22 January 2018

Well, I have officially been transferred again. And I have another companion who has only been out as long as I have. So we're both still working on the Spanish out here. Thankfully, we're in a full Spanish branch so that we can learn a little bit faster. My new companion's name is Elder Clement, and he's a big guy who used to play football, and is planning on playing for Southern Virginia after his mission. (I think.) Anyways, he seems like a good guy and is easy to get along with. Our biggest issue is that the previous people in this area broke the phone (we were double transferred in) and so we've gone down to a flip phone. Do you know how hard it is to text an investigator on a flip phone? Well, we're converting to a technology mission so that'll be over soon at least. There wasn't too much to do for this first week except try to meet the old investigators and get to know the members and find out how much they've been worked with. On Wednesday we drove 40 minutes out to district meeting, had about the first half, and then got a text from the assistants telling everyone to cancel district meeting because of the snow. So we then canceled and drove the 40 minutes back to the apartment. We didn't get anything more than a little bit of rain. Oh North Carolina and your unpredictable weather patterns.
Friday was our best day. We got out and worked from 10 until 9 and found a whole bunch of great people. Two of them were teenagers who were actually really open to hearing our message. The weird thing I've seen out here is that it's usually the younger people who are really open to receiving you, even though the same group is also the ones who cause the most trouble. Teaching them will be interesting because we want to teach the whole family, but it's not uncommon that the kids don't like speaking Spanish and the adults can't speak anything but Spanish, so we have to come ready to teach in both languages. It just makes it a little more challenging, but also more fun at the same time. The hardest part is making sure that you're not neglecting the ones who speak Spanish because they are harder to communicate with, even  though we're only allowed to teach in Spanish out here. (In some areas it's part English part Spanish because they don't have any English teaching out there.) Then we ended up helping this old guy change his tire and push his car because it wouldn't start. He was really cool, and it turned out that he already knew some members, which is surprisingly rare out here. It's not uncommon to talk to multiple people in a row who've never even heard of the church before. What we weren't expecting was that changing his tire was only practice for the next day. 

We had another really big day planned and were really excited to go out and work, and so we got out and started knocking a trailer park. This one didn't have any Hispanics, so we moved on. Or tried to. When we got back to the car, the front right tire was flat, and we found a screw in it. So we called our Fleet Supervisor and she said to take it to Firestone because they fix flats for free for the mission or something. So we threw on the spare and took off to the nearest Firestone 15 miles away. When we got there, they said it'd probably be a fairly long wait. So we went to the mall and started store contacting there. Store contacting is really hard because if it looks like you're there to teach people, they'll kick you out. Still, we had a few good conversations. After about two hours we decided to check back on the car. They hadn't even started on it yet. We decided to wait there and sat down and waited. And waited. Eventually we got the news that they had gotten to the car and declared the tire irreparable. So they wanted to replace it. Which wouldn't have been too bad, but it required a call to the Fleet Supervisor. Little did we know that just 15 minutes earlier all of the senior missionaries in the office decided to go out to a movie. So we were trying to contact them for the next few hours before we finally got through. Still, the tires got replaced and we were on our way at about 4:30. (We got there at around 11:30) When we were halfway back, Firestone gave us a call and said that they'd forgotten to put the spare back in the trunk. So we drove right back and got that taken care of and then headed back out, had dinner, and mostly taught some of the members for the rest of the night. So that was interesting. At least it (probably) won't happen again this week! 

​My companion's bike after it randomly just stopped pedaling. We have no idea how it happened. ​

 

The situation out here is definitely interesting. It turns out that we live on the western edge of Fayetteville, but cover a huge area. As in (if you have a map) just north of the 295 in Fayetteville, our southern border is Marietta, as far east as Autryville, and as far west as Raeford/Silver City. (Different than Siler City.) To do this, we only have 1600 miles a month. With where the car was mile wise when we came in, we have about 43 miles a day. We've gone over the past three days because there are areas that are so far away that just going there and back take up everything we have and more. So today we're not going much of anywhere in order to save miles. In positive news, my packages have been located (or at least one of them) and they're waiting at the mission office. Hopefully I'll have them in just a few weeks.  I asked her not to ship them for fear of them getting lost again, so my Zone Leaders will pick them up when they go. I think they were planning on this Friday for some meeting or another, but I'm not sure. So ideally I'll have it by next Wednesday. (Our district meeting) And to answer the question about Fort Bragg, yes. Everyone. Almost. Out here, everyone either works on base, has someone who is stationed there, or has a friend who is. It's pretty crazy.