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!