2 July 2018

So, the city I'm in is called Knightdale, and has the nickname of "The Dale." No one is entirely sure why. I'm staying here for our weird 7 week long transfer. Though that is because of the first piece of big news.

So, the biggest news for this week is that we officially have our new mission president! He is President Matthew Holland, and yes, he is the son of Jeffrey R. Holland. We still have yet to meet him, but we're going to have a special welcome Zone Conference on Wednesday to meet him. We're all super excited, but a little sad to see President and Sister James go. I'll miss them! Things around here are probably going to be pretty different. Unlike President James, the Hollands have their family out with them. (The James' kids had all grown up and moved out already.) So that means that we likely won't be able to see them as much as President James, and that the assistants are going to have a much harder job. They're going to have to shoulder all of the responsibilities that President Holland can't because of spending time with his kids. One of our assistants, Elder Hunsaker, already looks stressed enough. He extended for a transfer to make the transition smoother for the Hollands, but he already was just stretched to the limit. Apparently they have some nights where they don't sleep at all, just keep on working and dealing with all of the problems out here. So, whenever anyone asks if I would want to be assistant, the answer is no. Definitely not. No way. I already have issues with feeling like I get enough sleep as it is. I'm just about always tired out here, and a nap sounds really good all the time. 

Anyways, we had a pretty cool week in terms of people who we got to teach. We had a return appointment with someone named Luz, but she wasn't there. Instead, we found her daughter and got to have a pretty cool talk with her. She later told us that she whenever anyone from a church comes to their door, she just says that she's atheist and not interested. However, she let us talk and invited us to come back again. So that was pretty cool. Her mom wasn't there again, but we got to talk to her and her little brother outside. We taught them the Restoration, and they said that every other church was boring, but we made it interesting. We kind of wanted to say, "It's not that we make it interesting, it's just an interesting message! We have the same church that Jesus Christ established on the earth again! Yeah it's interesting!" They said that they would go to church, but their mom didn't let them. We're trying to get in contact with their mom again  so we can teach her and explain why it is that we want to teach and help her kids. And hopefully bring her along, too. One more cool thing. We ran into a guy who was selling things door to door, and it turns out that he and Elder Hull (my comp) have a mutual friend in Texas! Crazy, right? Anyways, that's the week for me.

25 June 2018

Well this week things are starting to look up with the work! Basically everyone (including the Zone Leaders) have given up any hope of success in the area I'm in right now. When they found out my comp was staying here another transfer, they both said they were so sorry for him. This place doesn't have a good reputation. However, we had some really cool experiences! It started out with finding a family Sunday night of last week and being able to meet with them multiple times this week. The mom (Naomi) has been going through a really rough time, she recently had a son murdered in Mexico. We're trying to help her understand the Plan of Salvation and that she can be with her son again as his mother. It's really great to see how much the gospel can touch people. She seems to be doing much better and being happier, even though she's been pretty sick the whole week, which is why she couldn't come to church. We've also been working with another one of her adult sons, Miguel, and he's doing a lot better than we thought that he would. We left him with  something to read from the Book of Mormon (Alma 40) and we dropped by last night to see how he had done with reading before we came by today to teach them some more. (He had to work Sunday morning.) To our surprise, when he started talking about something entirely different than the Spirit world. We asked him where he was reading, and he said Ether 15! It wasn't quite what we had hoped (where he had just read from Alma 40 to Ether 15) but rather that somehow the assignment got mixed up. However, it ended up being exactly what he needed! He read Ether 15:3 to us and said that it was exactly what was going on with his mom! ("and his soul mourned and refused to be comforted," Ether 15:3, last lines) So that was really cool! We're way excited to talk with them tonight again! He said that he had a hard time reading in the physical book, so we downloaded the app onto his phone and showed him how to use it. He was really excited with that and said he was going to read more! Way cool! 

And in other news, our mission president is going home this week. It's pretty clear that he's been kinda trunky. He (and especially Sister James) have been very excited to spend time with their grandchildren. I had my last interview with them on Thursday, and that was really cool too. I'm going to miss them, but I'm glad I had the privelege of serving with them for about 10 months! The really cool part is that our next mission president (coming in on Thursday or Friday) is Elder Holland's son! We're super excited for that, and I get to have him for over a year! I hope that Grandpa (as Sister James referred to him, referencing how the new mission home is going to have a guest room) comes to visit sometime and just happens to want to talk with the missionaries too! It's going to be a little weird having a mission president who actually has a family out here, we think it'll make the assistant's job more stressful because President Holland will also have to spend time being a father rather than just being able to be with the missionaries full time. Still, I'm looking forwards to the experience! 

So random thing about knocking doors in trailer parks: you can find a TON of change just scattered everywhere. I know an Elder who collected more than $70 in 2 transfers. It's pretty crazy. Apparently change collecting is a common thing with missionaries out here. 

And in other random news, being with my MTC companion again has been way good for my morning workout. We just ran 4 miles this morning, and we usually do three every day. We would do more, but we have time constraints on exercise. Still, it's not even hard to run anymore, and I've actually been able to outrun him in both long distance and sprinting! It's cool to see how much the Lord blesses you in every way out here, even physically so that we can have energy to do His work! That's still kind of hard, I'm tired every day!

I think that's the news of this week, love y'all! 

Elder Battraw

The pictures are first, our district just being crazy at Zone Conference (like normal), second a random sword we found while tracting, and finally, the famous fridge of the wife of our ward mission leader. Even if you don't want to give her your magnet tag, she'll take it. If she liked you, but she's basically every Spanish missionary's mom that goes through Raleigh. It's their house where my trainer had his last meal on the mission after his crash, and you can see his tag there too. (Elder Rolph)

 

 

18 June 2018

So this week was just a whole bunch of finding. On Friday we went out and knocked all day, but we found some really cool people. And 8 of them! We started out in the morning trying to knock in the only apartments close to us in our area, and we found some cool people then, including some people who are vacationing here from Honduras. It was pretty cool. It's getting a lot harder to find people right now because of the World Cup. People aren't answering the door, refusing to turn off the tv, and just generally not paying attention. In one house we asked them if we could turn off the tv and they said sure! So they then just turned down the volume. So helpful. It made our job much harder because the Spirit isn't quite as strong with two Hispanic announcers going crazy on tv. We'll still keep trying, but it's also hard to stay focused with a soccer game going on behind you. We have a few investigators who we've been trying to work with, but they're very Catholic. And believe that "anybody who talks about God is good, so it doesn't matter where we go." You don't know how often we hear that. We have to really go on in the Apostasy about how none of the churches were true and taught the doctrine of men, and go way in depth (with an object lesson on priesthood authority being lost and restored) with the Restoration to have a hope of them understanding what we're trying to say. Still, it could be worse. We're still finding alright. And in other news, we're going to have a new mission president in July, the son of Elder Holland. That'll be cool. Also, random moment from last night: we were visiting some of our investigators with our Ward Mission Leader and one of them wasn't answering, so my companion told him to "use his magic knock." So he knocked and opened the door. He told us that he thought that it was still locked, but it was funny nonetheless. We don't think that they noticed, but they did answer the door after that and we had a good lesson. So he does in fact have a magical touch for knocking doors!

That's all for this week! 

 ​The sorts of things we do out here. Yes, Mom, it's perfectly safe. Mostly.​

​It's been getting toasty out here. 

11 June 2018

*This week's title brought to you by Elder Lowe.

Thanks Elder Battraw, 

This week was rather eventful despite me actually not knowing what went on in the wonderful life of Elder Battraw, but knowing him it was probably very inspiring, and dramatic. I can imagine that he must have talked to lots of Hispanics and knocked lots of doors. He's still trying to find more people to teach, but is really excited to be able to spend some time with friends on P-day. Hopefully His Lesson With Jose goes well, I don't know if he's teaching a Jose, but he probably is, so for now we will call him Hermano Lopez. He has also probably been eating too much because Hispanics love to feed you a lot, which makes Elder Battraw kind of self conscious, but he get's over it.

That's all the news in Elder Battraw's life from the perspective of Elder Lowe

Back to you Elder Battraw

Thanks a lot Elder Lowe! 

So yes, that was the brain child of Elder Lowe. Lovely man, isn't he? We started off the week by destroying a pair of my pants. A very eventful game of volleyball that was. We had a FHE with some of our investigators and then we played some volleyball with a really high net. I could barely touch the top of it jumping. Apparently that's just how they do it in wherever they're from, I forget. I spent some time and patched them today, but I'm not too sure how well they'll hold up. 

Sorry, I don't have much emailing time today but we also had a talent show as a zone activity today. Some were interesting, like drinking 3 water bottles in 10 seconds and then throwing it up again. On purpose. Not many people liked that one. We also had a watermelon smashed by our zone leader's head, and I juggled uneventfully. Sorry, I don't have more time this week, but that's what zone activities do!

4 June 2018

For some reason, my email is limiting me to sending this to 4 people, so spreading it to others who'd like to hear would be great.

This was probably the hardest week that I've had so far in my mission. Friday was really the hardest part of it all. We've not found many investigators this week, and so we had a big day of tracting planned out. 7 hours of it. From this, we ended up with only 8 doors being opened at all, 3 Hispanics, and only one of those was interested at all in learning more. However, Saturday helped make up for that. It was one of the best days I've had out here. It started out by going out tracting from 10-12 and not being able to find anyone who would open the door, let alone Hispanics. So we decided to go store contacting. We found a little Mexican store, and walked around it for a minute. A girl who worked there walked up to us and asked if we needed any help. (In English) I responded in Spanish asking the price of a drink. She told me, but then commented on how good my Spanish was and asked how I learned. We then talked about how we were serving missions for our church and taught her a bit about the Restoration. She wasn't super interested, but we gave her a card with the church address and time it started on it, as well as our number. As Elder Hull was checking out, the lady at the counter asked us how we learned Spanish and so we went through the whole missionary spiel again. She immediately turned to the girl we'd been talking to earlier and said something to the effect of how she needed to go to church because she hadn't been in a long time. She then told us to give the first girl a card from our church, and then she demanded that the first goal go to our church and how she would go with her.  We think she was the first girl's mom, but we weren't sure and didn't ask. They didn't make it to church this week, but we hope they'll make it soon. After lunch, we went out to go knock some more doors, but decided instead to go and visit someone who we hadn't been able to get up with before. As we're walking down this trailer park, an ice cream truck is driving by us on the street. Right after he passed us, he leaned out the window and yelled, gesturing to the other side of the truck, "Hey, c'mere!" Fearing getting yelled at, but hoping for ice cream, we walked around it. Inside was a Hispanic man dressed as Mario who asked if we wanted slushies. We told him that we didn't have any money with us, but he said, "Es gratis!" We glady accepted our free slushies. As he was giving us them, a little kid who Elder Hull recognized as the investigator's nephew walked up to get some ice cream. We asked if Christian (the investigator) was home and he told us that he was. So we went and talked to him about baptism, and he said that he would read the Book of Mormon and pray about it and Joseph Smith and if he should get baptized. That was pretty great. We also found out that his member friend was taking him to church the next day as well. We knocked doors for a while and then headed to dinner at the chapel, which was followed by a musical devotional from a missionary who had served here about 4 years ago. It was really good. Afterwards, we went back out to Knightdale and were about to knock some more, but felt like we should go visit someone else who had previously brushed off our return appointment. We did, and not only was he there, he invited us right in! We got to talk to him and his wife about the Restoration, and by the end he asked how could get a Book of Mormon. He was surprised when I handed him the copy I was holding, and promised that he would read and pray about it. He also said that he'd go to church. He didn't show up, but we have another appointment with him to check up with him on. That finished up the night! It was pretty great. 

Earlier in the week I went on exchanges with another elder in my district. It was pretty interesting. We only found one person who was interested, but we found some very interesting people. The first one we met was a Satanist. That was very odd, and neither of us knew quite how to respond to him. He said that he was too busy to talk, and wished us a good day. Of course, we could see the game running in the background. Very busy. Later that night, we got caught by a group of drunk and possibly high people. One of them kept asking us if smoking weed was a sin, another kept spouting off about how Elon Musk was a prophet because he was going to take people to Mars, and the other one was mixed between yelling at the prophet one about him not being a prophet, how what he liked to do was drink, smoke, swear a lot, and **** *******, telling us how he used to be a Jehovah's Witness but now wasn't, and him telling us that we hadn't answered his questions. We had answered them to the best of our ability, but they were really weird and didn't make much sense at all. We excused ourselves from that as expiditiously as possible, but it took a while to extricate ourselves from that. It was a mix between unnerving because it was a drunk man getting up in our faces and really funny because of the kind of things that the Elon Musk prophet one was saying, which also included how "weed couldn't be bad because they found it growing on King Solomon's grave." That was just a weird day. Other than that, I can't think of much more that happened this week. Oh yeah, we did  find an abandoned lawnmower thrown into a creekbed and Christian just had his bearded dragon hanging out on his porch. And the closest parking job I've ever seen without them touching. A thick piece of paper might not make it through that. 

29 May 2018

Sorry, this one is going to be really short. I have to type this on a phone keyboard today and I can't send it out to the whole group of people that I normally do. But yes, I'm back in Raleigh and it was tons of fun showing up and getting to talk with everyone again. What was really cool was one of my recent converts offered to drive a long ways just to bring us to his house so we can have dinner with him. It's great to be back! I'm actually living in and working in Knightdale, but we still go to Raleigh 3rd ward. Other than that, not much has been going on. We've spent a lot of time tracting and we found some cool people. We also have had to go to many more meetings now, but we finally have the whole district leader thing figured out. Kinda. We'll get it eventually. The picture is from an ancient artifact that we didn't know still existed, the rumored "Time Clock."

21 May 2018

So the big news of this week is that transfers is tomorrow, and I've already found out that I'm going back to Raleigh 3rd ward! I'm going to be in the 3C area that I've already served in, but only for two weeks. That was after the lovely bike crash that took out my trainer, and I'm going to be serving with my MTC companion again, which is really funny. Partly because that's who I was with for those two weeks as well. So it'll be very interesting being together for the third time, in the same area. The downside to that is that I'm going to be co-district leader with him. That is more responsibility than I want to have to deal with, especially because it involves me speaking a lot more in public than I like. Which is at all, so... I'm sure I'll be able to live through that. It'll be great! The way I got told scared me though. We got a text from President James late Saturday night that said to call him as soon as we could. Which either means that something terrible has happened or that you're going to train, have a leadership position or serve with someone who is generally known to be a hard missionary to get along with. None of those sounded desirable, and so I was just praying that he'd ask for Elder Turner. He did not. And that was when he told me that. But hey, at least I get to know how I'll serve with and where I'm serving, so that's going to be great.

In other news, we just knocked a whole bunch this week. It's been raining, so driving in trailer parks is more like driving a submarine. It's pretty interesting. We found some pretty great people who seem like they're going to have a lot of potential. We got to share the Restoration with them, and one of them was just so great. His name is Ricardo and he just seems perfect! The Spirit was so strong! There's a lot of stuff that's going to be going on next transfer here. 

And then just random stuff. 

 

These are the things that you see in Fayetteville.


Probably my favorite family in Raeford, the Rentas.


That pie that we won and finally got.

And the best piece of beef jerky that I've ever seen. This is because my comp felt pressured into buy it because the only exit that the store had was past the cashiers. It was pretty funny, but all he's done is hung it up on the wall, not eat it. In the package, of course.
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