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!