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.)