8 July 2019

I went to Climb Time once or twice before my mission too, and it was pretty fun. Did they get to use the ropes, or were they stuck to bouldering? The weather here hasn't been hurricane levels of fun, but we're having thunderstorms every couple of days here. Not a huge amount of rain, but plenty of thunder and lightning. Our fourth of July was even less exciting, I'm afraid. We couldn't go see fireworks, and we didn't have any dinner scheduled. Fortunately, we had a member out with us that night who decided to be awesome and take us out to Cookout. So we celebrated with burgers and shakes. (Well, I had the chicken tenders, but it was close enough.) This is kind of random, but what are your feelings on coleslaw? That's a staple out here, and I have to have tried 20 different kinds by now. Previously, I didn't like Carolina style barbeque, but I learned that you have to eat it with your slaw to cut the acidity. Now I like it a lot. If you come out here, you'll have to try some.

The highlight of this week was definitely free Five Guys having Elder Holland come and visit the mission. We just had part of the Virginia Chesapeake Mission join with us, adding on 50 missionaries and 2 stakes to the NCRM. (The Goldsboro and Kinston stakes.) So on Tuesday, we had a mission conference to welcome all the newcomers to the NCRM. We started off by singing their mission song to them as they filed in, then President Holland talked for a few minutes and released us for lunch. This is where he told everyone that at 12:30, his dad would be coming in to take a picture with the mission, and he would be the only speaker for the afternoon. The missionaries who had been in the NCRM already knew, I don't know if those coming in did or not. But this was a cause for great excitement throughout. After the picture, he had us all come and shake his hand. Then came the instruction. Wow, what an instruction. He went on for two hours, and every minute of it was great. It's always a little weird to see the General Authorities out of General Conference, it's just a reminder that they're people too. He's a lot funnier, and even more animated in person than he is in conference. Here's a few random quotes from out time with him:

"I write in reformed Egyptian, so don't worry." "He's talking about birth, and He's talking about birth!" And my personal favorite, "That's the stupidest thing ever said!" This was in reference to John 3:4, Nicodemus's response to Christ talking of being born again. He rephrased it a minute later in a nicer way, but it was hilarious. The main themes of the conference were the importance of missionary work and the interrelation with everything else the church does, the importance of the Book of Mormon, and needing to teach to the level of our investigators. On how important the mission is, he said it's "the most pivotal moment" of our lives. It was all really good, and I could definitely feel the Spirit. Honestly, to go more in depth I'd have to write a really, really long email, but I won't subject y'all to that. On to less significant news. 

The most common thing I've been hearing all week was how I'm going home soon. All the missionaries, all the members. Apparently having a missionary go home is a big deal or something like that. The ward I'm in right now has another missionary also leaving this transfer, so everyone is all stirred up about it. But I really do love everyone out here, and I'm going to miss them a lot. This Sunday is going to be a hard one. \

Anyways, this Sunday was pretty good. Mario went to church again, and we got to have a lesson with him afterwards. It went pretty well, but he has some very interesting beliefs on how the Bible and the Book of Mormon relate. Right now, we're just trying to get him to acknowledge that the Book of Mormon is a book of scripture, and holds equal weight as the Bible. Small steps. We also had someone named Jesse go to church. He is even more interesting. We got a text in the middle of a lesson Saturday night from him asking if he could go to church. He had been taught before, but neither of us had ever met him, and he had never been to church before. We quickly said yes and found him a ride. Well, sacrament meeting started, and a minute or two into it his ride walks in followed by Jesse, who my companion described as "a mix between Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel." I'm going to have to agree with him, he's huge! Still, he enjoyed church and we have a lesson with him on Tuesday that we're excited for. 

We didn't do anything crazy on the fourth (except for the previously mentioned free Five Guys) so this is going to be about it for me. Bye!

1 July 2019

This is officially my third to last P-Day. It still feels like going home is forever away. I don't know quite when that will sink in. Anyways, on to a pretty brief email.

So the missionary work of this week was kind of interrupted and overshadowed by two big things: one, we just absorbed a large chunk of the now-dissolved Virginia Chesapeake Mission, giving us two new stakes and a about 50 more missionaries. That's pretty exciting, we have a mission wide conference tomorrow in Wilmington to meet the new ones. 

The second big thing was the more interruptive. We went on exchanges, and when I came back, my comp and the other missionary were gone. So we called them, only to have Elder Shore (the other missionary) answer and say he was following the ambulance carrying Elder Curtis to the hospital. Soon after waking up, my companion had a seizure, hitting his head and having some pretty bad memory loss. We spent most of the day at the hospital, and he was ordered by the mission nurse to rest and take it easy for a few days. He's better now, but as a result not too much has happened this week. The weirdest part about this was the striking similarity to my training, where I come back from exchanges and my companion is injured/injured worse. Even weirder, I'm in the same area as my training. But yeah, because of that I don't have a lot to talk about this week. Next week should have plenty though!

24 June 2019

As another missionary mentioned this week that I had somehow managed to not notice, I only have three weeks left. I will use this as an excuse to write shorter emails, I can tell you all about it in person soon anyways.

The main event of this past week was having the car taken away from us by the zone leaders. Well, sort of. They're now making us share the car between us and the Raleigh 1st Ward elders, but this presented a problem for us. You see, when I got here I left my bike at the mission office having been told that once again I was in a full car area. Suddenly, this was no longer the case. I just got my bike back today, but it will only get another week and a bit of use. The other problem is that my comp is recovering from a wrist injury caused by a bike crash, and isn't yet cleared to bike again. And his bike still hasn't gotten the necessary repairs to be useable again. With this, we were forced to dire straits: public transportation. Yup, we've been using the GoRaleigh bus system. It's not bad, but it's slower and requires concerted effort and planning in order to use it effectively. Also, there are some places where the buses simply do not go. Still, we've been making it work. Mostly through rides from members to lessons, and rides from other missionaries to church. On to the work!

Basically, we got whitewashed (double transferred) into this area without any notes getting left for us, so neither of us really have a full understanding of this area or the people being taught. Still, we've been plugging away trying to contact all of these people. We're teaching someone named Mario. Well, sort of. We haven't been able to meet with him in a while, but he's gone to church three times in a row, this last time finding a ride for himself when we couldn't. We're excited for him, but we really want to find a time to meet with him. This week we also found a small family of a mom and her two kids. The mom is Paula, the son is Paul, and we haven't met the daughter yet. We taught Paula and Paul the Restoration and they both really liked it and committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon. We should be having a lesson with the two of them tonight, and hopefully we'll also meet the daughter. I think that's about it for the news this week, just a picture now. (If you want to know why this was funny, use Google Translate.)

17 June 2019

To make a long story short, I'm back in Raleigh for the third time! To make that short story long, here we go:

So on Wednesday night Elder Jackson, Elder Oberstadt and I were getting ready to go to bed when we got a text from Elder Wilson (one of the office missionaries) telling me to be ready to have my departing interview with President Holland the next day after our Zone Training, which is basically a shorter version of Zone Conference. He also told me to have My Plan ready, and it wasn't, mostly because you do it in your last six weeks once per week. I was on week 2. So I was walking into this interview completely unprepared in multiple ways. However, the interview didn't even really go into My Plan much, we mostly talked about college. It was the end that caught me off guard. He said, "Well, Elder, how's it going in a trio?" After talking about that for a little while, he then asked, "Would it be too much of a burden for you to pack up and go to Raleigh?" There was a second of silence as I took it in, and gratefully accepted, because I absolutely love Raleigh. A missionary who was here before me ended up going home a little early for mental health, and so they grabbed me, the new guy to Sanford who was in a trio and just happened to have already spent 6 months in Raleigh. Talk about revelation in transfers, right? So I had about 18 hours advance warning that I was going to be leaving for my new area. Anyways, on to the stuff that's been happening in Raleigh these past 3 days. 

Most of what's been going on has been getting back up with the people being taught. My comp who is currently here has only 9 days more than me with these people, so we basically got whitewashed in, just without notes being left for us. It hasn't been too bad, but we're going to have to figure out the bus system here again. It's going to be one of our main modes of transportation as my comp can't ride a bike right now. He hurt his arm in a bike crash about a month and a half ago, and is still waiting on doctor's approval to start riding again. He has moved from a cast to a brace, which is some good progress. 

The main cool thing is that I managed to get up with someone who I'd taught when I was being trained here, who is currently married and baptized with a kid now. So he's had a lot of changes in his life, and is working hard. Unfortunately, he normally isn't able to go to church very often but he did this week so I got to see him my first week back here! 

I don't think there is any other crazy news for the week, see y'all!

3 June 2019

We got news last night that I am going to be leaving Clinton for my last transfer! My last 6 weeks are going to be in a new area. I don't know where yet, I'll be finding out tomorrow. I'm excited, with how things are looking there's a chance I might go back to one of my old areas. However, my comp thinks it's more likely that I'll go to the area he came from, Jonesboro. Well, I'll be able to tell next week! It's weird to think that this is the last time I'll ever have to worry about transfers again.

Time to talk about the actual week! We had an interesting series of events with Wayne this week. He just disappeared. Now, this man loves talking with us. But we called on Monday to confirm for Tuesday, and when we came on Tuesday he didn't answer. So we called him, but no answer. This is very odd for Wayne. If he isn't home, he always answers his phone. And he will normally return missed calls within 5 minutes or so. Well, we tried calling again on Wednesday and Thursday, and calling and stopping by on Friday. At this point, we were really concerned for him. We figured that he was either in the hospital, in jail, or dead. And with Wayne in particular, we thought that these were all just about equally likely. But finally when we called on Saturday, he answered. It turns out that he had been in the hospital recovering from a really bad infection from previous surgeries. He's on the mend now, and is doing a lot better. We're going to stop by him tonight. 

Elizabeth is doing really well still. This last week we taught her about prophets, with a lot of emphasis on Russell M. Nelson.  She has been reading every morning in the Book of Mormon, which is awesome! She just finished 1 Nephi, and she said that she took our advice and set aside a time every morning to read in the scriptures. She came to church yesterday, and is praying to find out if President Nelson is really a prophet. 

We started teaching a member's niece this week, her name is Stefany. She is pretty willing to learn, and wants to know more about the scriptures and how to come closer to God. It's a good thing that's our specialty! We had a great lesson about the Restoration and we're going back tomorrow. 

We also started teaching Saul last week. He's got the funniest little kid, Mateo (Matthew). Whenever we'd be talking, he'd start to try to run away from his dad. We were outside, so this presented a bit of a problem. After chasing him down a couple of times, Saul put him on the trunk of his car so he'd be stuck. He didn't like that until he found out that he can use the back window as a slide. It was pretty funny the whole time. The lesson with him went really well, it turns out that he has been taught by the missionaries before too! He likes learning more, and remembered a lot of what he'd been taught before. We were going to go by last night until he told us that he had been called into work in South Carolina. So, we're working on setting up another time with him. 

Gio wasn't able to make it to church this week because he worked, but summer vacation starts this week and so he said he's going to try to get Sundays as his day off now. We taught him about the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and he understood everything without a problem. He also started reading the Book of Mormon on his phone during lunch at school, because he says that's the only time that he has to do it right now. I'm excited for him! 

And now for the fun story of the week. I decided that I wanted some tacos. The only problem is that there isn't a whole lot of places that sell authentic tacos. That became a whole lot less of a problem with the discovery of a Hispanic grocery store called Tropicana. The best part for me was the fact that they sell pre-marinated carne al pastor, my favorite kind of meat for tacos. Long story short, I'm now the proud owner of a tortilla press and have been making tacos. They're pretty delicious. My only regret is that I bought the aluminum press rather than the cast iron, the aluminum feels pretty flimsy. I only bought the aluminum because it'll be easier to take home with me, the cast iron would weigh too much to go with me. 

That's all for the week, bye!

(The pictures are one of the tacos I made and some pretty huge pants that we found while volunteering at a thrift store.)

 

 

27 May 2019

So there wasn't a huge amount of stuff that happened this week. Mostly interviews, another Spanish Summit, and we found a turtle.

Interviews just happened on Thursday, nothing too exciting. We had to drive to Fayetteville, but that was about it. Nothing too exciting, President just wanted me to keep going in Clinton. Transfers are next Tuesday, so we'll see what happens. 

The Spanish Summit was pretty fun. It was a bunch of instructions and roleplays. Nothing super exciting, but it's always great to get up with all of my old comps and talk about how we're all doing. 6 of the Spanish Elders all go home together next transfer, so that's always a big topic of conversation. Other than that, not too crazy. 

The turtle was interesting, we were driving back from the church and we saw a turtle in the middle of the road. So we stopped to pick it up and move it, and took a couple of pictures. It managed to scratch my hand a bit, which is why it's on the ground in one of the pictures. 

Well, I forgot to send stuff about people we're teaching. The only major development was with Elizabeth. She went to church again, and we found a better ride for her now. We had a lesson on Saturday with her and a senior missionary named Elder Penrod. It was about repentance, and went really well. She's getting closer to deciding to be baptized, and even threw away all her coffee! She's making a lot of progress really fast.

20 May 2019

It's not been too terribly rainy here, which has been nice. It would just make the humidity here even more unbearable. We just hit 95 degrees a couple of days ago, and the humidity is pretty bad too. I checked the weather for Mesa, and it's going to be hotter here all week than there. And again, the humidity. I'm just glad I don't have to deal with a second full summer here. Come to think of it, I only had to spend one August here. Not bad, huh? 

As for the tracting, I've done almost none of that recently. It's weird. President Holland is really encouraging us to move away from it as much as possible and use other ways to find new people to teach. It is still going pretty well, we started teaching a member's boyfriend this week. Come to think of it, I'm still not 100% sure that the member knows about it. We found him (Gio) trying to talk to his mom who had been taught about a year before, and he really is open to learning a lot. He was the one who told us that his girlfriend was a member, and the daughter of the first counselor. We also don't think that the dad knows, so we're trying to figure out our next step with him. It's an interesting situation. 

We're also teaching Nino and Maria, which is a very interesting situation. Nino got injured at work a few years back after falling and hitting his head, so now he has the approximate mental capacity of a six year old, according to Maria. Basically, we teach Maria and try to keep Nino out of trouble. A member named Brother Centeno lives in their neighborhood and has been helping us out with them. We tried to visit them last night, but Nino was trying to "fix" the hose and didn't want to come in, so we're just going to go back on Tuesday. Their 20 year old daughter is home from college, so we'll try to start teaching her as well. I'll be on exchange in another area on Tuesday, so I won't have too many details on how well it goes, but I'll do my best to get them. 

Also on Tuesday, (but before the exchange) we're going to have a second Spanish Summit. That's where all of the Spanish missionaries in the mission get together and basically discuss how to best do Spanish work, because President Holland is recognizing that it is fundamentally different than English work and wants us to have more specific training. So, you'll probably get some pictures from that as well. 

The only thing that I really have pictures of this week was an exchange with the Spanish Training Leaders, two experienced missionaries who are basically the Assistants but for just the Spanish missionaries. I went with Elder Crowton, and it was pretty fun. He and I go home together, and we spent a little time just talking about how to not get really, really trunky. And then Harry Potter. It was a mixed bag. 

Elizabeth is still doing well. I was on exchange for her last appointment, but they were talking about temple work and baptisms for the dead. She asked them about if her 6 week old daughter was in heaven, and they read Moroni 8 with her. She started crying and was super happy to know that she could see her daughter again. We talked with her the next day and she was still pretty emotional about it. I love seeing how much the restored gospel can bless people's lives, and I know that the Book of Mormon teaches us the truths that we need! 

I think that's about it for the week, see ya! 

(The picture is just us and the STLs petting a horse that's in our backyard. Ish.)

 

 

13 May 2019

This was somewhat more of an eventful week. On Thursday, we had a zone conference. We focused a lot on planning effectively, and we all got new planning whiteboards! It's the kind of lame thing that only us missionaries get excited about. It was  really good zone conference though, and it gave me a lot of new ideas. Directly after, we went on exchanges with the zone leaders. I went with Elder Stubblefield, and Elder Lacey went with Elder Crews. It was a fun moment to reminisce with Elder Stubblefield, we went on exchanges for just a few hours while both of our trainers had to go to a meeting in my first week in field. Well, it went a little different than last time. Firstly, we had  full overnight exchange unlike the first one, and secondly, both of us actually knew what we were doing this last time. It made for a pretty good exchange, but we nearly got Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame spoiled for us. Someone who we were teaching was very enthusiastic about those and didn't know that we don't watch movies out here.

As for yesterday, I had a nice Mother's Day. I got to call my family, and Mom only had to tell the family to be quiet so she could hear me about four times. Clearly it was a peaceful day back home. We had some really good speakers in church who talked about the importance of mothers, especially to their children. (I had to translate The Family: A Proclamation to the World off  the top of my head, which is definitely not something I reccomend as a fun activity.) 

Sunday afternoon/evening we got to visit with Elizabeth again. She lives pretty far out there, so it's hard to get to her sometimes. But we had a good lesson with her on tithing and prayer. She never has any issues with the commandments we teach her and commits to live them, but is still a little unsure about getting baptized. Yesterday she said that she was getting close to being ready though, so we're hoping to have that be coming up soon. She's already been to church five times and loves it every time, she's just waiting to get an answer to her prayers about this being the true church. 

We also managed to get up with Wayne again this week, and he's been making a lot of progress with the Word of Wisdom. Right now, he's down from 1 gallon of sweet tea every 2 days to 1 gallon every four days, and never drinks it in front of us anymore. We're still trying to figure out how to get him to church, there's not a whole lot of members in his area, and it would have to be a longer term solution. He might be moving into Clinton proper though, which would make it a lot easier. He really loves having us come over, but he gets sidetracked easily. Still, we have high hopes for him.

This week we also got up with Jaquita, somebody who we'd first talked to about a month or two ago. Her sister had surgery down in Florida, and she just got back from helping her out. When we ran into her again she was having a yard sale, so we set up a time to come back for Wednesdy. She seems to like learning, so hopefully we'll be moving along with her. 

Gio is being very hard to get up with. Teenagers who work are probably the second hardest group of people to find and home regularly. We'll just keep plugging along and see when we can get up with him.

And for a more interesting part of the week, service! Our mission is a pilot mission for testing out how service affects the work in an area, and it's been keeping things interesting. We are supposed to get 10 hours a week each, which is hard in little areas like Clinton. We had really been struggling to find opportunities to serve this week, and we even tried something President Holland suggested, going door to door in work clothes offering to help people. Nobody took us up on that, and we tried texting various people in the branch and some that we were teaching to see if anybody knew anybody who needed help. Finally, one of the members answered and we ended up going out to him and mowing his lawn and helping wash his cars. It ended up being pretty fun, and we got four hours of service time out of it. 

That's all that I can think of for right now, so this is it for the week. See y'all later!

Pictures:

This was a pork burrito that one of the members made for us on Thursday, and it was absolutely huge and delicious. Only the second meal in my life that I've taken a picture of.

Just some of the weird stuff you can find while driving through Clinton. 

And finally, one of the turkey trucks. (Or chicken, I couldn't tell.) We live next to a bunch of turkey and hog farms, so these are a pretty common sight. What's worse, and even more common, is the smell!

 

 

29 April 2019

I've been doing my fair share of yard work this week, we've been helping clean up someone's yard. They have a tree filled section where there was an unbelievable amount of undergrowth and vines everywhere. After many hours of help, you can almost make it the 30 feet to the creek behind it. We were getting really close when on Thursday I had a bit of a scare. So you know how bad my poison ivy reaction is, right? Well, it turns out that there was some in the area I had been working, in some cases actually crawling on the ground. So we bailed quickly, used the hose and some soap to scrub my arms down really well on site and then we ran home and I showered thoroughly. So far, no reaction! So if you want a blessing of the Lord, there's a major one right there! I was fully expecting a hospital visit after that. But we're doing good over here.

22 April 2019

So this week the weather continued to be absolutely crazy. We were visiting some members on Friday morning when one of them told us to be careful because the weather was going to be really bad. Well, this was news to us. Apparently, there were some severe thunderstorms coming in and tornadoes were an option. Never ones to be beat, we took it and all the rain in stride. That is until, of course, we got a call a 5:30 locking us down in our house. So that made it a little less fun. The result was a lot of wind and rain with  tornado warnings and watches all around. Nothing but another fun day of weather in North Cackalacky!

In random news, Elder Lacey and I are both staying in Clinton for another transfer. That means that the chances that I finish my mission here are pretty high. 

And on to the people we've been teaching. Elizabeth went to church again this week, which was awesome. She's been going consistently and we've been working with her still. We had an appointment with her, but we had to cancel after a bunch of confusion after church. Still, we plan on setting a baptismal date with her in this next week. It'll be great!

Wayne has starting progressing again. We call and read the Book of Mormon with him every few days, and he really likes it. He says that we've been able to answer things for him in ways that no other church has been able to. He still needs some time and consistent work, but we'll keep it up with him. 

Damaris didn't go to church, and we stopped by after to see how she is doing. She said she doesn't like it because she doesn't really understand what is being said. Now, I could see this as a genuine concern if she hadn't turned down the offer of a translation headset. So, we're a little stuck with her.

Gio is also going slowly, he isi just really busy all of the time. When school is out we'll be able to go and visit him a lot more often. 

We have some newer people, Nino and Maria. They're a really nice couple, but they haven't been able to go to church because they have to take their daughter back to college in Fayetteville on Sundays. We'll try to work it out with them, and maybe have them bring their daughter to church with them as well! They're a bunch of fun, but a little hard to keep on track. We taught them the Plan of Salvation the last time we were there. Maria was really focused on it and seemed to like it quite a bit. Nino was all over the place. 

On Sunday we got to have an awesome Easter lunch that some of the members had made. We had steaks, chicken, rice, beans, rolls, potato salad and lemonade. Very filling, and very tasty. 

Saturday we had the branch Easter activity. That was a bunch of fun, and more good food. They had a dessert auction and and thing of Jello sold for $20. The bidding got pretty intense. I put in a bid of $1 a few time for some plates of cookies, but was unsurprisingly outbid every time. Someone evidently took pity on the missionary budget though, and gave us a plate of the cookies I had bid on! So just a good day overall. That was also when they had the Easter Egg hunt for the little kids, and they had laid them out all over the place. They also had a scavenger hunt, and they dragged us in on one side. That was pretty fun, but when we got to the chest that they had locked, the lock was jammed and we couldn't get the key in. Well, that ended up getting cut off. You know that all activities end best with someone breaking out the bolt cutters. And yes, they had them on hand because you know, it's North Carolina. But that was about all the fun from the activity. Time for pictures! 

15 April 2019

This week continued to keep it interesting here. Firstly, we were eating lunch with our district Wednesday at a Wendy's when some random Hispanic man walked up to us, and started talking. Now, there are three companionships in our district, and only one speaks Spanish. So the other two just watched silently as we had a five minute conversation with him, where we found out that he has gone to church twice and is neighbors with the first counselor! We set up another time to come by and talk with him, and started teaching both him and his wife! I wasn't personally there for this, I was on exchanges at the time. We have a new thing in our mission, the Spanish Training Leaders.  They're a couple of the more experienced Spanish missionaries who go around and help train and evaluate the missionaries, kind of like zone leaders but for all of the Spanish elders in the mission. They came and really helped us out with our miles as well, because I had to go to Fayetteville and do a baptismal interview for the sisters in our district. The STLs have unlimited miles, so we went in their car to Fayetteville. I really enjoyed the interview, the person being interviewed (Kenzie) is a 15 year old girl who has been going to church for over a year now, but just hasn't been taught before. She was super excited to be baptized and knew a lot more about the church than your average convert. The sisters say that she's actually already planning out her temple marriage with her member boyfriend in the Hawaii temple. It was a cool experience. After that, Elder Rasmussen and I went to try to contact a few people in a trailer park. It reminded me why I don't like trailer parks after dark. This huge dog started running at us while his owner shouted "No les hace nada!" (He won't do anything to you!) We stood there until he stopped with the owner chasing him and calling him to stop. The dog backed off, then came at us again when we had turned around. He called it off again, and we started walking past the truck (the STLs drive a weird car for missionaries) when the dog took off after us again. The owner was screaming again, "NO LES HACE NADA!" At this point, we weren't feeling very trusting in his ability to hold his dog in check and I ended up on top of the cab of the truck and Elder Rasmussen ended up in the bed. After that, the dog backed up and we decided that it was expedient that we leave the trailer park at that time. Reminds me of Alma 55:23. 

In other news, Elizabeth went to church again! She says that she likes it more and more every time she goes. We're going to invite her to baptism this week, and we're super excited for her! Damaris is also doing well. We invited her to be baptized, but she said that she wants to know if the Book of Mormon is true first. Still, we're going to keep working with her, and trying to involve her oldest kid, Joseph. We had a little object lesson with them where we copper plated a nail  and related it to the Atonement. It worked out pretty well, and actually managed to hold his attention for a while. 

I think that's about it for now, see y'all next week!

8 April 2019

Another conference has come and gone again! There were a ton of really great talks, and some of them are really going to help with missionary work. My top three were

1. Takashi Wada

2. Jeffrey R. Holland

3. Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Also, President Nelson calling all of the men of the church to repentance was pretty crazy.

But this week was pretty good. We had another lesson with Damaris about the Plan of Salvation and she had questions as always. Brother Navas is always a great help with her and her questions, and this time was no exception. She said she would be baptized if she came to know the church was true, which is exciting!

We also got a Book of Mormon referral named Elizabeth. Her brother is a member in Virginia, and said she'd be interested. We went over the Restoration and she really liked it. She watched Conference as well, and said it was definitely different than other churches she had gone to. Overall, she's doing really well! We're visiting her again this week.

And now for the fun story of the week: I got bit by a horse! So we were coming back from a service project and went around back where there is a large fenced off field, only to see a horse standing maybe 20 feet in. So, naturally, I called it over and pet it. Then, I took a picture with it. It apparently really wanted food, and at about that moment decided that my arm resembled it closely enough and went ahead and bit me. It wasn't much, but definitely got my attention. Not every day that you grt bit by a horse! That brings my animal bite count on the mission to

Dogs: 3

Cats: 1

Horses: 1

Fortunately, only two of these drew blood. Have a good week y'all!

 

 

1 April 2019

It's a big day today, I've now hit my 20 month mark. That's right, only 4 more months before people back home have to deal with me again! And in revelant news, on to the work!

So we finally got Damaris to church! It's taken some effort, but she's got some good member friends now who were able to take her. She really liked it, and is going to watch conference next week as well, hopefully with the same members. Nisha also came to church, but we found out why she only comes every other week: she trades off going to her daughter's boyfriend's church. This could probably be more easily addressed if the daughter wasn't 7. We've gotten ourselves in quite the pickle with this one. How do you convince an irate 7 year old that she shouldn't be "dating" someone?

In big news for over here, Wayne is going to watch General Conference too! Well, as much as a 90% blind man can watch it, but you get it. He thinks it's pretty funny that we want him to sit in front of a tv without being able to tell what's going on. I've never heard so many blind jokes in my life as I've heard from him! Honestly, his biggest holdups right now are stopping drinking sweet tea and Joseph Smith's name. The first thing he asked us is if he was a plumber. He then explained that in his base as a special forces troop people would frequently come in dressed the exact same way, carrying something that looked suspiciously like a rifle bag. When he asked them who they were, they were always a Smith and a plumber, so he's trying to change his mental association of the name Smith with CIA covers. I think that's the big news for the week, but I'll send more if I remember it!

 

 

25 March 2019

Me and Elder Lacey are getting along well. In random news, he taught me how to solve a Rubik's Cube and I've now done it in 4:38. He's done it in 20 seconds, so I still have a ways to go. We did have some excitement this week, we ended up going on two exchanges with the Dunn Elders. I had planned out that I would go with one, but they got confused and the other one ended up coming instead. So, I just decided to do them back to back, finishing all of the exchanges I had to do this transfer in two days. It would have been more, but as of last night the F1 Elders got taken out of our district and replaced by the Fay4 Sisters for car sharing purposes. We'll see if we can pull what we did last transfer and have our district win all of the pies in the zone. Anyways, on to the teaching. 

We haven't been able to get up with just about anyone who we were teaching previously this week, which kind of sucks. We've been calling or texting people daily to try to set up times to visit them, but no one has responded. Then, yesterday everyone bailed on church and their lessons. Except for 4 less active families we've been working with, they all came! Now the Elder's Quorum is planning an activity to get people more solidly reactivated. Well, the Hispanics are, which means that they're be a lot of food! They're still hashing out the details, but that'll be awesome. Then, there was a referral who we'd been trying to contact and meet with, but he kept on canceling last minute. Then Sunday night we suddenly had nothing to do, so we tried texting him for the second time that day and he said we could go over! We went and taught him the Restoration, and it turns out that he remembered it from a few years before where he had talked to some missionaries before. In fact, he walked to the back and pulled out a large print Book of Mormon! He hadn't read it, but we committed him to start. It was a really good lesson. We also went to a return appointment that we had set that seemed pretty shaky, it was some Hispanic lady who I had talked to on exchanges a few days back who was looking for her dog, Marley. We just talked to her briefly and set up the return. When we went back, she was there with her boyfriend, who was a less active we hadn't been able to find! That part was super cool. It was a really good lesson, but they're super busy so we couldn't set up another return appointment. However, we did get their number and we're going to set up something whenever we can. 

Well, I think that's about it, bye!

18 March 2019

So we had a few interesting events happen this week. Mostly on Friday. That was one of the strangest days on my mission, and that's saying something! It started off pretty normally, we worked out and had an inspection planned for a little later at about 10. Then, stuff got weird. Elder Lacey (my new comp) went to the bathroom and flushed the toilet as normal, then went and took a shower. The problem is, you can't flush that toilet like normal, because it'll seem like it flushes normally, but just keep filling the bowl after everything has been flushed away. So he went to the other bathroom and started to shower and thought nothing of it. I was eating breakfast on this pretty high up stool. A few minutes later, I started to stand up to put my bowl in the sink. Strangely, when I put my foot on the ground, I felt in become enclosed in ice as I stepped in the freezing half inch of standing water now in our kitchen. I quickly ascertained the source, shut it off, and promptly worried my companion by saying, "Hey, Elder.... We've got a bit of a problem..." He was still in the other bathroom, and came out to see water spreading out further and further. It was a ton. Fortunately, it was all on the tile area. So we broke out this massive pile of towels that we had and it did very little. We ended up sweeping and mopping the water out the back door, and would sop up as much water as possible with a towel, wring it out, then repeat. It was crazy how much water there was! Also, a member last minute the night before had asked us to go to the hospital with them to translate right before the inspection, which we had to push back for them. We had just about finished with the water after fighting it for about an hour and a half when the member knocked on our door to pick us up. So we got ready really fast and went to the hospital with him. While there, we got a call from the Boutons (the senior couple inspecting our apartment) asking when we'd be getting back. We had no idea, so they ended up just asking the Tyndalls (our branch president, neighbor, and landlord) for a key to get in. We told them what had happened that morning, and they must have taken pity on us because they're notoriously picky. Our apartment wasn't very clean, it wasn't fully dry yet, and stuff had been all pushed to one side for clean up. When we got back, Sister Tyndall said that we passed. Surprised, we went in to see a bag of desserts laying on the counter, something they only give to the missionaries who miss almost no points on the inspection, and another fan set up to help out with the drying process. I was surprised, but I'll take the pity points there if they're being handed out.

That particularly eventful morning is kind of dominating my memory right now, and I can't remember too much else from the week. We did get a really great text Saturday morning, though. Nisha texted us back for the first time in probably 3-4 weeks and said that she was coming to church, which she did! It was really great, and we're going to be able to start working with her again. Also, we had another appointment with Wayne. Previously, he had mentioned that his nurse wanted him to stop putting sugar in his tea, but he never would because he loved sweet tea too much to ever give it up, and was getting irritated with his nurse for asking him. There's a saying out here that goes, "Water is for washing your hands, sweet tea is for drinking." Wayne abides by that fully, and we were pretty unsure coming in. However, it ended up really well! He agreed to live the Word of Wisdom and to live the Law of Chastity with very little fight! It's great to see the Lord changing people's hearts and minds and preparing them to receive the gospel! 

I think that's it for now, have a good week y'all!

11 March 2019

So, this week has been pretty interesting. Transfers are tomorrow, and Elder Rivas is going to be leaving. But yesterday was a pretty eventful day.

Over the week, we've not been able to get up with a ton of people. However, we had a bunch of lessons yesterday, and someone came to church! It started with Mike, where we got to teach him about prayer. He talks a ton, and always has long rambling answers to any questions. But yesterday we asked him about why he didn't like to pray in front of us, and what was the difference between talking with us and praying with us. He just kind of sat there for a minute and eventually said he didn't know, and that it was a really good question. He's going to start praying out loud every night now to make himself more comfortable with it. He's also going to come to FHE tonight!

After him we had dinner with Dawn. Wr didn't get to teach her very much, but we dideget to meet her husband. He's never there, so we always have to bring someone with us. The biggest thing holding Dawn back is just that she wants to have her husband's support, so it was a big step to get to meet him. He said that it's not too long until he's going to start working locally more and we'll be able to talk to him more often. 

Following Dawn, we had a lesson with Esther (who came to church!) and her mom! We had no idea that Esther was going to be bringing her, and we read Ether 12 and discussed it. We also were able to teach Esther's mom the Restoration, and it was really powerful. It was also the first time I've been able to teach a lot in Spanish in a long time, and I got some compliments on it. One of the more fun ones was, "Your voice when you're speaking Spanish reminds me of the Spanish dubs of National Geographic! Before you leave, I need to get a recording of you speaking." They also said I have about no accent while speaking, thankfully. I know that I don't sound like a gringo. 

Also, during the week, we were able to get up with Wayne. He's had some really rough times, and we got to teach him the Plan of Salvation. Basically, he spent the whole time going, "That makes sense!" So he's going to be progressing well probably. We'll see how he goes.  But that's all for right now, have a good week y'all!

 

 

4 March 2019

So we've been encouraged to go out and find service opportunities. So, we started serving at a thrift store. Now, I've been looking for an automatic breadmaker. Turns out this store had one for 3 dollars, and it works. So I've made a whole bunch of bread already. It's been nice. Anyways, on to important stuff.

We had interviews this week, and those were pretty nice. We talked about the work in Clinton, and just how I'm doing. Other than that, nothing really remarkable.

We found someone new named Damaris. She is doing pretty well, we've already had two lessons with a member with her. She couldn't make it to church because she got sick, but she wants to go next week. Other than that, I can't think of anything super crazy off the top of my head.  Sorry, short one today.

25 February 2019

We had a missionary devotional yesterday, and that was the big thing for the week. Well, we had stake conference 50 miles away, so we got permission to work with the Raeford elders all day. It was super nice to be able to talk to a whole bunch of the old members that I hadn't talked to for months. But in the devotional, every missionary had to sing in a choir. They asked for some volunteers a week or two ago to sing in a small group or do solos. So I decided that I'd like to sing in a small group, and went to the auditions. About 8 or 9 elders showed up, and Sister Goodman (the senior missionary in charge of it all) started having people sing different things. So, I got called up and I sang a part of Savior, Redeemer of my Soul. Evidently it was good enough where I ended up being voluntold into being in the small group and the solo thing. The small group was 4 elders singing the chorus of the second verse of How Great Thou Art, and I ended up singing the higher part. Sister Goodman asked who could sing a high G, and apparantly I can. With the solo, I sang the first verse of Savior, Redeemer of My Soul with Elders Schmidt and Oberstadt. Second verse was just me as a solo and then Elder Oberstadt was alone on the third verse. I was shaking pretty badly, but everyone I talked to said that I did a really good job still. (There were about 500-600 people there.) One member said that my future wife was probably in the audience, so I'll take that as I did well. The whole devotional was really spiritual and had lot of great speakers. It was interesting though, there were no conducting officers or anything. It just flowed from one part to the next. But it was super good.

25 February 2019

Dear Parents,

I hope you are enjoying this wonderful new opportunity to visit more regularly with your missionaries. They are such a delight.  We are in the midst of doing multi-stake/zone musical devotionals titled Joy in Christ right now and I wish you could see their smiles and hear them sing and pray and bring the Spirit to the room with such power. 

As we move into this new era of communicating home, I wanted to share a mix of my personal observations and reminders from the Brethren that I hope you will keep in mind.

--The length of your calls is up to you and your missionary, but please remember not all missionaries are in the same situation when it comes to family support and relations.  Be mindful of how keeping your missionary on the line might be affecting their companion.

--The principle is one call home (or two, if parents are not together).  Others family members at home may join in the call.  In that spirit, other family members may also join that call electronically (conference call, or video link).  What should not happen is multiple calls to multiple family members throughout the day.

--Remember the principle the Brethren had in mind when they changed the name of the day to Preparation Day when it used to be called Diversion Day.  The day is meant to get the missionaries ready for the coming week to do the work, not as a day to divert or distract them from the work. Please know that the missionaries have many things to do on P-day to get ready for the work and please do your part to help keep your missionary mentally and spiritually focused on their purpose of: “Inviting Others to Come Unto Christ.”

--Missionaries are to initiate the contact during regular PDay hours, not you.  If you need to reach them please message me or the Mission Office directly and we will facilitate whatever contact judgment warrants.

--While virtually all of the missionaries are excited with the option to call home every week, many have already expressed that they may not want to do this every week.  The Brethren have indicated that it is not their expectation that missionaries will call home every week. 

--There will be no increase to mission budgets for these calls. Missionaries are not authorized to make long distance calls which incur additional charges on their mission phones. Missionaries without easy internet access would typically buy a phone card with their own funds. 

--You might be interested to know I send this as a mission president, but also as a father with a daughter on a mission.  I was giddy with love and excitement as I got to speak to my daughter last week.  We will do so again, I am sure.  But, we (meaning me, my wife and my daughter) have all agreed that mission letters are a treasure and should not be discontinued or be entirely replaced by calls.  You say different things (often better things) when you write, rather than call.  We are also agreed that part of the mission experience is to grow in individual maturity and independence.  Just as a great cake cannot bake with a constant opening of the oven door to check on it, a great mission experience is often only achieved after some period of individual struggle without direct, parental observation and intervention. 

I pray for heaven’s blessing upon you and your missionaries as you thoughtfully and prayerfully consider your communications in light of these reminders.

It continues to be the finest honor of my life to serve your noble sons and daughters who give so much to the work of the Lord and the salvation of the people of North Carolina.

Best,

President Holland

18 February 2019

So, in brief, this was an odd week. We're teaching a man who had a flesh eating bacteria infection in his groin and had tons of surgeries and is constantly in pain, and he talks about it every time. He originally was Irish Catholic but it pretty skeptical about almost every church. Fortunately, ours isn't one of them! So he's really interested in learning a lot more. He's not super sure about joining the church, but we'll work with him.

Our weird story for the week is about going to the local HerbaLife to contact the owner again, Al. Well, an older millionaire Rhodesian street preacher came in and started talking to us. He tried to get us to join his ministry, but we politely declined. He later praised us and kissed our hands because "it's a hard job and nobody gives us praise." It was just a weird time. He also bought us shakes. So, that's the week's story. 

4 February 2019

So I now have done my first week in Clinton. It's bigger than Wallace, but that isn't a very difficult feat. Still, it has some more stuff. We'll just have to figure out something to do on P-Days now... Anyway, on to the week.

It started off with getting the apartment cleaned out and throwing out a lot of food. Wallace got shut down due to a lack of missionaries, and we had to clean out everything, and the APs were very insistent that everything be taken out. Nothing was allowed to stay. The rest of the day was saying bye to the members and finishing up our cleaning. 

Tuesday rolled around and that meant it was time for the hour and a half drive to Raleigh. I'd picked up quite a bit of stuff in my months in Wallace, and Elder Reynolds also had a lot, plus all of the stuff that had to be taken out. (Mostly the food.) So, the Malibu was riding pretty low. And got terrible gas mileage all the way to Raleigh. But we made it, and I got my new companion, Elder Rivas. He's from Utah and has been out for eight months. So we went and headed off to Clinton, where I was almost overwhelmed by the size. A whole whoppin 8,600 according to Google Maps. It did feel a lot bigger though. The apartment is interesting. We're next door neighbors to our branch president, and it's not an apartment. It's actually a little stand-alone house. That's really nice because we don't have to worry about loud neighbors or anything like that. 

Throughout the week I've mostly been getting to know the people we're teaching. We've got some really good people, and we set a baptismal date for someone named Cornelius. He's a really nice guy, he just needs to stop smoking. I also had my first online lesson with someone named Esther. She's been learning from the missionaries for a long time now, but just hasn't taken the steps to develop her faith all the way. We're trying to encourage her to read the Book of Mormon, as that's been the hardest thing for her to do. She's a college student with a kid, so it's understandable that she's busy. The lesson was just us reading the Book of Mormon with her, and that was interesting. Doing it over Facebook Messenger gives you kind of a weird seperation, and the connection dropped at one point. Still, she liked it and ended up coming to church. 

Speaking of Sunday, we went to someone's house who we'd set up a return appointment with only to find that there were a bunch of 20 ish year olds there as well. We were pleasantly surprised at how well they received us, and they had a lot of good questions about what it was like to be a missionary. Two of them were 20, and it was hard for them to think about what it would be like to just give up two years of your life to go and preach the gospel. This was made even better by the baliadas the mom had made us. We won't be able to keep teaching any of the kids because they had to go back to school the next day across NC, but hopefully they'll remember what they heard when other missionaries find them down the road. 

I think that's all the major news for this week, I'll keep you all informed!

(Oh, yeah, I hit my 18 month mark this week too. I forgot about that.)

28 January 2019

So, I am getting transferred out of Wallace and onto Clinton, North Carolina. Funnily enough, This is where my MTC companion is now leaving, continuing our string of areas that we've both served in. The weird part about all of this is that Elder Reynolds is also leaving. In fact, Wallace is getting shut down for a transfer. Someone didn't make it out of the MTC leaving us one companionship short, and Wallace got the ax for a transfer. Hopefully it'll be up again soon, we have some people we're concerned about, namely Diane and Tom. Both were doing well, but now they're going to be missionary-less for a while. They know some people in the branch, and we've passed on news of our leaving. The branch president said he's going to keep up with them, so I've got some hopes. But for interesting things of this week....

On Thursday we had a first for the mission: A Spanish missionary summit. Basically all of the Spanish missionaries all got together with the mission presidency and a "guest star," Sister Voils from The District, who now lives in the mission boundaries. For those of you who are unfamiliar, The District is a set of missionary training videos from a mission in Texas, and we all have to watch them. Anyways, in the meeting we basically discussed the unique challenges of Spanish work and how we could solve some of them. It was a really good meeting, and you could really feel the Spirit in the discussions. Afterwards, we had a lunch and it was really good to just be able to be with all of the Spanish elders and talk. They're some of my favorite people in the mission, and it's the first time that the "Furious Five" have gotten together all at once since starting our missions in the mission home. The Furious Five is the nickname that the group of five Spanish elders who are all starting and ending their missions together was given. I'm gladly a part of that, but it'll be interesting when we all leave. We'll have about a quarter of all the Spanish elders leaving at the same time, so there's going to be a lot of people who have to train. 

In other news, we went to the Mt. Zion branch for the first time yesterday. President Holland wanted us to go there to see if they would be receptive to having missionaries again, and they really liked having us there. It was a lot of fun to be with all of them, especially because I recognized some of them from helping out with the hurricane cleanup. We were going to start going every other week or so, but now there aren't any missionaries in Wallace to go there at all. The branch is disappointed, but they'll get some new ones soon. President Holland knows how excited they are now, and so I hope that they'll get the missionaries they want soon. They're a really great bunch of people.

And finally, we went around and started saying our goodbyes to the members around here. I'm really going to miss a lot of them, having been here for so long you really start to get close with them. So, pictures. 

 

 

This is the Furious Five all together, (from left) Elder Hull, Elder Schmidt, Elder Clement, Elder Rasmussen, and myself. I've served with all of them but Elder Rasmussen, and we're all hoping to be able to serve with each other in the time we have left.

 The Verdin family

 President Roper (his wife wasn't there for the picture)

 Matt, the one who gave me the bullet casing last week

 One of my favorite streets to go down in Wallace

 

And one of my favorite signs here. There's not a lot to get pictures of here, so you have to make the small things count.

21 January 2019

So transfers is next Tuesday, and so this might be my last week in Wallace. We'll find out on Saturday/Sunday as is the norm. Anyways, ....

This wasn't an incredibly eventful week. However, there is some good news. As of Saturday, Aaron (Diane's husband) was still holding on. We visited them and prayed with them. They had a few people over and she was still understandably distraught, so we didn't stay too long. We're hoping to be able to visit again tomorrow and see how they're doing. 

Speaking of Tuesdays, we got up with Tom again (it's been about a month) and he said that he wanted to be baptized. He still won't set a date, and we're still really confused about him. He pays tithing, but is still iffy about doing anything else. It's odd. We're also going to go by him tomorrow to read in the Book of Mormon with him and introduce him to Come, Follow Me. 

We've not been able to meet with Ozzie again lately, and he couldn't come to church because his car got totaled. Hopefully we can get a member to give him a ride again, but the member that he's friends with has to work every other Sunday. 

And in more fun news, we had a really nice lunch with a family yesterday. I mentioned that transfers were next week, and Matt (19, and we're good friends) went to the backyard as we were leaving. Then, we heard a huge bang, and Matt comes running around to give me a 30-06 casing from the bullet he had just fired as a way to remember him. That was pretty funny, and it scared his dog to death. As he did this, his mom apologized and said that it was his redneck coming out. Speaking of which, I think Wallace is the most Southern feeling place I've served. Raleigh just doesn't have that Southern feel, but it's very strong out here. I think it gets more and more the more rural of an area you're in. 

That's about it for the week, adios!

 

 Oh, the things you see driving around Wallace. Yes, that's a little girl riding on a giant tortoise. Don't ask me why.

 I believe we found the world's biggest Steeler's fan. The car is impressive, but the suit he wears is a sight to behold. I didn't take a picture of him, I thought it'd be weird.

 And finally, some awesome member decided to grace us with pizza, and pasta, and cinnamon twists, and soda. That was a good dinner. (And then lunch.)

 

14 January 2019

I had to start out with that because this last week has absolutely flown by at record pace. I don't know where all the time goes, really. We got to visit Diane this Wednesday and teach her about the Plan of Salvation. She has been recovering well from her surgery, but her husband is in really bad shape and isn't expected to live more than a couple more days. So, it would be great for y'all to continue praying for her this week. But in some cheerier news, we also had Zone Conference this Wednesday. That's always a bunch of fun. It still surprises me how funny President Holland is. It was a little strange afterwards because I was asked to translate between him and another elder in the zone who doesn't speak English yet. He and his comp were having some issues and President wanted to help him learn English faster, so I kind of ended up being a mediator in all of that. It was definitely one of the stranger moments I've had with President so far. I had wondered briefly why I had been picked to translate, then remembered that I'm the only Spanish assigned missionary in the Wilmington Zone. So I guess I'm really his only option. I did pretty well, but he had to rephrase a couple of things because he uses some more complex words. I've got a good grasp of most Spanish, but when you're throwing around words like "syntax," that's not something that I use often in Spanish. Or at all. So I was caught a little off guard with some of the words. But I got through it okay, and just hope that I don't have to have a repeat performance. But back to the work side of things, we found a couple of sisters the other day who are really excited to learn more, Lexi and Nicole. They've got a big religious background, and want to know more. One of them said she'd invite her boyfriend the next time we visit, so hopefully we'll be able to start teaching him as well. I think that's all of the news for the week, until next time!