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.