clear the scene. We try to go
unnoticed. People stare. Sounds of fighting. Sounds of lust. Sounds of the natural man. Creating
man and eliminating man both very
quickly and without purpose. Solely on impulse. Sounds of "English" that has been altered from lack of
education and substance abuse.
We walk
outside of the project grounds and back onto the road again. We walk. Slow
at first. Pace begins to pick up. Taking in mentally everything we just saw. As we brush it off, a man in
front of us looks behind us.
Suspicious. All dressed in black. Hood over his head. He gets more and more agitated. He keeps walking. Faster,
more rapidly and more aware of us.
Pulls out a knife. Raises it high above his head as a warning to us. He keeps walking, putting the knife
high in the air like he is
chanting in a parade. We stop as we feel the soft warning of God's spirit, pressing upon us to stop. We slowly
walk...calmly, knowing all is
well. He pulls out something else in his other hand and raises it
above his head as he looks at us. We stop. We turn down the road. We walk and walk and walk. We get away. We walk
for 30 minutes.
We walk....we see Caucasian Americans all
wearing red, with tents set up
on the streets of Harlem. We walk up to them and start talking to
them. They are the same age as us. They are here
for a week to go around the city
to pray with people. They come from all over the country. As we are talking, two African Americans get
into a bad fight right in front of
us. Other people start joining in, and I am a little irritated because it completely interrupts our
conversation. I see the fear fall into this
young woman's eyes as she watches.
I ask her how she likes Harlem. She says with horror in her voice, "I'm from a cornfield in Idaho. I've
never seen anything like this. This
scares me to death." We tell them not to worry about it. We understand how they feel :) We were once there, new,
not too long ago. We decide to put
off the chaos around us, and we all come together and put our arms around each other (like a team huddling).
In the middle of the streets of
Harlem, with all the chaos going on, we start praying, as strangers, but as brothers and sisters united in God. I
leave that little circle with a smile on my face
for the hope that is still out
there in this world. I love good people. We smile. We thank them. We walk away to our next goal.
We turn
down the next street and continue on our way, searching for a building to knock.
We go in faith that God will place in our path someone He has prepared. The day passes, full of extreme
experiences. We go home. Plan for the next day.
I look in the mirror. I wash my
face and thank God for preserving me another day. I open up my email. I see letters from friends and my family
explaining about the tests they
have taken, about the people they are interested in dating, and how they are going on vacations. Pictures
of them at the ocean with their
family and friends. Happy. My mom sends me a picture of my dog. This simple life. It is now foreign. It
confuses me. School? Sports?
Family? It now feels like that life never existed. I wonder how I will transition back into that life after experiencing this. I am
different. I am not the same Austin Celaya anymore. Before this, I had seen so little compared to what's out in the
world, but I have seen enough and
I can no longer be the same. The Lord is bringing me low so I can learn how to
build up the life I so dearly now want for the future. The things that matter. I know what they are now. I
don't just know them as one knows that two plus
two equals four. I know them as I
have experienced them, as someone experiences walking into the ocean. Feeling the cold water rush upon your
legs as you dig your feet into the
sand, sand crabs tickling your feet as the waves come crashing against your shins. I know it in a
different way than I have ever
known before.
This
place is a very dark world. We know in the end God will win, but
I feel as if evil is winning. God has promised
us another world. If we live
faithful here and live according to His words, he promises us a different world where we may dwell in a state of
forever-ending possibilities and
ultimate happiness; with His son, Jesus Christ, with our families and with Him forever. I don't want
to do anything that would take me
or my family away from that. That is why I love this truth. God has given us the way to endure this
dark world, to create that heaven
here on earth, and has given us the power and the guarantee to be able to have this world in the future.
It has come through His authority
that He has given to His prophets. We can know for ourselves through prayer as we pray and ask. God
will press upon us the very Spirit He
possesses Himself, and He will show us through many hand-crafted experiences that only He could craft
because of their perfection, that
these things are true. We will know it. He will show it to
us. Is everything else not just a mere hope anyway? I need more than just a wish to be able to know that
this world that we all hope for
will come and that I will be with my family forever. I need it manifested to me. That is why I am so grateful
for the knowledge
of God's power that He has given to his prophet here on the earth today. His power, His priesthood, is the only
way to make anything sure in that
world we all hope for. I am so grateful for the sealing power we possess to be able to be sealed to
our families for time and all
eternity with our Heavenly Father and His Son. The Prophet Joseph Smith’s testament was that God had
revealed through him the sealing
power by which “all covenants, contracts, bonds, obligations, oaths, vows, performances, connections,
associations” shall be in force
and recognized as valid in the eternal worlds (D&C 132:7).
Suffering
is ok. Hurting is ok. Feeling hopeless is ok sometimes. It is all ok, because I feel the greater amount we see
and experience, the greater
capacity for good we will know and be able to experience. The next world will come if we like it or not, just as
the sun will fall in the night
whether we wished for it or not. But, thankfully, God has given us the daytime to choose which side we
will follow. When the sun falls,
it will be too late for us to choose whom to serve. As C.S. Lewis puts it:
"God Will invade. But I wonder whether people who ask God to interfere openly and directly in
our world quite realize what it
will be like when He does. When that happens, it is the end of the world. When the author walks on to the
stage the play is over. God is
going to invade, all right: but what is the good of saying you are on His side then, when you see the
whole natural universe melting
away like a dream and something else-something it never entered your head to conceive -- comes crashing
in; something so beautiful
to some of us and so terrible to others that none of us will have any choice left? For this time it will be God
without disguise; something so
overwhelming that it will strike either irresistible love or irresistible horror into every creature. It will be
too late then to choose your side.
There is no use saying you choose to lie down when it has become impossible to stand up. That will
not be the time for choosing: it
will be the time when we discover which side we really have chosen, whether we realized it before or
not. Now, today, this moment, is
our chance to choose the right side. God is holding back go give us that chance. It will not last forever.
We must take it or leave it."
As C.S.
Lewis said so perfectly,
"Now, today, this moment, is our chance to choose the right side.
God is holding back to give us that chance. It will not last forever.
We must take it.......or leave it."
I'm still
trying to convince myself to take it. I'm in this with you all just the same. I just hope we can take it together.
Your
brother and friend,
Elder Austin Celaya
