Seeing Happiness When You Literally Can't (16 March 2016)

Most productive week of my mission hands down!

- We were able to see so many miracles this week.

- Prayed with 100 people on the street this week in the first contact with people we have never talked to. We knelt with a lot of people on the street to pray as well. It's amazing to see how it turns a crazy, more hectic and dark environment into a very time-paused, peace-filled bubble where the presence of God can be felt. It's amazing to see how a flat-out "no" turns into "wow, tell me more" after they have the chance to feel what comes from the prayer. 28 of those people turned into people who set return appointments, who want to learn more. They are 28 new people we have to help, talk with, and teach.

- Elder Richards and I are completely exhausted though. We have been talking with everyone in sight and it has taken a toll.

- We found this man on the street. We decided to go and talk to him. As we did, we prayed with him right there and eventually went into teaching the restoration. He got everything. But what was amazing was that at the end when we were explaining the feelings of the Holy Ghost, we told him that he would feel those feelings as he read, pondered and prayed about the book. He looked at us and said, "Wait, but can't you both feel that feeling right now? Because I know I sure can and I already know this is from God." I knew I was feeling it, I knew Elder Richards was feeling it, and that is what moved us to share with him the feelings of the spirit so he could identify them. He pointed out right there how strong the spirit was and he had not even read the book yet. We gave him a Book of Mormon and are hoping to meet with him soon. It's amazing to see how easy it is to teach people the gospel who are ready. It feels like we are not even teaching. The spirit is very present in those teaching situations and it's like we (the missionaries) are not even there.

- One day we ended up talking to four people who we "randomly" decided to talk to, who used to invite the missionaries over in the Dominican Republic and were taking the missionary lessons. That was guided. You could feel it before you even started talking to them. I have realized there are little simple miracles throughout every day. We just have to look for them.

- Got caught in the middle of a big drug deal. It was about 8:30 at night. We walked down this rundown street to find an old investigator. Here in these apartment buildings, there are always two doors. First, the main one (you have to get buzzed in to get into both), and then the second door which leads you to the stairs. As we were walking up, we saw this big black SUV pull up. Everyone looked frantic. We opened the door to the building. This lady had gotten out of the SUV, and a group of people in the back of the SUV pulled out big, big bags (they looked very heavy) filled with powder-like substance. She grabbed them and ran into the building. We were right behind her. We got into the first door because the people opened it. So we were stuck in between the first and second door with this lady who had pounds upon pounds of drugs. A little boy came in after her (we found out he was all a part of this, too -- he had drugs on him as well.) The doorbell was not working, and the lady was stressing out because she could not get in quick enough. The people on the outside, who were watching to make sure nobody comes in and interrupts the deal, got worried and came into the first door where we were. They were heavily drugged (just think of your toughest looking street thugs, and that is them). The room we were in was tiny, and the problem we had was that they thought we were the police. The tension in the air was very serious. Apparently, in this building they do a lot of drug deals, so the people upstairs who take in the drugs rigged the door. So while these thugs and this lady and kid, and Elder Richards and I, were in the tiny little entrance, they locked both the first door and the second, so there was no way to get out either way. We tried but could not. We knew this was going to get ugly very fast because here are these big bags of drugs with the people who are delivering them next to us who they think are cops. So out of desperation, we pulled out cards of Jesus Christ and start frantically telling them all about Jesus Christ and how God has a plan for each of them and how this life is not the end or the beginning. Haha, it is very funny now, but scary in the moment for sure. They eventually got the picture that we were not cops, but it was very close to having something go down, so we got lucky. Jesus Christ can save us in any situation. Even His picture can ;) Then about 10 people came down and manually opened the second door to make sure there were no cops, and they all freaked out because they thought we were cops. The lady told them we were "Jesus people" and they all rushed the drugs upstairs. It was a crazy situation -- we were for sure in the wrong place at the wrong time.

- Things I learned from William. I have been reminiscing on a member back in New Paltz whose name is William Krom. He lives in the woods and is blind, but has taught himself how to play the piano beautifully. He writes his own music and can play just about any song you tell him to. We would visit him once a week, read scriptures with him, and then he would always bless us with the entire Sound of Music soundtrack on the piano, all without seeing a key. We would close our eyes to teach him so that we could, in a way, enter his world. For us, that made it a lot more personal. These are the lessons I learned from Mr. Krom:

He was the happiest man I have ever met. When the sun shined he would say, "Can you feel the goodness of God coming down? I just know that is his way of showing that He loves us and wants us happy." Although he could not see and could not do anything on his own, that did not stop him from being happy or giving service to others. He would go (with the help of a friend) to senior centers every day and play piano for whom he claimed were the people who did not have joy, so he could serve them and make THEM happy. He likes to help other people when, in reality, he was the one who needed help the most, but he didn't see that because he was too busy helping others and making them happy. I learned from him that when life seems like it's all caving in to a never-ending black hole, you will be able to find happiness and hope by finding those who need to be uplifted and lifting them up, despite you being crushed on the floor. It's amazing how when you help someone else, they just don't benefit from it, but rather the two of you are elevated. And who can elevate us anymore than Jesus Christ and God? There is nobody higher. But the only way that we can let them do so is if we lift others, and then we ascend together with Christ lifting us way past the height we could lift ourselves. In order to know Christ, we have to be in a sense like Him, and in order to be like Him, we have to trust Him enough to know that by doing what He asks, He will lift us to eternal joy. There is only one way to find out.

“Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fullness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.” Psalms 16:11

No matter where we are, or how bad or good we are, He can give us new life.

With sincerity,

Elder Austin Celaya

Praying in the Middle of the Street! (9 March 2016)

Hello from NYC!

I'm now at the top of the island of Manhattan which means I've been able to be blessed to serve in almost all parts of the island lengthwise.

- We have turned up the volume! Elder Richards is willing to put to the test any type of missionary work, which sometimes isn't good, but great at the same time because we will do whatever!  We have been talking to literally everyone. 

- We had a goal to pray with 30 people yesterday. God blessed us with 30 prepared people to pray with. It was LOTS of work trying to find them, but it happened. So far, we (Elder Richards, the Lord and I) have been able to find 8 new investigators (meaning you share a message with someone on the first contact, get their phone number and address, and set up a return appointment with them).

- It was in the late afternoon and Elder Richards and I were drained. We were talking about how our energy was gone. We were walking along one of the main roads and two seconds after we said that, this big black man with dreads down to the floor spotted us and he had a bottle in his hand. He threw it on the ground and it shattered. Then he came after us, trying to shake our hand. He grabbed our necks and started praying with us. He then started saying he was going to "kill them"... whoever 'they' are. He had us repeat a prayer with him, and then he stood around and shouted to everyone on the street that we were his Christian brothers. He then "anointed us" lol, and gave us like 10 hugs. It was the weirdest thing ever. God knew we were tired, but what a way to show us "not yet." (:

- Prayed kneeling down in the street yesterday with a man we just met in the ghetto. It was one of the most awkward but cool experiences I've ever had on my mission.

- We prayed with a pizza delivery man yesterday, too, in the middle of our apartment lobby. Haha, it was great because we told him we were going to pray with him, and then all of a sudden we just knelt down on the ground (which was very awkward). He refused to kneel at first, but by the time the prayer was over, he was kneeling too. I'm sure the people that walked into the lobby while we were praying felt very uncomfortable. But that's good. It turned out to be a very spiritual experience, and the man told us after how much he really needed that and was touched. We are both being super bold with people and relying on God 100% and he's given us miracles.

- We tried praying with this lady and she just wasn't having it. She told us Jesus already "saved her" from her cancer, so she doesn't need him anymore. Makes complete sense, right? So we walked and walked with her, trying to convince her to pray, and she kept saying "no no no no no." Finally, we told her, "You can't just not let us pray for you. That just isn't nice." Haha. She would not stop, so we walked with her and prayed as we walked down the road with this lady.

- Met a guy from Greece. We tried to pray with him, but he had dementia, so every time we tried to pray with him, he forgot that we told him we were going to pray with him. He would just start talking in the middle of the prayer, talking about how his brother died in the war. Haha. He kept talking about how bad the world is, and in between every sentence we would say, "and that is why we need to pray!!" So finally, in the middle of him talking about how horrible this world is, we started praying. It was a very funny experience because in the middle of the prayer he would remember we were praying and then two seconds later he would forget and start talking about his brother again. Haha. Great time though.

- We stopped to go to the bathroom in McDonald's and we ended up praying with five people.

- I've learned this week how much "talking to everyone" can change your entire mission. For you current or future missionaries out there....When it says everyone, it means everyone. I used to not do that, but as Elder Richards and I have tried to talk to everyone we see, you will find prepared people. It has been GREAT! And wow, is it fun. We try to picture this as a game. If it were a game, what would you not be afraid to do? So, every time we leave the apartment, we say to ourselves, "ok, we our out in our playground. Let's have some fun."

- My dad sent me a message this week: "If you knew you could not fail, who would you talk to?" Thanks pops for that because we are trying to apply that in everything we do. IF I knew I could not fail, I would talk to everyone. Imagine if we took that perspective in life.

IF you KNEW you could NOT fail, WHAT WOULD YOU DO?

"I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me."

Love you all,

- Elder Celaya

New Zone Leaders for the Manhattan North Zone

Missionary Leadership Council (MLC)

 Spanish class with Elder Zimmerman

"I'LL BURN YOUR BIBLE" (2 March 2016)

Hello Everyone!

- Crazy week.

- We were in a lesson and the next door neighbor came into the house, uninvited, and told us to get out of the house. He started cursing at us, saying we ripped up the grass and caused all this damage, and then he threatened to fight us and started taunting us, saying he was going to "rip all our little Bibles in half and burn them right there” as he “beat us till we died." This went on for about 10 minutes and then we got out of there. It was quite a funny experience. I have become so much more patient on my mission with people. Mom knows if that was the old me, it would have ended quite differently.

- Got transferred from New Paltz back down to the city, back into the Spanish program. I’m in a place called Inwood, at the top of the Manhattan island right above Harlem. I’m with my old companion, Elder Richards. It's Spanish haven here. I'm very excited to be back here in the city and with Elder Richards. We worked so well together and he challenges me to be better!

- Well, I think we all get to the point in life where we have phases that feel like ground hog day. How do we get out of the "stuck feeling"? Read the story of this man to see how we can change our own lives by ironically doing nothing to improve our own, yet it does everything to improve it.

Weatherman Phil Connors​ ​is dispatched one freezing February to a town in Pennsylvania. His assignment: to cover the Groundhog​Day ​Festival, involving a groundhog, its shadow, and the possibility of six more weeks of winter. Phil is bored and hostile; he bullies his cameraman; he disdains the cheery locals and their festivities; he can’t wait to wrap up this piddling gig and get back to Pittsburgh. But a huge snowstorm blocks his way home and he is trapped there for the night. When he wakes up the next morning, it’s Groundhog Day. Again. Same conditions, same people, same ritual. So it goes the morning after, and the morning after that, and on and on. Phil is in a loop, a temporal locked groove. He’s stuck.​ This goes on for what has been estimated for eight years. Every day, the same as the last, over and over again.​

​His day begins each morning at 6:00 A.M. His clock radio is always playing the same song. His memories of the previous day are intact, but he's trapped in a time loop, repeating the same day in the same small town.​ After briefly trying to rationalize his situation, and then thinking he is insane, he takes advantage of learning the day's events and the information he is able to gather about the town's inhabitants, and finds that his actions have no long-term consequences for himself. He ends up schmoozing people, stealing money, even driving drunk and experiencing a police chase. He begins to tire of, and then dread, his existence, starting the day by smashing the alarm clock. He tries almost everything to break the cycle.

Eventually, he enhances his own human understanding which, in return, makes him an appreciated and beloved man in the town. He is able to befriend almost everyone he meets during the day, using his experiences to save lives and help the townspeople.

During his days, he opens his heart to his coworker, and her advice helps him to gradually find a goal for his trapped life; to become a benefactor to others, to help others. After seeing an elderly homeless man die, Connors vows that no one will die on "his" day and performs many heroic services each and every repeating day, including performing the Heimlich maneuver on a choking man and saving a little boy who falls from a tree. However, he becomes despondent at being unable to save the homeless man, despite trying to get him medical care. When he demands to see the man's medical chart, a nurse tells him "sometimes people just die." "Not today," Connors replies, but he never manages to prevent it.

He then spent his days perfecting the good that he could do, and when he got it perfect, he found the time loop was broken.

We find ourselves when we lose ourselves in service to others. Doesn't make much sense, but it works :)

With love,

- Elder Celaya

I Dare You with Love (24 February 2016)

Hello Everyone,

What a weird but awesome week we have had here.

- Got pretty sick this week. Still fighting it.

- Working out every night hard. Yoga in the mornings. 

- We did a look-up of a person who had supposedly been looking into the church before. He oddly let us in and talked about how his brother lets us sleep at his house. We were super confused, and he then told us that his brother was very high in our church. We did not recognize his name, so he said he was going to have him come over. Wasn't home, so he called him. We told him our names and that we were new in the area and that we were trying meet the members. We told him we were from New Paltz, and he said that it was impossible because the New Paltz missionaries don't cover the area where he lived (we were in a different town). We told him we did, and he asked us what our "area cards were"? Well, come to find out, he is a Jehovah's Witness, and we got so deep into it not knowing that they were such that we had no way of backing out of it. So, we pretended like we were JWs. Quite a funny experience. We left a Book of Mormon on his porch so he probably knows now who we are. :)

- Right after the experience above, I was driving 50 in a 30 MPH zone (I thought the speed limit was 45) and got pulled over by a cop. He asked where we were coming from, and we told him we were missionaries from our church just coming home from an appointment. He asked me if I have ever gotten a ticket in New York, California or anywhere in-between. Said no. He looked at my name tag, thought for a second, and then gave me back my license and told us to be careful going home and to keep up the good work. God is good. That would have been a $300 plus ticket :)

- Last week we went over to a member’s house to have dinner with them. Within the house is an older man who is not a member of the Church. Well, 25 years earlier on that day, his wife had passed away. He was lonely, and you could tell he missed her. The head of the household asked us if we could go and pray with him. We did, and then we started to learn more about his family. We talked and ended up teaching him that he CAN be with his wife again, and we shared how he can. We taught him the plan of salvation mixed with the gospel of Jesus Christ. We invited him to be baptized on the very first contact and he said yes!  By the time we finished the lesson, we had to go to our next appointment and never even got to teach the family. But God knew why we needed to go over there, and it was for this man. Well, this week we went over there, taught him the restoration of the gospel, and he is now on date to be baptized the 2^nd of April.

God is a god of miracles, but he gives us this life as our playing ground.  This life is a training.  God never leaves us, we leave Him, and as we try to get closer to Him, He will guide us through this life perfectly.  Don’t think it can happen?  Try it.  I dare you.

I dare you with love,

- Elder Celaya

God sees the Divine Potential of Those Who Struggle (17 Feb 2016)

When you come to start to know God, you start to see the DIVINE potential of others. There are moments in life where you feel comfortable and think you do not need God. But there are moments in life that are deep and extreme reminders that we indeed do need Him.

I feel like my life right now is surrounded by addicts and their struggles. It's been crazy. In this area I’m in we are teaching a lot of drug addicts and alcoholics. In fact, out of all the people we are teaching, only one isn't an addict. It's so sad to see the craziness it causes. One of the people we are teaching was in a coma for four days in the hospital because he overdosed on Morphine. He did it again the other day, but didn't end up in the hospital. We were over there when he did it and we had to deal with that, trying to save the guy's life. We have been trying to get him off of it. 

We are teaching this other guy who was in the military. Decided one day to take on his captain in a fight. The captain beat him to a pulp. Doctors gave him pain meds and he got hooked. Got to a point where he was taking 6 vicodin a day, 5 morphine, and 4 other medications (8 each) that were pain meds, but his biggest drug of choice was heroin. Nuts right? He was homeless for 10 years living on the street that has the highest murder rate in the entire nation here in NY. Well, he has been clean of heroin for two years. We are working getting him off alcohol and cigarettes now. 

We are teaching another guy who used to be a crack addict and a hard core liquor drinker. He has to have a bottle in his hand every second of the day or he physically cannot handle the way his body rejects being sober. We got him off liquor and he’s just drinking beer (about four a day). He has a wife, two kids (16 and 9), and grew up in Yonkers. He's a grown man, but calls us whenever he needs help. We went over there the other day and he took us into this laundry mat where his wife works. He cried his soul out to us, saying he felt like there was no way out and that he wasn't a man anymore. 

These are just a few people we are teaching. I don't know why all we teach are people with suicidal thoughts and drug habits, but it's teaching me a lot. Like a ton. I have learned not to judge anybody. In fact, when we were teaching this guy, he said, "I feel like I have failed, have no potential, and that I am not a man anymore." I looked at him in his eyes as he was sobbing, a little confused about what I was feeling. I felt an overwhelming love for him. A love like I have never felt before. And I sat there for a minute as he cried, looked up at him and said, "Pat, I don't know why, but I feel an overwhelming love for you, so intense I have never experienced anything like this. I barely even know you. I don't think what I am feeling is the love that I have for you, but just a small piece of the love that God has for you." It was such a cool experience to feel that. I've seen, as I’ve prayed for it, God giving me a little bit of a vision of how he sees these struggling people...their divine potential. It has been amazing.

I never would have thought two years ago this would be my life. It gives you a different perspective than you can get anywhere else because you are 100% disconnected from the world.There is no TV, no news, no phone, no internet, no calling friends ... all you are left with is yourself and the promptings of God. It truly gives you a vision of HOW THINGS REALLY ARE.

A bit of bad news... we got in an accident two days ago. It was snowing a lot, and we slid across the road and hit the curb really hard. I hit my head on the top of the window, but luckily neither of us were hurt. We destroyed the wheel and the rim. We had to take in our car all day yesterday to get it fixed. It's like new now, though :) I guess that is what you get by giving two California boys a car in snow. Believe me, I know how to drive in snow—the members ALWAYS teach me because they know I’m from southern California. There was just nothing I could do in the situation that we were in. It could have been a lot worse.

Ugh, it was negative 5 degrees here on Sunday, 10 degrees on Monday, and 59 on Tuesday. Makes no sense, right? It was snowing super hard 2 days ago… we woke up and it’s 59 degrees! Haha, gotta love this weird weather.

I hope you are all doing alright.

Love,

- Elder Celaya

It's snowing!

Zone Conference Feb 2016

Miracles (27 January 2016)

Hello Everyone!

— We went and did service at this house that takes in drug addicts, those with diseases, and homeless people, and helped cook breakfast for them. The head chef was a recovering addict himself. Got into cocaine when he was 15, then tried other things, but really got into heroin. The amount of pain killers and the types that he was taking a day was unreal. Doing 50 bags of heroin a day, taking ridiculous amounts of pain killers, drinking, smoking, and doing other types of drugs left him homeless. He ended up getting married 3 times. His first wife left, and his second wife died from a heroin overdose. The third one was his gem. He has been clean of any drug for a year now. It was incredible to hear his story. With the more in-detail things he told us, he should have been dead. It is a miracle that he is still living. He just had a baby last week with his new wife. It was amazing to hear that he said the only way he was able to recover was when he gave his will to God’s. He said that he knows God preserved His life to give him a second chance with his new family and baby girl. It was so touching. This man was one of the most Christlike people I have ever met. He was so loving and genuine, and humble, because he knew how every one of those addicts and people without homes felt. What a great example of extreme change that only God can give us if we give him our hearts and do what He asks us (which leads to happiness anyways).

— We got our ex pro tennis player, Kenny, off of his morphine and also off of his anti-depressant pills. We have worked so hard with him relating the gospel to the game of tennis. He has come to church the last two weeks, the first times in the three years he has been looking into the church.

— We made this goal when I first got here to talk to everyone that spoke Spanish. So, if we saw a Spanish person, even if we had to pull over the car, we would go talk to them. Well, now we are doing this with everyone, Spanish and English. So we have been pulling up to people and asking them if we can give them a Book of Mormon. The different responses have been entertaining. We pulled up to this elderly lady yesterday and asked her if we could give her a book that could change her life. She looked back at us very offended and snared, "ABSOLUTELY NOT. NOTHING CAN CHANGE MY LIFE." It was quite funny. We have been able to give out quite a few using this method.

— We have been working out twice daily. Elder Hansen and I have been hitting the track, and then we have this intense 90 day workout that we are doing. It's by far one of the hardest workouts I have ever done. We are eating very healthy as well. It's really paying off.

— I have been thinking about how we can never come to know how Christ can change us if we don't have the faith to just do what He says. Some might think, "How can an individual that isn't here change my life more than anything else?" But I have realized that one can't know, unless they put their faith into trying, trying to do what He asks of us. It is only then that we can begin to see God working in our lives. Until we have faith unto works, we are doing this on our own. Faith is a lot deeper than we think, but it is the key to unlock the treasure chest of the life God has in store for all of us — in this life and the next.

Love you all,

Elder Celaya

Exploring in the Catskill Mountains