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!