2 July 2018

So, the city I'm in is called Knightdale, and has the nickname of "The Dale." No one is entirely sure why. I'm staying here for our weird 7 week long transfer. Though that is because of the first piece of big news.

So, the biggest news for this week is that we officially have our new mission president! He is President Matthew Holland, and yes, he is the son of Jeffrey R. Holland. We still have yet to meet him, but we're going to have a special welcome Zone Conference on Wednesday to meet him. We're all super excited, but a little sad to see President and Sister James go. I'll miss them! Things around here are probably going to be pretty different. Unlike President James, the Hollands have their family out with them. (The James' kids had all grown up and moved out already.) So that means that we likely won't be able to see them as much as President James, and that the assistants are going to have a much harder job. They're going to have to shoulder all of the responsibilities that President Holland can't because of spending time with his kids. One of our assistants, Elder Hunsaker, already looks stressed enough. He extended for a transfer to make the transition smoother for the Hollands, but he already was just stretched to the limit. Apparently they have some nights where they don't sleep at all, just keep on working and dealing with all of the problems out here. So, whenever anyone asks if I would want to be assistant, the answer is no. Definitely not. No way. I already have issues with feeling like I get enough sleep as it is. I'm just about always tired out here, and a nap sounds really good all the time. 

Anyways, we had a pretty cool week in terms of people who we got to teach. We had a return appointment with someone named Luz, but she wasn't there. Instead, we found her daughter and got to have a pretty cool talk with her. She later told us that she whenever anyone from a church comes to their door, she just says that she's atheist and not interested. However, she let us talk and invited us to come back again. So that was pretty cool. Her mom wasn't there again, but we got to talk to her and her little brother outside. We taught them the Restoration, and they said that every other church was boring, but we made it interesting. We kind of wanted to say, "It's not that we make it interesting, it's just an interesting message! We have the same church that Jesus Christ established on the earth again! Yeah it's interesting!" They said that they would go to church, but their mom didn't let them. We're trying to get in contact with their mom again  so we can teach her and explain why it is that we want to teach and help her kids. And hopefully bring her along, too. One more cool thing. We ran into a guy who was selling things door to door, and it turns out that he and Elder Hull (my comp) have a mutual friend in Texas! Crazy, right? Anyways, that's the week for me.