16 January 2018

Well sorry I couldn't email yesterday, all the libraries were closed for MLK Jr. Day. So here it is today in a very abbreviated form. It was a cool week with a pretty good amount to do. We were always busy running to appointments, and the last few days we were going out and prepping our investigators for the new people coming in, because our area is getting whitewashed. Well, kind of. It's getting pinkwashed. That's when the sisters come in and replace the Elders, which is kind of good just because we had a ton of investigators who are single women and we couldn't catch up to them without a male member so it got pretty hard. But we have a few people who are progressing really well. I really hope that they continue to progress and that the Sisters keep up with them. We have a few really good members as well that love to go out with us, so hopefully they'll be able to keep that up. Sorry this couldn't be longer, but I promise I'll do better next week!

8 January 2018

So some snow happened this week. Probably with the worst timing it could have, but it was fun to drive in. The cars were grounded, but then President James decided that there was nothing, NOTHING going to stop him from doing interviews that day. So we got to drive around in the snow for about two hours that day, and still had district meeting because we were all there anyways. At the time, I was on exchanges in Pittsboro, which as far as we could tell, was one of the worst hit places in our mission. We know at least that it was the worst in the district. We were out the previous night and it had just started to snow when we got a call from our district leader that they were probably going to ground the cars soon and so we need to head back to the apartment right away. Well, turns out that yes, the cars did get grounded after we got back and so we were on foot for the rest of the night. We found about the only cool thing in Pittsboro, a 9/11 memorial. (It's even smaller and more spread out than Siler City.) But then the next morning, we got a call from President James that we were still going to have interviews and that the cars were mobile again for that. By this time, we had walked about a mile and a half to get to somewhere to knock doors and had to turn back again to make it to interviews/District Meeting in time. So that was fun.

Yesterday we had a cool experience with an investigator. His wife is a recent convert, and he has been investigating for a while(ish) but hasn't ever really felt the desire to do things like go to church, read the scriptures and pray. However, we found out that it was him who pushed his wife to go that morning, and that he had been reading the scriptures, had some questions about it, and that he had talked to the stake president while he was there and had a really cool moment where he felt that God had answered some of his questions! It was really awesome. We're hoping that he'll continue to have these sorts of experiences, and that he can quit smoking.

Well, transfers are coming up this next week and I might not be in Siler City anymore, so let's see how it goes!

 That 9/11 Memorial, it was helicoptered in from New York, and that thing in front of it says the distance and direction to Ground Zero.​

 ​All the way back to the ward Christmas Party, my district leader and his companion dressed up as Wise Men because some people backed out last minute.​​​

 ​A sample of the snow that we had overnight. ​

 ​When you're in a small town that isn't prepared for snow, they use what they have.

2 January 2018

We recently had announced out here that we are getting a new mission president. President James is going home in July (I think) and we will have Matthew Holland, President of UVU and son of Jeffery R. Holland coming in. It will be interesting, and they've already met and President James is hyping us up for him saying how awesome he'll be. I hope so. Anyways, sorry for no warning on not sending out an email on Tuesday, I found out on Friday that Monday would be a regular work day because President James said that everyone would be home with their families. Well, he was right about that. The only problem is that no one would answer their door until two. Anyways, back to the start of the week. On Wednesday, we had a really cool experience with a former investigator that we had never taught before. We came by with a member who shared his conversion story and we taught a really powerful lesson with. By the end of it, the investigator was in tears and acknowledged that she had felt the Spirit and that it was telling her that she should go to our church. Unfortunately, when Sunday came, she wasn't there. There's always next week, but sometimes you want to take away people's agency and make them go with you because you know it's the best for them. Still, it's their choice and like it says in our purpose, we are to "Invite others to come unto Christ," not force them. We'll still work with her and make sure that she recognizes that the Spirit is there whenever we are and whenever she reads in the Book of Mormon as well. Hopefully she'll continue to progress. (By the way, I do apologize again Mom, no pictures because I don't have my camera with me and I can't recount the week too well because I left my bag in the apartment, which also had my camera. I never am quite ready for P-Days.) One more experience that stands out from this week is some work we did with a less active member. (Mostly because it happened yesterday.) But we had met this less active and he was pretty well to do, so we asked if he could help us. We're both new missionaries right out of training who haven't been able to do a whole lot of teaching in English (this is a split English/Spanish area) and we're trying to work on teaching. Could they help us? It turned out that he was very willing and so was his nonmember wife. We went over and taught the Restoration, and they gave a lot of very helpful feedback about how we could improve and how we could adapt to the area, because there a lot of Southern Baptists and Methodists. (The member was a Methodist, his wife is a Southern Baptist.) So that really helped. At the end of the lesson, we invited his wife to read the Book of Mormon, and she accepted for real, not just as a practice. So that was pretty cool. We're going back next Monday evening and working with them some more. That's all I have for the week, so have a good one everyone! And thanks to the ward for the letters, I just got those on Thursday!

26 December 2017

Sorry for not giving y'all a warning about me not being able to email yesterday. I didn't know until yesterday that I couldn't have just about any time, but the mission president said we had a little time today. Well, Christmas was great! We opened presents with some other missionaries and I did really appreciate the gifts Mom! After presents, we went over to Bishop's house to make our calls. After that, we hung out for a few hours with them (it was both p day and Christmas, so...) and had a breakfast. They had a basketball shooting game that I went head to head with Bishop on, and lost. Just barely. He took that as an opportunity to go over again how Hoosiers don't have anything on Tar Heels when it comes to basketball. After that, we were over at another member's house for dinner and some games. We had biscuits with gravy, turkey, ham, and nachos. It was pretty interesting. The only game we ended up playing was Quelf, which was still pretty fun. After that, we were given the chance to watch a church movie, so we watched 17 Miracles. It was really weird after nearly 5 months without any tv.

The rest of the week has been a little strange. We haven't been able to get up with one of our investigators for a while, and we just found out why. Her husband (who she kicked out and tried to get a restraining order against because he beat her and their children) is back against her will. And we also now have a death threat against us if he ever sees us come over again. We'll just have to be a little more careful. (Okay Mom, a lot more careful.) But the finding here is still going strong! Everyone is super open to listen, especially around Christmas. Hopefully it'll tide over after Christmas as well. We're trying hard, but it's been a bit hard to keep up with some of them around now because everyone is leaving for other places. I'm pretty sure it'll all calm down after this season now, so we'll be able to work normally again.

I wasn't expecting a chance to email today, so I wasn't ready to upload pictures. However, I'll have plenty next week. Bye until then!

18 December 2017

Well, nothing too spectacular happened this week. So much so that I forgot to get pictures. (Sorry Mom.) So here's a picture of Elder Lowe (not my companion) looking surprised.

​The most exciting thing that happened this week was probably our top investigator who was going to be baptized this week texted us and said that she was going to follow her culture of worshiping saints rather than be baptized. Either that or that was last week and I simply don't remember when it happened. Still, it wasn't fun. On Mondays we don't have anything to do out here, so my companion and I played Risk where I lost 13 consecutive dice rolls in a row. I was done after that. Today we're having a zone activity that none of us are excited about because it'll basically just be hanging out at a stake center really far away that we don't have enough miles to go to. When we got to this area on December 6th, the previous elders had already used 694 of the 1100 miles we're allowed to go for the month in the car. It wasn't for good reasons, either. They just spent the last few days driving around the area (which is pretty sizeable) visiting members, hanging out with them, and saying goodbye. So we don't have any miles left for the car, and zone activities are mandatory. Hopefully the car doesn't get taken away. We've already explained the situation to the assistants, so probably not.

Friday was pretty fun. We had a ward Christmas party that we invited tons of investigators to, but none of them showed up. However, we did have a less active/part member family in our area show up, so we got to give them an impromptu tour of the building, which is brand new (less than two months of use) and we got a return appointment with them. Hopefully it'll work out well. We did a nativity where the other elders had to be two of the wise men.

On Sunday we had a Christmas program. It was really cool, and I got to sing in Spanish with the rest of the Spanish group. We had two investigators there and they loved it.

Well, that's all of the news I have for this week. Have a great week!

11 December 2017

So transfers happened this week. I am now in Siler City with Elder Schmidt. He seems like a good guy, and this is a really crazy area. It's a small city with a population of only 8,000 people, but the work is going so much better than in Raleigh. We had one of our bikes stop working when the tire went flat and then we were on foot for the next two days. The most crazy thing is that that was when we started finding like crazy. 9 new investigators in two days! That's a week or two of work in Raleigh! Also, we somehow managed to make it to all of our lessons with some crazy timing. Twice in one day, if we had showed up on time rather than the 10-15 minutes late we did, we would have missed them. We also got to talk to two less actives, both of whom went to church yesterday. One of them works at the Search and Rescue station here, and when we showed up, we ended up teaching his junior trainee the Restoration as well. We're working with someone who has a baptismal date on the 23rd, and apparently she hadn't been taught the Word of Wisdom. You need to follow that for at least two weeks leading up to your baptism, and we didn't get to talk to her until the day that marked two weeks. So we talked to her about it and committed her to living it, and she said that she didn't even do any of those things anyways so it wouldn't be a problem for her at all! It's been a fantastic start to this transfer. Aside from an exchange that happened the very first day of the transfer so I didn't really even get to know my companion until day two, it's been pretty standard. We have some really great members out here, and it seems like a solid ward. The only problem is that I was asked to translate on my first Sunday out here. Which reminds me of the weird thing about our companionship: We're both right out of training, as green as can be. Which never happens. The even weirder part about it is that I'm the senior companion. We don't know why, because there can be co senior companionships, but somehow I am senior. Even though technically he's had about 7 more hours of being in the actual field due to all that mess from me trying to get out here on that plane. (He came from the Provo MTC and skipped all the plane drama.) So yeah, I don't know what I'm doing some of the time, but we're doing well! Also, the weather here has been crazy. It was in the mid 60's one day, and then we had the first snow that lasted for two days. Nothing really stuck though, which was sad.

Elder Allred, my second trainer because of the bike accident

The first snow here in Siler City

And this was the first time I saw Elder Schmidt cooking.

​

4 Decemeber 2017

So this week has been interesting. Basically, I was just trying to figure out how to work in a trio for a whole week before we're all getting transferred. Well, except for trainer #2. He's going home. Meaning I'm sending home two of my first three companions. Yay for trunky training! One of my companions in this trio was my MTC companion. Actually, with my MTC companion, we're in the same district. So we saw each other a lot, even before we went into the trio together. We've joked that we might be serving our entire missions around each other. Anyways, we're going to figure out who our new companions are tomorrow. I think that they intentionally have PDay as the day before transfers so the family is in the dark for a week before they get to find out who their missionary is with. It's been fun in the trio, but it's also made me have a very strange start to the mission. By the time I get out of training, I'll be on companion #4 in my third transfer. I'll also have had two trainers, and a "brother" in the mission in two transfers. Not the normal start. All I know right now transferwise is that I am leaving the Raleigh zone, but I don't know where to or who I'll be with. So hopefully I can tell all that next week.

For whatever reason, all of the cars out here are dying for whatever reason. Either they're getting transferred out of our zone or there have been minor crashes that do a ton of damage somehow and completely cripple the car. So we've been on bikes again. It's not been too bad, but we have to cover two areas, so there's been a whole lot of biking all over Raleigh. My legs have never been more sore. And it turns out that my bike was actually damaged in the crash that sent trainer #1 home. My rear derailleur is pretty badly bent, so I need to fix that too. It kind of works, but it's threatening to pop off at any moment. Hopefully I can spend some time working on that today. 

In terms of the work, it's been a little frustrating. Our boundaries have already changed once, so we got an investigator from the Zone Leaders, but they're changing again so we're losing them again. Also, our most promising investigator was super drunk when we last met with him. We ended up switching our lesson plan to the Word of Wisdom, but he didn't want to talk with us because our Spanish wasn't good enough for him while he was drunk, so he spent the entire lesson interrogating the member we had with us. He was asked how old he was, where he was from, and a few other questions. The big problem was that he couldn't remember what he'd asked, so he did it over and over again. We set another appointment, and hopefully he'll be sober for that. Other than that, it's been a ton of knocking doors. We spent six hours knocking doors on Saturday, and only 5 people opened the door. None of them wanted to listen. However, yesterday, we decided to try a potential who wasn't there for their return appointment, and we found them home with another six people who all wanted to listen! It was super awesome, and we got to teach them all. Hopefully they'll all be progressing well. 

I think this is all the news for the week, so have a good one everyone!

 

Actually, with my MTC companion, we were in the same district. So we saw each other a lot. We've joked that we might be serving our entire missions around each other. Anyways, we're going to figure out who our new companions are tomorrow. I think that they intentionally have PDay as the day before transfers so the family is in the dark for a week before they get to find out who their missionary is with. It's been fun in the trio, but it's also made me have a very strange start to the mission. By the time I get out of training, I'll be on companion #4 in my third transfer. I'll also have had two trainers, and a "brother" in the mission in two transfers. Not the normal start. All I know right now transferwise is that I am leaving the Raleigh zone, but I don't know where to or who I'll be with. So hopefully I can tell all that next week. It's got to be fun with the other car down and so many places to go. We have that same problem here. For whatever reason, all of the cars out here are dying for whatever reason. Either they're getting transferred out of our zone or there have been minor crashes that do a ton of damage somehow and completely cripple the car. So we've been on bikes again. It's not been too bad, but we have to cover two areas, so there's been a whole lot of biking all over Raleigh. My legs have never been more sore.