29 October 2018

This was our last week of going out and doing hurricane cleanup. We ended up with over 500 people on Sunday! That was so cool, and it ended up being the longest time I've ever seen it take to pass the sacrament. We didn't have nearly enough trays to carry all of the cups we needed, so we had to refill a few trays. It was a really spiritual sacrament meeting. The cleanup wasn't super intense from a workload point of view, we had a ton of teams and not that many work orders left. There was a trailer park that hadn't even been touched yet, but we came there with over 200 people and left only a few hours later having mucked out all 18 trailers. The owner was so grateful. We had two people that we are teaching there, too, Jay and Osvaldo. It was fun working with them. Because of the service equipment taking up all of the space, we weren't able to baptize Jay this weekend, but it is planned for this Saturday. We're so excited for him! It's taken two months or so and two hurricanes, but it's finally happening! That'll be the big news for this upcoming week. I've uploaded more pictures to the Hurricane Florence folder, and those are the last additions. However, we helped someone else that we're teaching clean up all the grass and branches from his yard, and then we had a bonfire. We taught him by the fire, and went home smelling very much like smoke. If you got within five feet of it, it was painfully hot. It was pretty cool. For whatever reason, they also threw a couple of old tires in there as well. Those burned way hot.

22 October 2018

This week we had a couple of good lessons, and one really cool experience alluded to in the title. One of our people, Jay, is still doing great. We taught him the Word of Wisdom and he accepted it with no problem. He didn't have a problem with doing any of the things in it except for a little bit of tea, and that is a miracle in of itself down here in the South. The problem is he can't drive himself, so we have to find a ride for church and things. All of this service keeps everyone tied up all day, though, and so no one can really give him one right now. We're trying to get it all figured out, and we'll see how it goes. He has a baptismal date for Saturday, and we might have to push it back by a week or two until things calm down enough. We also have started teaching another member's friend, and he is doing great. He has a ton of questions all the time, and he definitely felt the Spirit in the last lesson. We're going to teach him again this week, and he'll go out and serve with us this weekend again. We also got him to go to a devotional that President Oaks did for the Wilmington Stake on Saturday. That was really good. He talked a lot about the importance of keeping the Sabbath day holy and taking the sacrament. What I wasn't expecting was how funny it would be! It was a riot for half of it. His wife made fun of him for still getting up and cleaning out the gutters by himself and getting married so young. He poked right back, and he just kept it funny and spiritual the whole way through. But the coolest part of that day for me happened earlier that morning, where our tiny branch got a special visit from President Oaks! I got to talk to him personally, explain a little about what we did, and shake his hand! He's so humble and excited about everything. It was awesome being able to hear from him.

That about wraps up the week, I'm still uploading more pictures into that Google Drive folder I shared a few weeks back. Only one for the email today. Bye!

 

Yeah! I got to talk with President Oaks face to face and he asked me about myself and that sort of thing. It was way cool! He visited the little town of Wallace (pop. 4,000) because our tiny branch building (we don't even have a chapel, just a multipurpose room) and our 35ish active members are recognized as one of the most efficient in moving teams in and out and just general organization. We got about 400 people in and out in an hour, something that even the stake center EOC's struggle with. And they have 10 times the manpower, easily! Our members are just super good at getting everything organized and keeping things flowing smoothly.

 

15 October 2018

Now that I think about it, this week marked the third hurricane on my mission. While I was flying into NC, we had Hurricane Irene that we tried to land in at Atlanta(I think it was Irene), Hurricane Florence in September, and now Hurricane Matthew just a bit under a month later in October. And my mom probably thought going stateside for my mission was safe. It didn't do too much to us, but our mission president didn't allow us to leave the day it hit. Weird, right? This week we had a really cool experience, though. Our most progressing person had an issue of his granparents hating the church. They didn't want anything to do with it, and they didn't like that he was getting taught by us or going to church. He lives with them and can't drive, so that made it very difficult to teach then as they didn't want us to come to their house. But this week we found put that their house was damaged by Florence, so we got to go over in a weekend crew and clean it up. They were grateful and we had a good talk with his grandpa. We're hoping we'll be able to get to talk with them more and get their approval for his baptism! We've also gotten in contact with some of our people we were teaching before Florence and pick it up with them again. Another cool thing that happened this week was also service related. One of the members here invited her friend to come out with us and help the clean up efforts last week, and he came this week too, even being there for church. Even cooler, he accepted to take the lessons/discussions or whatever you want to call them. Afterwards, the member mentioned to us that she had been trying to get him to go to church and talk with the missionaries for a really long time but he'd never wanted to do it. Things are looking up here, and transfers aren't until November 6th, so I still have some time left here! Then again, I'll probably stay here for at least one more transfer anyways. That's all for now, bye!

8 October 2018

This has been one of the hardest weeks of my life, physically. The amount of physical work involved in preparing for the weekend work crews (that we also do) is crazy. For example, this week included unloading two full semi trucks of supplies, one of them entirely by hand, the other halfway, as well as me and my comp making an impromptou parking lot in the field next to the church for all of the overflow parking we'd need. We only had about 45 minutes to do it, but we did a fairly decent job. The only issue was that it was a little tight pulling in and out, but we fixed that. After all of the in week stuff, we went out on the weekend and did a few houses. In the process, I managed to hurt myself in our last house on Sunday. We were ripping up their hardwood floor when a chunk of it shot up and hit me in the eye, which was thankfully covered by my glasses. It was still moving fast enough to bend my glasses way out of shape and cut me a bit around them, where either the wood or my glasses hit me. I'm not entirely sure. Still, I love serving everyone around here. It doesn't matter how sore I am the next day or how tired I am, these people are so grateful for what we're doing. People have lost everything here, and they don't know how to continue. Then, the "yellow angels" show up and help them out. One of my favorite parts is leaving a house, because we always get to leave them with a food kit that will last them a few days, a cleaning kit, and a prayer. The amount of gratitude is incredible. I don't think I'll ever understand how much we affect their lives, but I know it's for the better. Even more, people are wanting to learn about our church and why we do what we do, so the missionary work after the cleanup will still keep us really busy!

I'll attach one picture here, the rest will just go into the same Google Drive folder I shared last week. 

1 October 2018

Well, I am no longer in Raleigh. We got back into Wallace late on Wednesday. Driving in, the damage didn't seem to be too bad. Some downed trees here and there, but nothing too dramatic. And then on Saturday we got to go and start the cleanup efforts in Wallace. Long story short, there's a lot of damage, but most of it isn't easily visible from a drive-by. At one point, we were knocking doors asking people if they needed help with cleanup in a trailer park that seemed undamaged. The water line on the inside went up to about 3 feet up the walls, and everything was soaked/half destroyed. Then, if drive down other streets where they've started cleaning, there are just piles of trash on both sides of the street going all the way down. Well, to start from the beginning of the stuff we started helping with, it goes back to Thursday. The day after we got back, President Roper(our branch president) called us and told us about a special branch council meeting that they wanted us to go to. We showed up and it was all about arranging things for the ~270 people who would be coming in to help out in this weekend, and just determining the supplies we would need, how we would get everyone in and out of our tiny parking lot, and how we would help out all of the people who might be staying overnight to camp at the church. On Friday there was another meeting, this one to help stage things and get them ready for distribution on Saturday. We had to go to Wilmington and Jacksonville to pick them up, and then unpack them again in Wallace. By the time we were done, there was a pretty good setup and we were almost ready to roll. Saturday morning we made some last minute preparations and then people started coming in. People from Raleigh 3rd ward were there, so that was cool. They were the ward that I've spent the most time in on my mission, and it was fun to see them again. We assigned everyone work orders and sent them all off. There are two main types of work orders that we deal with here, muck outs and tree removal, but muck outs are definitely the most common. (Muck outs are going in and ripping out carpet, drywall, damaged furniture, appliances, and the like.) We weren't assigned to any crew, so we were at the command center until a crew came in that afternoon and asked for some Spanish translators because they were going to a job who didn't speak English. So we got to go out and help out with a mixed muck out and tree removal job. What made that one interesting was a Baptist church that showed up a little bit in with a Bobcat and some more chainsaws. The Bobcat made getting rid of the tree limbs a lot easier, but we had to build it a little bridge thing so it could cross a ditch and get to the other downed trees. It worked out surprisingly well. The homeowners had already done a lot of work, so we got it done pretty quick. That was the end of that day. Sunday turned out to be just as interesting. We had a brief sacrament meeting outside and then we attached ourselves to a crew and took off. We started off working in a really wealthy house, and it was huge. The same crew had spent about five hours working in it the day before, and there was still a lot to do. We finally left after about another five hours, with 5 people to finish off the little bit that was left. It was pretty crazy, especially because they were throwing out things that were completely undamaged, including a personal library, massive shelving units, and tons of clothes. The flood waters hadn't even reached these things, but they still threw them out. The craziest part to us was literally the only thing on the first floor that they did want to save: the front door. This made sense to us when we found out that it cost $14,000. This, as well as the fact that it was in a super wealthy neighborhood and could likely pay for contractors to clean it out, really irritated people in our group. Basically, they wanted to help people who really needed the help and not spend so much time on people they said could pay for it themselves. Well, what could we do? That afternoon, we went out in a mini group off five people to begin a muck out. It was on some back roads, and took us a while to figure out how to get there because one of the roads was washed out completely and had tons of dead fish covering part of it. That smelled really bad. Eventually, we got to it. It was on stilts to keep it from flooding, but the water level in the river had risen 17 feet and flooded them out anyways. Their whole neighborhood was on stilts, but everyone had been flooded. The waterline in this house went up to about 3 1/2 feet on an already raised house, which made us wonder how bad it would have been if it wasn't on stilts. The water had receded out of the house only 3 days before, and the roads had only cleared off the day before. All of the carpeting was still completely soaked and weighed an incredible amount. We were taking our wheelbarrow in and out, or we wouldn't have been able to do it. We also pulled out their fridge, stove, and dishwasher, as well as a lot of miscellaneous furniature and drywall. We got a good start on their house, and a crew will be returning next week to finish it all off.

Unfortunately, in terms of the people we are teaching, I still don't have any news. We haven't been able to get in contact with them at all so far, and we've basically been turned into service missionaries for a while. Our branch president said that the weekends might be like this for up to a month or two, so we'll see how things go. That's all for now, but enjoy the pictures. I took a lot, so they'll be coming through a Google Drive link.