26 November 2018

Thanksgiving has passed, so I now guiltlessly can wear my Christmas ties again. They've been sitting on a shelf for 11 months now, but they're free again! I was just given my second one this week, actually. Very exciting.

Thanksgiving day wasn't too exciting for us out here. We started off the morning biking to a pulga that's pretty close and tried to talk to a few people there. We had a pretty nice conversation with someone, but she kept on trying to sell me a phone case. She was near the booth, and I didn't know it was her booth until I'd started talking to her. Oops. After a while of talking to people there (and this place was PACKED), we went to our Thanksgiving lunch. They had a super good ham that they had cooked, and I found out their secret later: they had cooked it in ginger ale. Apparently this is a common thing in the south. You either cook your ham in ginger ale or Pepsi. It sounds gross or weird, but it was super delicious. And super tender. Oh, now I'm hungry again... We stayed and visited with them for a little while, and one of their guests was a little interesting... He was from the Cary area, and he knows Brother Watkins! Mom, I have yet to serve there, but I've at least now been able to make indirect contact with them! He said he'd pass on that I'd said hi. And if they ask you if it's from me because the person can't remember my name, say yes. Of course, we did our missionary duty and tried to eat everything that they had. Now, this was only the first big meal of the day. We had a dinner that we'd been invited to as well. So, we went to them at five. Thankfully, the turkey took way longer than expected, and so our stomachs had some more time to prepare for round two. Of course, we ended up stuffing ourselves silly again and having a good time. Both families have been appropriately thanked, with much gratitude on our part. 

One of the best days of the week was when we got to sit down with Oscar and talk with him again. He's really humble and nice, and always invites us right in. We taught him about the importance of keeping the Sabbath Day holy and going to church. He's talked to missionaries before, and gone to the church a few times in the past. He said he wasn't a very religious person, but the church that he does like is ours. Then his wife spoke up and told him that if he liked a church, he should go to it! It was awesome. 

Of course, the real highlight of this week was a day that we spent knocking doors in a town called Burgaw. It was this neighborhood of maybe 125 houses that was the real interest there. While there, we got to talk to many people who "weren't interested," one person who said they'd go to church without knowing who we were or anything (and then didn't), another person who accused us of being a cult, and then an old couple with a ton of random stuff. From the top! 

Well, the people who weren't interested aren't exciting at all. Let's skip to random church guy. 

So we knocked his door, and he answered pretty quickly. After, of course, we heard some girl yell to someone, "It's two white guys!" and a voice respond, "No way, really?" We started talking with him for about 15 seconds before he asked where our church was. We told him and were writing down the address as he had a conversation in the background with his mom (?) where he asked her if she'd take him to church the next day. She seemed rather taken aback by this, but agreed. So he said that he'd go. He didn't, but it was an interesting contact anyways. 

Now there's cult lady. As she opened the door, the words were already coming out. "I'm not interested in what you're selling." The door was already shutting, and my companion quickly interjected that we weren't selling anything. Innocent enough, we get confused for salespeople fairly frequently. Clearly we were wrong, and she made sure to tell us. Yanking open the door again, with fire beginning to rise in her eyes, she set us straight. Yes, we were trying to sell her our cult. Oh darn, how do they always see right through us? Desperate to form a rebuttal after having been thrust into the light so abruptly, we regrouped and countered with the bold declaration that we were not a cult. But this kind of impertinence could not stand! Oh, no, not with her! Straightening up, she announced her status as a good Christian woman, denounced us as a cult once more, and slammed the door in a righteous fury! Her eyes had been absolutely blazing! How dare we claim to Christians? Well and truly stymied by this, we counseled together briefly and decided on our next course of action, which seemed obvious at the time: burn down her house. After a few moments of searching, our efforts were fruitless in procuring sufficiently flammable materials to accomplish our plan, and so we moved on. 

And the disclaimer: Some of this was slightly exaggerated for comic effect, and we had no intentions of causing her or her house any harm. I just thought that it sounded like a great way to end the story, rather than the much more realistic (and boring) walking down the steps to the next house. But that's pretty much all of the exciting stuff for the week, see you next time! 

 

 I feel like as these people were setting up their Christmas decorations, their thought process went something like, "How can we make this setup as dangerous as possible?"

 Just random murals you can find in Burgaw

 Just wanted to let you know mom, I only knock doors in the safest places in my areas! When there were sisters in Wallace, they totally weren't banned from knocking here!

 

19 November 2018

I'm only able to type this on a phone, so this one'll be short. But our big three things this week involved those parts of the title, in that order.

First is the fire. We were tracting down a street, and someone was burning a huge pile of branches, and we offered to help. He said no, and so we asked him how we could help. He said he was fine, but we'd already started picking up branches. He said he didn't want us to smell like smoke, but we assured him it was fine. And so we started helping, and he was grateful. We talked and worked for probably about an hour, and had a really good conversation. It turns out he has talked with missionaries before after a surgery that left one of his knees immovable for 4 months, and they had visited him everyday. He really appreciated what they did for him, and expressed gratitude for what we did too. He also dispensed some life advice, which I've taken into consideration. He also saved some woman's life once, dragging her from a burning car. He's a really cool guy. He invited us back, and said that we could come over sometime for dinner, and gave us his number. It'll be great. 

Number two was a lot of fun for Elder Martins. We were knocking doors when someone named Terry opened. He seemed a little strange at first, and invited us in. He gave us both a hug, and said that he loved us because God loved us. We had heard someone playing guitar, and we asked it had been him. He said yes, and showed us. It was pretty cool. Elder Martins said he played guitar too, and was given the chance to play as well. Terry (who asked us to call him "Pops") got his son who also played guitar, and he and Elder Martins played together for a few minutes. Then they got me to sing along, and we just had a good time for a little bit. Trying to introduce the gospel, we played/sang the only two church songs Elder Martins knows, When I Am Baptized and something else I'm forgetting right now. Anyways, we had a nice talk. He isn't very interested, because he's very firm in his own faith. He used to play in his own band, toured the country, but then had his moment of realization and turned his life around. He's really nice though, and told us to stop by whenever we needed a drink, a place to use the bathroom, get something to eat, or stay for a few nights. A very generous man.

And finally, the guns. We had set up a time to visit a less active member, and so we swung by his house. We got to meet him and his two young daughters. He's a lot of fun, and we ended up taking pictures with an inflatable poop emoji that they had. But we were talking about his job as a police officer, and he wanted to show us his guns. He walked over to a very large gun safe and opened it, and he had some cool stuff, including an M1 Garand that his father (or grandfather, I don't remember) had used. I ended up describing it as "family history with firearms," and that fit pretty well. He also invited us over for dinner whenever we were available, and pressed $20 on us to buy food. The hardest thing on my mission in refusing money from members. They seem to think it's their duty to pay us sometime. Back in my second area, I had a member threaten to shoot me if I didn't take his money. But yeah, that was the majority of what happened this week.

 

 

13 November 2018

The reason for this particular title is also part of why I'm emailing on Tuesday, we had Zone Conference yesterday. This will also lead into a slight rant about miles and how badly we're doing with them. So I'm in the Wilmington Zone now, and we had to go to Fayetteville, a 90 mile trip, and then back, another 90 miles. We only get half back for that, so we essentially just lost 90 miles. We also had our total mile total cut but another 150, and had to drive to and from Raleigh for transfers, another 200 mile round trip that only gets half back. And when I was in the Fayetteville zone, I had to go to Wilmington for Zone Conference. There's only so much you can do with that. So that's the little rant that I have about that, now onto things that actually matter.

The Zone Conference itself was awesome. Elder Costa, the President of the Area Seventies, and his wife came to it. (Which was also why it was a combined Zone Conference.) They talked a lot about the various chapters in Preach My Gospel, with a lot of emphasis on 4 and 10, Recognizing the Spirit and How Can I Improve My Teaching Skills. I came out of it all with a whole bunch of new ideas on how to start working with the members, and might I just say: Please, be the kind of members who do member work. It's so important. Even if the missionaries don't approach you about it, do it and introduce friends to the missionaries, invite them to church, just be friends and good examples. I think the biggest problem is that a lot of the time, members don't know how to do missionary work, and missionaries don't know how to do member work. We just all need to work together, and we can figure it out. Be the model families that the missionaries all love because they help them! We also got to see all of the new #LightTheWorld videos, and they're super good. I'd highly recommend watching them all (there's only 4, and they're short) because they're so powerful. There's also a new calendar thing that has been put up, and it's got a lot of great ideas. 

For just the week itself, it was pretty good. Jay has been continuing to go to church, and is even already answering questions in Sunday School! He really likes church, and is going to be a strong member, especially because he's young. We've been teaching him the lessons again, and he remembers a lot of what we taught. And he's super excited to go do baptisms for the dead, there'll be a temple trip in January. Pray for him! Osvaldo (Ozzie) has also been doing good. He keeps on saying how he's already seeing differences in his life from when we've been teaching him, and wants to continue meeting with us. He's great, but he gets nervous around new people and so church is hard for him. He hasn't made it since our last weekend of service 2 weeks ago. He keeps on saying that he wants to go, though. We also met someone really cool named Oscar. We knocked into him and he let us right in! He's talked with missionaries before, and so he already likes us. He didn't make it to church, but we're visiting with him again tomorrow. I'm excited to see where he goes. And as the last little bit of news for the week, our apartment is smelling good again due to our awesome branch president giving us a bunch of melter things, room sprays, and stuff like that that he makes himself. And some of the honey from his hives in the back. I don't know if they're online, but if you can find Sue's Wicks somewhere, go for it. It's good stuff. We also did find out the source of the bad smell, Elder Escobedo had left a whole bunch of sweet potatoes in a box on top of the fridge, and they weren't doing so hot. On the plus side, I found out that vacuums are a great way to quickly get rid of large numbers of fruit flies that are too small to be effectively swatted!

Until next time!

And these are our preparations for Christmas that we found in the attic, and the world's largest frying pan, which is about 12 miles down the road from us. We were visiting our Branch Mission Leader and decided to stop by the only tourist attraction in our area because it was on the way.

5 November 2018

So, long story short, Jay got baptized. It was awesome! Sorry, I don't have a huge amount of time because transfers are tomorrow, but I'll talk more about it later if I can.