24 September 2018

For right now, no big news and I might not get to send a full length one. Basically, we had a cool zone conference highlighting the miracles around the hurricane, and got some training for service. Also, they got us some new service clothes and said we can start going around to help out. It'll be great! 

17 September 2018

So, we got hit with a hurricane this week. That was interesting. It was supposed to be a category 4, nearly a 5. Instead, it slowed down before making landfall (about 35 miles from my apartment) and was only a category 2. The really crazy thing is the path that it took. It was originally headed straight for Raleigh, but then curved around it, going into South Carolina and then going up into Ohio and that area. Huge miracle there. But what happened woth getting evacuated is interesting. On Tuesday we got a call that we were evacuating to Fayetteville in an hour, and so we took off. We got there and were picked up by a member named Brother Mckoy. He was super awesome, and we filled our time there with reading, playing clarinet and playing foosball. That was pretty fun. We had power the whole day we were there. The next day, (Wednesday) we got a call to leave for Raleigh in 40 minutes. We were caught off guard and so we had to shove everything in our bags and leave again. After we got to Raleigh, we got picked up by a member family called the Woodalls. They were a ton of fun to talk to. We also got permission to do more things from the mission president, including watching family friendly movies and the news. So we got to watch Coco, which was a way better movie than I thought it would be. It might just be that I haven't seen any movies in a year, though. But we spent 5 days with them. It was mostly a lot of watching the news, talking, and reading. I also got some more good cooking experience. We don't have a lot of news on how Wallace is doing, but we know there is a ton of flooding. Our apartment is probably fine. We might be here for a week or two months. No specifics here. We might be able to go out and help starting next week, but everything is still up in the air. Everyone we know is still pretty fine. Yesterday they told us to go to the stake center and now we're going to be with other missionaries working. Not too much is known, but I'll have more info.

15 September 2018

Hi mom, we were given permission to email home and tell our parents that we are alright. I'm in Raleigh(well, close to it anyways), and we've only seen some rain and heavy winds. We're fine, and the storm is skirting around us for the most part. I'll be able to talk more Monday. Bye!

10 September 2018

This week is going to be a little hectic, or it could just end up with us sitting around for a while. A Category 3-4 hurricane is coming into North Carolina on Thursday or Friday, so we'll probably get moved further inland. I'm one of the closest to the ocean, which will make life a little more interesting. We have a safe house with one of the members in the area, but they said if it's a 4 they're leaving the area as well. We got told that our entire zone (the whole Wilmington area of missionaries) is likely getting pulled into Fayetteville to sit out the storm. Everyone these past few days has been getting ready for (and are very focused on) Hurricane Florence coming in. It's really crazy how much it has been talked about. The stake presidency is having nightly meetings about it and what they're going to be doing. I'm willing to bet that we're going to end up just doing clean up for a little while as well.

For the news around here of this week, there isn't too much to report. We didn't get to meet up with J at all still, he's been having a really rough time with his health. We're hoping that he gets better. William has been doing well, but he hasn't been reading in the Book of Mormon. We've been helping him out around his house though, and apparently he's very grateful. He offered us each a few hundred dollars for everything that we've been doing, which we turned down. We kept on trying to explain that we only do this for free and because we want to help people, as well as having a rule that we can't accept money from people while we're on our missions. That only made him determined to track us down after our missions and pay us then. He's a determined man. We also recently got to have dinner with the Branch President where he talked to us about bee keeping, which he does as a hobby and makes a lot of his own honey. Which is delicious. Oh yeah, and we had some car troubles too. I don't know what it is, but they seem to have issues around me. In Raeford, I got flats all the time. Here, the touchscreen in our Malibu died. So we got to spend about 4 hours between two days at a Chevy dealership as they fixed it for us. That was interesting. What was really cool was getting to be right up next to my dream car, a 2017 Chevy Corvette Grand Sport that they had in the showroom. 

Honestly, I think that's about it for this week. Not too much has been going on, but I can almost guarantee that next week will be a lot more interesting. Nothing like a hurricane to shake things up a little bit. 

4 September 2018

I don't have too much to report on this week, so it'll be brief. We did a lot of service, and that was pretty good. More yardwork and the like. On Sunday, we had a really cool thing, we had two people we're teaching come to church! William was taken by his less active cousin who we're trying to help out (he works like crazy in night shifts and doesn't want to lose sleep). J gets taken by another member, and he told us on Sunday that he read the entire Book of Mormon! In 2 1/2 weeks! We're so pumped for him! He wants to get baptized, but it's going to be a couple weeks more until he can because of a combination of stake conference and us not being able to meet with him very often. The member has to take him to the church to meet with us because his grandparents that he lives with don't like us. He's 22 so he doesn't need their permission, but we want them to stay on good terms. We really don't want J to get kicked out! We'll continue working with him bit by bit and see how he goes. Other than that, we don't really have anything much to report this week. Just another week as a missionary! It's going great though!