26 December 2017

Sorry for not giving y'all a warning about me not being able to email yesterday. I didn't know until yesterday that I couldn't have just about any time, but the mission president said we had a little time today. Well, Christmas was great! We opened presents with some other missionaries and I did really appreciate the gifts Mom! After presents, we went over to Bishop's house to make our calls. After that, we hung out for a few hours with them (it was both p day and Christmas, so...) and had a breakfast. They had a basketball shooting game that I went head to head with Bishop on, and lost. Just barely. He took that as an opportunity to go over again how Hoosiers don't have anything on Tar Heels when it comes to basketball. After that, we were over at another member's house for dinner and some games. We had biscuits with gravy, turkey, ham, and nachos. It was pretty interesting. The only game we ended up playing was Quelf, which was still pretty fun. After that, we were given the chance to watch a church movie, so we watched 17 Miracles. It was really weird after nearly 5 months without any tv.

The rest of the week has been a little strange. We haven't been able to get up with one of our investigators for a while, and we just found out why. Her husband (who she kicked out and tried to get a restraining order against because he beat her and their children) is back against her will. And we also now have a death threat against us if he ever sees us come over again. We'll just have to be a little more careful. (Okay Mom, a lot more careful.) But the finding here is still going strong! Everyone is super open to listen, especially around Christmas. Hopefully it'll tide over after Christmas as well. We're trying hard, but it's been a bit hard to keep up with some of them around now because everyone is leaving for other places. I'm pretty sure it'll all calm down after this season now, so we'll be able to work normally again.

I wasn't expecting a chance to email today, so I wasn't ready to upload pictures. However, I'll have plenty next week. Bye until then!

18 December 2017

Well, nothing too spectacular happened this week. So much so that I forgot to get pictures. (Sorry Mom.) So here's a picture of Elder Lowe (not my companion) looking surprised.

​The most exciting thing that happened this week was probably our top investigator who was going to be baptized this week texted us and said that she was going to follow her culture of worshiping saints rather than be baptized. Either that or that was last week and I simply don't remember when it happened. Still, it wasn't fun. On Mondays we don't have anything to do out here, so my companion and I played Risk where I lost 13 consecutive dice rolls in a row. I was done after that. Today we're having a zone activity that none of us are excited about because it'll basically just be hanging out at a stake center really far away that we don't have enough miles to go to. When we got to this area on December 6th, the previous elders had already used 694 of the 1100 miles we're allowed to go for the month in the car. It wasn't for good reasons, either. They just spent the last few days driving around the area (which is pretty sizeable) visiting members, hanging out with them, and saying goodbye. So we don't have any miles left for the car, and zone activities are mandatory. Hopefully the car doesn't get taken away. We've already explained the situation to the assistants, so probably not.

Friday was pretty fun. We had a ward Christmas party that we invited tons of investigators to, but none of them showed up. However, we did have a less active/part member family in our area show up, so we got to give them an impromptu tour of the building, which is brand new (less than two months of use) and we got a return appointment with them. Hopefully it'll work out well. We did a nativity where the other elders had to be two of the wise men.

On Sunday we had a Christmas program. It was really cool, and I got to sing in Spanish with the rest of the Spanish group. We had two investigators there and they loved it.

Well, that's all of the news I have for this week. Have a great week!

11 December 2017

So transfers happened this week. I am now in Siler City with Elder Schmidt. He seems like a good guy, and this is a really crazy area. It's a small city with a population of only 8,000 people, but the work is going so much better than in Raleigh. We had one of our bikes stop working when the tire went flat and then we were on foot for the next two days. The most crazy thing is that that was when we started finding like crazy. 9 new investigators in two days! That's a week or two of work in Raleigh! Also, we somehow managed to make it to all of our lessons with some crazy timing. Twice in one day, if we had showed up on time rather than the 10-15 minutes late we did, we would have missed them. We also got to talk to two less actives, both of whom went to church yesterday. One of them works at the Search and Rescue station here, and when we showed up, we ended up teaching his junior trainee the Restoration as well. We're working with someone who has a baptismal date on the 23rd, and apparently she hadn't been taught the Word of Wisdom. You need to follow that for at least two weeks leading up to your baptism, and we didn't get to talk to her until the day that marked two weeks. So we talked to her about it and committed her to living it, and she said that she didn't even do any of those things anyways so it wouldn't be a problem for her at all! It's been a fantastic start to this transfer. Aside from an exchange that happened the very first day of the transfer so I didn't really even get to know my companion until day two, it's been pretty standard. We have some really great members out here, and it seems like a solid ward. The only problem is that I was asked to translate on my first Sunday out here. Which reminds me of the weird thing about our companionship: We're both right out of training, as green as can be. Which never happens. The even weirder part about it is that I'm the senior companion. We don't know why, because there can be co senior companionships, but somehow I am senior. Even though technically he's had about 7 more hours of being in the actual field due to all that mess from me trying to get out here on that plane. (He came from the Provo MTC and skipped all the plane drama.) So yeah, I don't know what I'm doing some of the time, but we're doing well! Also, the weather here has been crazy. It was in the mid 60's one day, and then we had the first snow that lasted for two days. Nothing really stuck though, which was sad.

Elder Allred, my second trainer because of the bike accident

The first snow here in Siler City

And this was the first time I saw Elder Schmidt cooking.

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4 Decemeber 2017

So this week has been interesting. Basically, I was just trying to figure out how to work in a trio for a whole week before we're all getting transferred. Well, except for trainer #2. He's going home. Meaning I'm sending home two of my first three companions. Yay for trunky training! One of my companions in this trio was my MTC companion. Actually, with my MTC companion, we're in the same district. So we saw each other a lot, even before we went into the trio together. We've joked that we might be serving our entire missions around each other. Anyways, we're going to figure out who our new companions are tomorrow. I think that they intentionally have PDay as the day before transfers so the family is in the dark for a week before they get to find out who their missionary is with. It's been fun in the trio, but it's also made me have a very strange start to the mission. By the time I get out of training, I'll be on companion #4 in my third transfer. I'll also have had two trainers, and a "brother" in the mission in two transfers. Not the normal start. All I know right now transferwise is that I am leaving the Raleigh zone, but I don't know where to or who I'll be with. So hopefully I can tell all that next week.

For whatever reason, all of the cars out here are dying for whatever reason. Either they're getting transferred out of our zone or there have been minor crashes that do a ton of damage somehow and completely cripple the car. So we've been on bikes again. It's not been too bad, but we have to cover two areas, so there's been a whole lot of biking all over Raleigh. My legs have never been more sore. And it turns out that my bike was actually damaged in the crash that sent trainer #1 home. My rear derailleur is pretty badly bent, so I need to fix that too. It kind of works, but it's threatening to pop off at any moment. Hopefully I can spend some time working on that today. 

In terms of the work, it's been a little frustrating. Our boundaries have already changed once, so we got an investigator from the Zone Leaders, but they're changing again so we're losing them again. Also, our most promising investigator was super drunk when we last met with him. We ended up switching our lesson plan to the Word of Wisdom, but he didn't want to talk with us because our Spanish wasn't good enough for him while he was drunk, so he spent the entire lesson interrogating the member we had with us. He was asked how old he was, where he was from, and a few other questions. The big problem was that he couldn't remember what he'd asked, so he did it over and over again. We set another appointment, and hopefully he'll be sober for that. Other than that, it's been a ton of knocking doors. We spent six hours knocking doors on Saturday, and only 5 people opened the door. None of them wanted to listen. However, yesterday, we decided to try a potential who wasn't there for their return appointment, and we found them home with another six people who all wanted to listen! It was super awesome, and we got to teach them all. Hopefully they'll all be progressing well. 

I think this is all the news for the week, so have a good one everyone!

 

Actually, with my MTC companion, we were in the same district. So we saw each other a lot. We've joked that we might be serving our entire missions around each other. Anyways, we're going to figure out who our new companions are tomorrow. I think that they intentionally have PDay as the day before transfers so the family is in the dark for a week before they get to find out who their missionary is with. It's been fun in the trio, but it's also made me have a very strange start to the mission. By the time I get out of training, I'll be on companion #4 in my third transfer. I'll also have had two trainers, and a "brother" in the mission in two transfers. Not the normal start. All I know right now transferwise is that I am leaving the Raleigh zone, but I don't know where to or who I'll be with. So hopefully I can tell all that next week. It's got to be fun with the other car down and so many places to go. We have that same problem here. For whatever reason, all of the cars out here are dying for whatever reason. Either they're getting transferred out of our zone or there have been minor crashes that do a ton of damage somehow and completely cripple the car. So we've been on bikes again. It's not been too bad, but we have to cover two areas, so there's been a whole lot of biking all over Raleigh. My legs have never been more sore.

 

 

27 November 2017

So yeah. My companion went home this week because he needed surgery. Basically, we went into the doctor's on Tuesday to get some more x rays. So, we get those done and sit back down to wait for the doctor to arrive. We knew it was bad when he walked into the room with a weird expression on his face and immediately asked if he had done something to reinjure himself. He then showed us the x rays, and originally he had broken his collarbone but it was still in one piece, just cracked. With the second set of x rays we found out that his collarbone was now two pieces, and the ends weren't even touching anymore. We started walking out of the room to go see them and I saw a computer screen with his x ray on it. He didn't say it was his at first, but the first thing I thought was, "Oh I hope that's not Elder Rolph's bone." Unfortunately, it was. So he got to have a nice chat with the doctor about his options. There were only two. Let it sit there in the sling and heal as it is, which would result in a huge knot of bone, possible reduced range of motion, and possible nerve issues. Or he could have the surgery and have a plate holding the two parts together, which would hugely reduce recovery time and almost immediately regain at least some use of the arm. The doctor very much encouraged the second option. So Elder Rolph talked to the mission president who agreed that it would be best to go home and get the surgery, especially because he only had two weeks left anyways. We had the official call of he's going home to have the surgery on Tuesday at about 2, and his flight was Wednesday at 1:30. The church is very efficient in shipping its missionaries around. So we spent the rest of Tuesday packing his stuff and getting him ready to go. Then we spent Wednesday morning getting stuff figured out and putting me with my new companions. So, I'm now in a trio with 2 elders from my district, and we're covering two areas. The funny thing is that one of those elders is my MTC companion, so we already know each other. The other one is his trainer, so now he's training two elders in Spanish at the same time. He's also going home this transfer. Then on Thursday we had Thanksgiving with one of the counselors in the bishopric. The funny thing is he's one of the only Americans in the ward, so we had an English Thanksgiving. We ended up being the judges of all of the pies, so we had to eat from five different slices. There was a super good apple pie, and we declared that the winner. Mom, you have the pictures of all that, so you are in charge of pictures. They didn't give us them. But it was fun, and after that madness for days in a row the rest of the week was kind of a blur. So sorry, that's all I have for this week. Except for that I relearned how to juggle.

20 November 2017

Well, this has definitely been the least exciting week of my mission. We couldn't find last week because of my companion's injury, and so we didn't have any appointments. We spent a few hours on Monday in the hospital, and then we didn't have much else to do. For most of Tuesday, we were in the apartment but got to go out and knock a little bit. Wednesday was pretty good. We had a zone conference, and we got to go to the temple. It was super nice. It's always great to be able to go and do work. Then Thursday we went on exchanges with our district leaders. We mostly just knocked because they didn't have any appointments set up that day. Still, it was great to go out and work. The next morning we transferred back and I immediately went on exchanges with our zone leaders. That one was even better. We didn't knock a whole lot, but I got to go with him and teach a few lessons. And I got to drive the only truck in the mission. It's a Chevy Silverado, and only the Raleigh ZL's have one. The only reason I got to drive it was the ZL I was with had his driving privileges taken away after getting dinged by the system called Tiwis- Teenage Independent Witness. Basically your mother sitting next to you and screaming at you if you speed, brake too hard, accelerate too fast, or turn too hard. And then telling your mission president. I didn't think that I would enjoy it much, but it turns out that I also love driving trucks. Not just small cars like I thought. Unfortunately, I got back after that exchange and found out my companion had decided to go out and knock and work for two full days without wearing his sling. He's in a lot of pain, so we couldn't work Saturday or Sunday. It took me and my district leaders an hour and a half to convince him to leave the apartment this morning. He just doesn't want to move at all anymore. It's kind of rough just being stuck in your apartment all day. On the plus side, I've had plenty of time for scripture and language study. I've also read every Ensign we have. Which is a lot. Well, that's all for this week. As nothing really happened, I don't have any pictures, so I apologize for that.

13 November 2017

Yay! We got in a bike crash! It was very fun, and I got to ride in an ambulance for the first time! What happened is that we were going down a hill when it was really dark, and it had been raining all day. My companion saw a pile of leaves that covered the entire sidewalk and thought it would be fine to go through them. I was maybe 15-20 feet behind him, so I couldn't see it. He hit the leaves and started to slide, and I was right behind him. He went down first, hit the ground hard, and started to slide. I hit the ground right after him on my right side, rolled onto my feet and walked over to him. It was probably that roll that saved me, because when I got to him, he was laying on the ground with his head bleeding. And both his hands. And his ear. I started checking to see if he was okay, and two people showed up with some paper towels for his head. They started asking questions, and then we found out that he had lost a lot of his recent memory. While I was calling our mission nurse, they called an ambulance. The nurse showed up right before the ambulance did, and she fought them on taking him to the hospital, because she said it would be too expensive for the ambulance. They said they had to take him rather than her because he was confused and couldn't make his own choices. So, I got to ride in the ambulance with him. When we got to the hospital, they made me wait outside, so I found the mission nurse and sat with her and her husband. Eventually, we got to go in and see him. Elder Root (the mission nurse's husband) and I gave him a blessing. Shortly after that, he started to regain his memory. I had forgotten my camera, so not many pictures from it. Our mission president got a whole bunch of pictures when he got there, but he never sent them to us. When he was released, he had cuts on his hands, a bloody bald spot on his head, a really cut up ear, a cut shoulder, and a broken collarbone. My sum total of injuries from the exact same type of crash about a half second after his: A bruise on the inside of my left calf from my own shoe, a mid-sized cut on my right knee, and an 8 inch long bruise on my right hip. Not much for me. He has to wear a sling for a while, and might go home if our visit to the orthopedic surgeon says he needs surgery. He'd be slightly peeved, mostly because he only has 22 days left anyways. So I've been stuck in the apartment with him, working on the area book. I think I'm going to explode. Well, that's pretty much my big thing from the week. Until next time! ​

​Elder Rolph's head, 1 week from the accident



His helmet that he had borrowed just for that one day. We had forgotten ours as we dropped off the car, and the other missionaries let us just use theirs. Didn't even make it 24 hours before we had wrecked one of them.

​My pants after the accident. (Sorry mom, I didn't even make it out of my first area before I ruined some.)

​Here's the crazy part: this is Elder Rolph's normal helmet. If he'd been wearing this one, he probably wouldn't have made it nearly as well. (Note the safety pin holding it together.)

6 November 2017

Well, this last P Day was very interesting. It involved 2 Olaf pinatas, many smaller homemade pinatas, and far too much candy. Basically, we just had an activity where we beat the snot out of pinatas because it was Halloween and we could. One of my district leaders was wearing a kilt because you know, why not. Our attempts to blindfold people didn't work too well, and so we decided to just go with wearing a shark head backwards. Again, because why not. Everyone ended up with way too much candy, and I have Olaf's head on my desk. We used medieval flails on Olaf because the DL with a kilt had some randomly. As well as a short sword and multiple knives. He's a strange man. Later, we all played a game called Werewolf. Kind of like mafia, but more complex and with werewolves instead on a mob. This is us trying out the blindfold on a front facing shark head. (Didn't work)
Aftermath of a single Olaf pinata
Middle of a werewolf game

In the actual week, nothing too terribly exciting happened. Well, except for one door contact. I was on exchanges with my non-kilted DL(Who is also just English speaking, so I got to do a ton of Spanish work on my own.) and we were knocking some apartments. We get to one door, and as soon as we knock, it swings open. There's just a man standing there with a huge knife and a crazy look in his eyes. Before we can say anything, he says with much enthusiasm, "I'm making spaghetti!!" We said that was great and we were missionaries of the church before he yells again, "I'm busy, I'm making spaghetti!!" Every time he said he was making spaghetti, he shook the knife to emphasize it. I don't know why, but that was the funniest door contact I've ever had. When we walked away, we couldn't stop laughing. Aside from that, our week was pretty uneventful. Just my trainer getting super trunky as he's been doing something called "My Plan," which everyone says is designed to make you as trunky as possible. Basically, it's you making a plan for after you get home, and it involves you signing up for Institute and college, making plans for your career, where you want to be in 5 years, and (my favorite) dating plans. It's so hard for him to focus after doing it so I end up doing most of the work for the rest of the day. It's really been helping my Spanish. Unfortunately, we've been having some trouble with our investigators. Our most progressing one just dropped us, and we haven't been able to get in contact with our one with a baptismal date. We think he's avoiding our calls and not answering the door when we're there, but we aren't for sure. We'll keep trying with him. On the plus side, we have another who is reading in the Book of Mormon every day and progressing pretty well. He's already been taught a lot by other missionaries, but then he moved. The big problem with him is that he needs to get married, but we're working with him. We had a lesson with him last night and it went pretty well. His girlfriend (a less active member who recently reactivated herself) made us pupusas(I have no idea if I'm spelling that right), and they were delicious. I always find it funny how people here get more upset if you don't eat all of the food in their house. We had someone get mad at us before because we "only" ate 5 pupusas each. Hopefully I don't get too fat out here. 

I think that's all for my week, but I shall be back in another with some hopefully more exciting news. ​

31 October 2017

Well, I'm going to start off with an apology: Yes, I did forget that our PDay got switched to Tuesday and so no one got warned I wouldn't email yesterday. With that, it made yesterday really weird. We woke up still half expecting it to be P Day and my companion was super sad about it the whole day. It ended up being even stranger after we had a door conversation with someone who still believes in the Egyptian gods and was trying to put down the Book of Mormon and the Bible as just "bedtime stories already in the Book of the Dead." We didn't really know what to say, so we invited him to have the English elders come over and teach him more of the Book of Mormon. He declined, saying that it was a man-made religion. That night we also had both of our appointments not be there, so that was fun.

On Saturday, our ward combined with one of the English wards to have a trunk or treat. It was a lot of fun, and we were able to go because one of our investigators showed up. They had the missionaries judge the costumes, and we declared the winners to be an older couple who dressed up as Carl and Ellie from Up. They were great, they had the grape soda buttons and everything. While talking to our investigator, we also got him to commit to go to church, and he did! After the trunk or treat, there were still hundreds of hot dogs left, and they filled up a pot with them and gave it to us and another companionship. So. Many. Hot dogs. We were splitting them up when we realized how ridiculous it looked and so we got a picture right as I was dropping one. 
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Sunday was pretty fun too. That was when our ward again combined with the English ward, but this time to have a primary program. So our poor bishop got to conduct the meeting in both Spanish and English, we sang all the hymns in both languages, and and the primary kids did some songs in Spanish as well. Our investigator really enjoyed it, and we got to teach him about prayer that night. It was super cool, and you could really feel the Spirit. Aside from that, not a whole lot happened this week. Randomly, I have a picture of my district and some super sketchy van that we found on the side of the road.

 

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23 October 2017

Well, we started off the week by going to the state fair. It was pretty awesome. Some of the rides were absolutely fantastic, and all of them spun. Like, all of them. I was going to try some fair food, but one of the rides just absolutely killed my stomach. It was one of those that spins you around super fast until you're stuck on the wall. I don't know why, but I couldn't do that one well. Which was really disappointing because right after that we saw deep-fried bacon wrapped Reeces. I'm pretty sure I found heaven. My favorite ride was one that would spin you around while slowly swinging you higher and higher until you were going all the way around it like everyone wants to do on swing sets. It was super crazy because it feels like you're upside down forever before the earth is coming back at you super fast and you're going to die. My companion didn't want to go on that one for whatever reason. And sorry, I forgot to get pictures of just about anything. I know, I know, I'm a terrible missionary. Speaking of which, we only found two Spanish people this week. We found around 7-8 referrals for the English missionaries, but we couldn't find any of our own this week. It was a little bit frustrating, but we're hoping this week is going to be better. Member work is super hard because no one gives any referrals. We don't know why, but we're going to try to kick them into high gear. Maybe we'll get a referral or two. This first transfer has gone by so fast! I don't want it to go this quick! I know Mom is reading this and sitting there thinking that it's not going nearly quick enough, but it's too much for me. Oh yeah, we also moved apartments. The one we'd been using the mission had for 7 years and it wasn't doing to well. So we just got to move into a far nicer and newly renovated apartment that is absolutely fantastic. It's maybe 400 feet down the road and in the same complex, but everything is so much newer and it actually all works! It's a miracle! Anyways, I think that's all of my news for the week! Have a good one everyone! This is weird person that I really like weird Elder (those are the exact words he told me to put under this.)



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Also, we just had a whipped cream challenge and I did it. So here's the video. ​

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16 October 2017

Ah, nothing quite like making a week sound so much more fun than it really ended up being in the title. That isn't to say that we didn't have our own share of adventures though. First off, we actually have people consistently keeping return appointments and reading out of the Book of Mormon! It took 5 weeks, but we finally have people to teach. One of them, Benjamin, even accepted a baptismal invitation! The other two we have are more hesitant about baptism, but are still progressing and interested in learning more. I don't know what made the difference exactly, but we've been working more effectively this week. It's been pretty great.

In less spiritual matters, it's been really crazy.  On Wednesday we were on transfers so I was actually driving, which is unusual for me. Even more unusual was the insane rain. It was so bad, we couldn't see much of the road, let alone the lines. It was really bad, and I'll try to send some videos of it that my exchange companion took. The roads were flooding, and it was the worst weather I've ever had to drive in. It was pretty crazy but still fun. I don't think I went more than half the speed limit that whole time it was raining super hard. We got to some intersection at the bottom of the hill that we thought might just kill the car to go through it until another car pulled it off instead of just bailing out over the median. Also, the next night, Thursday night our fire alarm decided that it didn't want to let us sleep and so it went off at 10:30. It then turned off a few minutes later, so we called the housing coordinator and asked him what to do. He said if it went off again, we should go outside and call the fire department. It did, and so we did. Nothing like two trucks coming in with lights and sirens late at night. To be fair, they turned off their sirens when they got into our apartment complex. A couple of firefighters hopped out and asked us what the problem was, and so we explained it. We led them back to our apartment to show them the detector, and that was when Elder Rolph got this picture of one of the trucks.

 

They came out a few minutes later saying it was just a faulty detector and we would be fine. They left, and we called our housing coordinator to explain. After that, it was about 11:30 and so we finally got to go to bed. So yeah, that's all of my exciting stuff for the week. Have a good one everybody! 

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​Sorry that these are a bit crazy, it was a tense night.

9 October 2017

Holy cow this week has been tiring, but good. Just yesterday we stopped by a potential without setting an appointment, and he was actually there instead of hiding from us! Not only that, but he was super receptive and we got our first baptismal date and he said he'll read the Book of Mormon. It's still a little hard to understand everything that they say because they always talk so fast, but I'm getting much better. Talking is harder, but I'm still working on it. I've gone from not being able to talk at all to being able to hold conversations, understand jokes, and keep up with almost everything in only ten weeks. It's super crazy how much the Lord can help us if we let him. We also met a young guy who is super open to learning more and wants a Book of Mormon, but his dad doesn't believe in what we teach at all and so it might get a little hard to keep him going. We'll keep trying though! Maybe his dad will open up more as we teach his son. Other than that it's still mostly been a lot of tracting. I got to go on exchanges with my MTC companion Wednesday, which was pretty cool. Even more so because our trainers were also MTC companions. Go figure. And yesterday a member showed up to priesthood meeting with a huge bag of ties and said that if they weren't all taken, they'd get thrown away. And so now I have a lot of ties. 
​This is maybe half of them. The weirdest part was that almost of them were purple, so now I have tons of purple ties. We also have a random spider who has a web right next to our apartment who we've been feeding random bugs to. It helps keep them out of our apartment. Also, I caught a frog in a jar. It sounds a lot harder than it really was, I just put the jar in front of him and then he hopped in. It was pretty cool, but I let him go like two minutes later and forgot to take a picture. Going back to how exhausting this week has been, it's been super hard to just get up in the mornings. We've managed it, but this is the result half the time: 
​Yeah. It's not pretty. This was during companion study when they make us watch tons of training videos because I'm a greenie. Elder Rolph also is insisting on training me to be a district leader because he's saying I'll be training and a district leader right after he's gone. I hope not, I don't feel ready for either of those at all. Especially training. I'm still trying to figure out what on earth I'm doing. Also, he's saying that he fell asleep because he was sick, but I don't think so. He's now saying that I'm lying, but whatever. anyways, that's all of the news for this week, have a good one and write me back!

Who asked how my Spanish is going? I can do a lot of the talking, but I don't like talking to new people very much so that's a bit of a struggle. I'm definitely getting a lot better with it though. With the band, yeah it gets pretty loud. Especially if you're by the drumline. Also, I find it rather surprising that Matt even knows what a soprano sax is. Do you know how he heard about it?

I tried to run a 5K today, but only made it to two miles. It's just so boring only running on a treadmill, and my companion doesn't like to run nearly as much as I do. Still, I got my mile time down to a 5:45, so that's good. It's really hard to do, but I'd say I'm getting much more in shape. It's been helping me just make it through the days without feeling like I'm dying by the end. We have a zone activity next week that I forgot to mention, we're going to the state fair. It looks like fun, but I'm having some trouble convincing Elder Rolph to go on the really big and scary stuff. He's opening up to the idea. 

Have fun in Louisiana! Hopefully the house will stay standing with only Tom in charge! And I've now sent two emails, so I hope together they're long enough!

2 October 2017

Well this is being weird and won't let me put a subject in, so sorry. It's been a pretty slow week in the work, but Conference was awesome! There were so many great talks, but I really loved Elder Holland's on how we don't have to be perfect, just doing our very best, and Elder Callister's because of his awesome defence of the Book of Mormon. Workwise, this week has just been a lot of tracting. So far, we've had one person keep their appointments, and no one has showed up to church or conference. We're going to keep trying though! A few days ago we got lost on a greenway and couldn't figure out how to get to where we were supposed to, but we at least ended up by an awesome lake. This state is super picturesque, but is really hot and humid. This week was in the 90's for most of it. And humid. I thought I was dying, but then it cooled down into the 60's. I don't understand this weather. And we saw some deer out our apartment's window! I went out and got a picture, but they didn't let me get within 20 feet. I did my best though. Elder Rolph and I are planning on trying some new spots to tract at soon, so we're hoping for more success there. We also found this apartment complex that has tons of Hispanics, so we're going back to there too. Well, here's hoping we can do better!

This is one of the Elders in our district riding a bike on a car

Here's the lost lake

And some deer pictures


​

25 September 2017

My Spanish is improving as always, and we do speak it quite a bit. We find more Hispanics than white people out here, which I thought was interesting. We've been working hard and finding a lot of English speakers who are willing to hear the gospel, which is a little frustrating. We're not allowed to teach them beyond the doorstep and then we turn them over to the English speaking elders. So far, we've found 14 and 2 of them have said that they want a Book of Mormon. We haven't found anyone Spanish speaking who's that interested yet, but we're trying. Almost all of them seem to be big Bible thumpers who are interested in their church and not much else. We have a lot of potentials, but no one will return our calls, answer their doors, or be there for appointments. So far we've had one lesson, and it was with a part member family. Oh well, we'll keep on trying. We met someone yesterday who I'm hoping will let us meet with them. This is where the Christmas lights come in. So, last night we'd been knocking for a few hours and had only found two more English referrals. We were about to give up and go home (We had just finished knocking an entire apartment complex and had ten minutes before we needed to go home) but we decided to find some houses and knock. We turned down a street and my companion said that if anything stuck out, we would stop for it. About a second later, we turned the corner and found a big house covered in flashing Christmas lights. If that wasn't a sign, I don't know what is. We knocked on their door, but they were English and didn't want to hear it. They did, however, say that about two blocks down there were some people who spoke Spanish. So we walked to where we though they were talking about, and the first door we knocked on was an entire family of Hispanics who were willing to hear the Gospel. It was pretty cool, but the dad will be busy for a while so we'll call to schedule something with them later. Fingers crossed! I think that's all the big stuff for this week, so bye until next!

18 September 2017

Well, it's my first official week in field. Here in Raleigh (And sorry mom, everyone here pronounces it the same way as Matt does) it's crazy humid all the time and I'm usually dripping in an hour. It's a part time car mission, but we don't get it until this week, so we've been biking, using the buses, and walking. We've only used the bus once so far, and it was really hard to figure it out at first. We missed one by like five minutes, and another wasn't coming for an hour. So we walked until we found a Wendy's were I could get some more water (I had already drained my bottle), walked out, and there was a bus heading in the right direction for us. So we ran and hopped on, took two more buses, then realized that we had no idea where the apartments we were trying to get to were. So we walked and knocked for a while and were picked up by a member for dinner. Speaking of dinner, we had dinner at a member's house with a recent convert, Jovany. He's super cool and 20, and wants to serve a mission. He's from Mexico, and we had a serrano pepper eating contest. I won by eating most of a pretty big one and going the required two minutes without eating or drinking anything. It hurt really bad, but I just sat there and smiled to make him think I wasn't struggling with it. I think that's what got him over the edge of defeat. I was very proud of myself. The previous Elders in our area didn't leave us with any investigators, so we've been trying to do a lot of finding this week. We've got a few now, one of them being a crazy drunk who speaks Spanish really fast but wants to change his life. We invited him to church, but he didn't show. We'll try to visit him again. Also, we have the boyfriend of a member who we started teaching, but he only seems to want to do it for her. We'll see how it goes, but we don't expect too much. And now, because I know you've been dying to know, here's my lovely travel story. So, we woke up at two to get ready and be at Reception at 3 (I was travel leader and so had to be the first one there). I tried to print off my boarding pass, but it said that I had to do it at the airport due to federal regulations. I was literally the only missionary to get that message. Everyone else did just fine. Anyways, everyone showed up, weighed their luggage for the last time, and we loaded up the bus to leave at four. By the way, there is an Hermana who is going the the Indianapolis mission. If you see an Hermana Hendricks somehow (she is Spanish speaking) tell her Elder Battraw says hi. So we got to the airport at about five and went through to check our luggage, where I was able to print my boarding pass. I was also the only missionary who had to pay for their luggage. After that, we went through security where I was randomly selected and they tested all of my stuff for drugs. Then there was an hour long wait to board our plane, which was scheduled to leave at 7:22. There were some seating issues that had to figured out with some irate passengers, and so we didn't end up leaving until 7:45. The flight was pretty uneventful up until about a half hour before we got to Atlanta. Then, we had super bad turbulence and got to circle the airport for another half hour because of the hurricane. So when we made our landing attempt (yes, attempt) we got within probably 30-40 feet of the runway with the entire plane shaking really badly when we feel the pilot just punch it. We flew for about ten minutes (still turbulent) before he got on the intercom and explained they couldn't land because of the 70 mile per hour crosswinds. The limit for a landing is 33. He also said that if we had made it just five minutes before we could have landed. So, we got diverted to Memphis, another hour away. Upon landing uneventfully, we were stuck on the plane for another 45 minutes while Memphis scrambled to prepare for international arrivals. Once we got off, we got to go through customs without electronics because their system was down, so we had to use paper. On the plane there, forms were handed out to all the non-residents, saying that U.S. residents didn't need to fill them out. Upon getting to the front of the line, we were handed a form to fill out and told to go to the back of the line. We got through customs finally at about 4:15 and got to wander the Memphis airport. We checked in with Delta to find out when our flight was going to leave and were told that they had no idea, all the flights to and from Atlanta were grounded and they didn't know when they were going to be able to fly again. We were also told that we weren't getting meal vouchers. Our last food had been a snack on the plane and as we were leaving the MTC at four. So we wandered the airport and found a Moe's Southwest Grill and I got a burrito. Finally, at about seven o'clock we heard over the intercom that our flight was about to start boarding, and so we got on. We left and got to Atlanta at about 8:30, then asked when our flight to Raleigh was. We were told that it was in twenty minutes. So we got to take the train across the busiest (and I think largest) airport in the world to catch our next flight. In twenty minutes. We got there and boarded the lovely 757 they had ready for us. It was a replacement plane, and was way bigger than it needed to be for the number of passengers we had. It was pretty great, and ended up being the smoothest flight I've ever taken after the first five minutes. I took a fantastic hour long nap and woke up as we were landing. We walked in and were quickly greeted by the mission president and his wife. They had just realized they didn't bring a car big enough for the three new missionaries and our luggage, but it turned out to not be a problem because somewhere along the line, our luggage was lost, and one of the Elders didn't bring any extra clothes. So we got to the house at about 11 and had some dinner and our interviews, and got to bed at 12:30. So yeah, not quite as easy as we though it was going to be. We got to meet our companions the next day and got our luggage. So yeah, my new companion is Elder Rolph and he seems pretty cool. He's easy to work with and has been helping with my Spanish. Also, thanks so much for the care package! It was great, and we both enjoyed it. We got my bike and everything without a problem and got the apartment and started knocking that day. So yeah, there's my week. (Is this long enough, mom?)
 
This is the last picture of my district (and one of my teachers). From left to right, Hermana Smith, Hermana Compton, Elder Hull, me, Elder Benson, Elder Johnson, Elder Kluger, Hermano Trejo, Elder Perkes, Elder Rasmussen, Hermana Meyer, and Hermana Reed.
   
I found an interesting picture in the Memphis airport

And finally Elder Rolph, my new companion.

Earthquake

If you heard about the earthquake in Mexico, don't worry, I'm fine. If you didn't, surprise! It was pretty far south of here, but we still felt it. Apparently, it was an 8.4. Bit of a big one. My teacher told us that 15 people died, but they were pretty far from here. Nothing to worry about in the CCM, I didn't even wake up. And there were sirens. Slept through it all. We were told to email you guys because supposedly you might be worried. That's all, talk again Wednesday!

6 September 2017

It's been pretty fun this week. Yes, I found Elder Bischoff this morning and he's going to give me the package after lunch. Thanks for sending it! All he said was that there was jerky, and that is exactly what I asked for! And yes, we did get a picture. After lunch we're going to try to get one in front of the sign, but Elder Bryan had a temple trip so we didn't have time this morning. Tell David that I expect him to be in tip-top shape by the time I get back. I want to go on runs together! My companion has been pushing me really hard physically, and I'm about an hour and a half before my attempt to quadruple the furthest distance I ran pre-mission. This 10K is probably going to hurt. Tom told me about those classes, and he seems to be having a lot more fun with them than your students are.

For my birthday, my district decided that I needed to be sung to, and so they sang to me over breakfast. Some of the Hermanas got me doughnuts in the morning, and then after lunch everyone came up and gave me stuff they bought in the Tienda. They sell root beer apparently, which is pretty awesome. 

I found out that I've been called as a travel leader, which basically means that I'm in charge of the luggage for myself and three other missionaries who are on the same flight out of here. Two are going to Raleigh with me, and the other (Hermana Hendricks, if you ever randomly see her) is going to the Indianapolis mission! This calling would probably be easier if I had absolutely any idea what it entailed aside from the luggage, but they were pretty vague about all that. 

We've been a part of the "mixed" program which means that I had a Latino companion as well. We had our last time teaching together this week before Elder Ronderos left the CCM. He was a cool guy who said he preferred British accents because he watched a lot of Doctor Who. 

My Spanish is getting better every week, and I finally got over a grammar concept that's been keeping me back for a while. I get a lot of compliments on my Spanish now, which I guess is a good sign. One night, our culdesac (or however you spell that) flooded knee deep, which was pretty cool. I don't have any pictures, sorry. I think that's about it for this week, and the next time I email you it will be from Raleigh! ​
​Two of these pictures are the closet of one of the elders in my room whose closet door mysteriously went missing. No, surprisingly, it wasn't me who did it. And he got a replacement door. (The little one)​
​Also, we apparently all committed to Eastern Kentucky University this week. One of the elders in our district has a dad that works there, so we all got shirts and pens.​
​And here is Elder Ronderos right after we finished teaching for the last time and got our pretend investigator to commit to baptism.

30 August 2017

Maybe I need to try emailing later, because the only email I have from you this week is one that would result in my death if I tried to have that be the only one I sent you this week. Anyways, it's been a pretty standard week. I finally really got preterit vs. imperfect down, and that took me forever. I'm not a very big fan of Spanish grammar. Conjugations are all over, and almost all of the really common verbs are irregular. This language is going to be the death of me. Also, I found out how the guys in my district have been getting stuff from their families. Apparently, there's some link or path on the CCM (MTC) website where you can select items to send to your missionary, and the way it works is that they send out someone who works here to buy all the stuff and bring it back. If you decide to do that, beef jerky. That's pretty much all I want. Lots of beef jerky. Anyways, we had Christmas again this week. I gave my secret Santa person a roll of cough drops that look like they might be candy, and got a pen that has a weird knit covering. (Yes, the gifts are supposed to be stupid.) We also had a surprise visit from Santa himself! ​
​I don't know how they got the hairnets, and I'm not so sure I want to know how we got the fake fire. It's still sitting in our living room. We got some new people in our house this week because all of our three week program people left, and we got to meet them. Their first night here was our party, so I think they're a little scared of our district. We've only got one more left in here, so we have to make it count. I'm super happy that we're almost done, there's only so many times you can teach your teacher and make it feel like an investigator for real. Speaking of real investigators, we had our first TRC this week! I think it stands for Teaching Resource Center.  Basically, a whole bunch of volunteers come in from around here and they just are themselves. It can be investigators or members or less actives. We taught two lessons in that about prayer, and it was super cool. The first one was a grandma and her granddaughter, and that one was really nice. Our second lesson was the less active mother of said granddaughter and her other kid. You could really feel the spirit, and it felt a lot more real than trying to teach Hermano Trejo or Gayosso (my teachers). I'm just impressed that people would volunteer to come in and be taught in really, really bad Spanish stuff they probably already know. Oh well, it really helps us.

We did have something really sad this week. One of our guys went home to take care of some stuff. He's a really good guy and we're all proud of him for having the courage to do it, but it's sad all the same. He said he wants to come back out and serve as soon as he can. He broke his watch by dropping it earlier this week, and so I gave him mine (sorry mom) with a really cheesy line: "This is so you know when to return to the field." I know, it's bad, but it's all I had. He seemed really happy with it anyway. I think he was mostly just happy that he had the support of his district. That's all for this week, so I'll write again later! 

(And mom, I want some news from home!) 

I can check tomorrow, but I can't write back. And this is my last opportunity to write today. And in random news, thanks to my companion pushing me really hard, I can run here! I used to run out of breath really fast because this is 10-11 times the elevation of Fishers, but I did my first 5K today! I don't know the time because neither of us have a watch, but I did pretty well. You can tell Uncle Michael that when I get back I can run them with him! (Oh yeah, and we're trying for a 10K next pday because I didn't feel like this was too hard. We'll see how it goes.) Bye until next week!

23 August 2017

Well, time to apologize in advance. I don't have any pictures this week. We aren't allowed to take pictures on any day that isn't our P-Day. It's only 8:30 here, so we didn't have anything particularly picturesque happen this morning. We did play a little basketball in our regular proselyting clothes before breakfast though. Yeah, I have seen Elder Bryan around. I just talked to him at breakfast this morning, and we got a picture. You'll probably have to get that from Sister Bryan though, because I left my camera back at the house and we didn't want to wait to get it. Sorry. I'm trying to stay away from things like sugary cereal and actually eat healthy because my companion and I are running almost every day and doing weights too. We both have a goal of being able to do 100 consecutive push ups with no breaks. As of day one of trying, he's only at 31 and I'm at 34. Not very good, but we'll work on it. As for the eclipse, we had two people come into our classroom and say from the hours of 11-2, don't look at the sun. Don't try at all to see the eclipse. So we didn't. I didn't notice it even get darker at all, so it probably wan't even that dramatic here. And yes, the Spanish is much better. On the first day I saw Elder Bryan, I was able to correct his Spanish. He also keeps on trying to call me Sam, which I find hard to even respond to now. He yelled it this morning and I didn't even turn until he yelled Elder Battraw. Funny side note: only one person here has gotten my name right on the first try, and the teachers (all natives) have trouble saying it at all. I can always tell when they're trying to read my name because they squint and turn the paper a little bit. Really not too different from the U.S. My companion and I try to speak it out of class, but there's still a lot of words we don't know. As for the packages, it depends. One Elder in my district said his mom sent him a package that never arrived, but one of my roommates has gotten one each week. One of the Mexican Elders told me that if you want your stuff to stay safe when being sent, draw a picture of the virgin Mary on it and they'll leave it alone. It might be better to wait, but the clothes situation is getting a little rough. Speaking of clothes, why would I rinse them in the sink? Does that prevent them getting really bad? Anyways, we have one towel hook in our room and four people trying to use it. All of the chairs already have towels hanging off of them. Yesterday we started our mixed group, where I got assigned a Latino elder, Elder Roderno. He seems like a pretty cool guy. We had 40 minutes to get to know each other and prepare a lesson, and it seemed to go pretty well. I have the first vision memorized in Spanish, so I got to do that at least. I'm hoping that you're still teaching so I can get that same benefit too! Well, we'll see how it goes.

Love, 

Elder Battraw part III

I just realized I completely forgot to explain why my last email was titled, "Christmas." Well, my district's first two pdays were completely taken up with temple trips (not a bad thing) and so this first one that we had the whole day was exciting. So we called it Christmas and had a secret Santa gift exchange last night. I gave my person a bag of their favorite suckers from la tienda, and I got a nail file from my guy. There was a twenty peso limit (about $1.20) so there wan't much that you could get your person. It was awesome. Anyways, my hour is up, so time to sign off!

16 Aug. 2017

Me español es muy mejor de semana uno, pero necesito mas trabajo antes estoy listo. (You can have David try to translate that, I´m sure I made a mistake in there somewhere.) That´s hilarious that you had to be the one to drive Matt to school after all those warnings. Speaking of driving, how is Tom getting along without me driving him all over? Is he any closer to a licence? Tell David good luck with the route from me! I haven't been able to find Zach yet, but he's one missionary among 700. This week we had two really cool devotionals from M. Russel Ballard and Neil L. Anderson, but they were both streamed from the Provo MTC. Elder Ballard spoke on locking our hearts against any romantic temptations, and one of the Latino elders that I'm friends with came into my room afterward and said, "The prophet spoke to me tonight!" (He'd been talking about one Hermana who he liked and was interested in.) So there was definitely some real inspiration there. The classes are hard, but not too crazy. At first I couldn't understand them at all because they were all in Spanish, but I don't even really have to try to keep up anymore. The hard part now are the progressing investigator lessons. Our teachers pretend to be investigators, and they don't let up on the speed or complexity of their Spanish. I've had to say "Otra vez, por favor." more than once. One of the sisters from my district (Hermana Compton) walked up to me yesterday and asked how I'd managed to learn so much Spanish so fast. I told her flashcards and the spirit. Speaking of Hna. Compton, she's from Hawaii! Someplace that starts with an L, I think. I mentioned my step dad was Hawaiian too, and now she wants to know where David is from. I also learned that though our half court basketball isn't supposed to be competitive, it still  is really rough. I got a blood blister on my finger after getting knocked down in a game, as well as bruising most of my right side and hitting one of my toes pretty hard. Elder Hull is trying to run me into the ground by making me run with him, and it's killing me. My shins hurt a lot now, and it's way harder to breathe at eleven times the altitude of Fishers. Oh yeah, and one of my roomates' IPod was stolen from our room after the people came with new sheets, so we don't have any more music. The MTC security has been investigating, but they haven't had any luck so far. And I do apologize about this not being that long or newsy, just not much that is super newsworthy has happened. Every minute of most of our days is planned out for us and most of that is classes.