27 May 2019

So there wasn't a huge amount of stuff that happened this week. Mostly interviews, another Spanish Summit, and we found a turtle.

Interviews just happened on Thursday, nothing too exciting. We had to drive to Fayetteville, but that was about it. Nothing too exciting, President just wanted me to keep going in Clinton. Transfers are next Tuesday, so we'll see what happens. 

The Spanish Summit was pretty fun. It was a bunch of instructions and roleplays. Nothing super exciting, but it's always great to get up with all of my old comps and talk about how we're all doing. 6 of the Spanish Elders all go home together next transfer, so that's always a big topic of conversation. Other than that, not too crazy. 

The turtle was interesting, we were driving back from the church and we saw a turtle in the middle of the road. So we stopped to pick it up and move it, and took a couple of pictures. It managed to scratch my hand a bit, which is why it's on the ground in one of the pictures. 

Well, I forgot to send stuff about people we're teaching. The only major development was with Elizabeth. She went to church again, and we found a better ride for her now. We had a lesson on Saturday with her and a senior missionary named Elder Penrod. It was about repentance, and went really well. She's getting closer to deciding to be baptized, and even threw away all her coffee! She's making a lot of progress really fast.

20 May 2019

It's not been too terribly rainy here, which has been nice. It would just make the humidity here even more unbearable. We just hit 95 degrees a couple of days ago, and the humidity is pretty bad too. I checked the weather for Mesa, and it's going to be hotter here all week than there. And again, the humidity. I'm just glad I don't have to deal with a second full summer here. Come to think of it, I only had to spend one August here. Not bad, huh? 

As for the tracting, I've done almost none of that recently. It's weird. President Holland is really encouraging us to move away from it as much as possible and use other ways to find new people to teach. It is still going pretty well, we started teaching a member's boyfriend this week. Come to think of it, I'm still not 100% sure that the member knows about it. We found him (Gio) trying to talk to his mom who had been taught about a year before, and he really is open to learning a lot. He was the one who told us that his girlfriend was a member, and the daughter of the first counselor. We also don't think that the dad knows, so we're trying to figure out our next step with him. It's an interesting situation. 

We're also teaching Nino and Maria, which is a very interesting situation. Nino got injured at work a few years back after falling and hitting his head, so now he has the approximate mental capacity of a six year old, according to Maria. Basically, we teach Maria and try to keep Nino out of trouble. A member named Brother Centeno lives in their neighborhood and has been helping us out with them. We tried to visit them last night, but Nino was trying to "fix" the hose and didn't want to come in, so we're just going to go back on Tuesday. Their 20 year old daughter is home from college, so we'll try to start teaching her as well. I'll be on exchange in another area on Tuesday, so I won't have too many details on how well it goes, but I'll do my best to get them. 

Also on Tuesday, (but before the exchange) we're going to have a second Spanish Summit. That's where all of the Spanish missionaries in the mission get together and basically discuss how to best do Spanish work, because President Holland is recognizing that it is fundamentally different than English work and wants us to have more specific training. So, you'll probably get some pictures from that as well. 

The only thing that I really have pictures of this week was an exchange with the Spanish Training Leaders, two experienced missionaries who are basically the Assistants but for just the Spanish missionaries. I went with Elder Crowton, and it was pretty fun. He and I go home together, and we spent a little time just talking about how to not get really, really trunky. And then Harry Potter. It was a mixed bag. 

Elizabeth is still doing well. I was on exchange for her last appointment, but they were talking about temple work and baptisms for the dead. She asked them about if her 6 week old daughter was in heaven, and they read Moroni 8 with her. She started crying and was super happy to know that she could see her daughter again. We talked with her the next day and she was still pretty emotional about it. I love seeing how much the restored gospel can bless people's lives, and I know that the Book of Mormon teaches us the truths that we need! 

I think that's about it for the week, see ya! 

(The picture is just us and the STLs petting a horse that's in our backyard. Ish.)

 

 

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!

 

 

29 April 2019

I've been doing my fair share of yard work this week, we've been helping clean up someone's yard. They have a tree filled section where there was an unbelievable amount of undergrowth and vines everywhere. After many hours of help, you can almost make it the 30 feet to the creek behind it. We were getting really close when on Thursday I had a bit of a scare. So you know how bad my poison ivy reaction is, right? Well, it turns out that there was some in the area I had been working, in some cases actually crawling on the ground. So we bailed quickly, used the hose and some soap to scrub my arms down really well on site and then we ran home and I showered thoroughly. So far, no reaction! So if you want a blessing of the Lord, there's a major one right there! I was fully expecting a hospital visit after that. But we're doing good over here.

22 April 2019

So this week the weather continued to be absolutely crazy. We were visiting some members on Friday morning when one of them told us to be careful because the weather was going to be really bad. Well, this was news to us. Apparently, there were some severe thunderstorms coming in and tornadoes were an option. Never ones to be beat, we took it and all the rain in stride. That is until, of course, we got a call a 5:30 locking us down in our house. So that made it a little less fun. The result was a lot of wind and rain with  tornado warnings and watches all around. Nothing but another fun day of weather in North Cackalacky!

In random news, Elder Lacey and I are both staying in Clinton for another transfer. That means that the chances that I finish my mission here are pretty high. 

And on to the people we've been teaching. Elizabeth went to church again this week, which was awesome. She's been going consistently and we've been working with her still. We had an appointment with her, but we had to cancel after a bunch of confusion after church. Still, we plan on setting a baptismal date with her in this next week. It'll be great!

Wayne has starting progressing again. We call and read the Book of Mormon with him every few days, and he really likes it. He says that we've been able to answer things for him in ways that no other church has been able to. He still needs some time and consistent work, but we'll keep it up with him. 

Damaris didn't go to church, and we stopped by after to see how she is doing. She said she doesn't like it because she doesn't really understand what is being said. Now, I could see this as a genuine concern if she hadn't turned down the offer of a translation headset. So, we're a little stuck with her.

Gio is also going slowly, he isi just really busy all of the time. When school is out we'll be able to go and visit him a lot more often. 

We have some newer people, Nino and Maria. They're a really nice couple, but they haven't been able to go to church because they have to take their daughter back to college in Fayetteville on Sundays. We'll try to work it out with them, and maybe have them bring their daughter to church with them as well! They're a bunch of fun, but a little hard to keep on track. We taught them the Plan of Salvation the last time we were there. Maria was really focused on it and seemed to like it quite a bit. Nino was all over the place. 

On Sunday we got to have an awesome Easter lunch that some of the members had made. We had steaks, chicken, rice, beans, rolls, potato salad and lemonade. Very filling, and very tasty. 

Saturday we had the branch Easter activity. That was a bunch of fun, and more good food. They had a dessert auction and and thing of Jello sold for $20. The bidding got pretty intense. I put in a bid of $1 a few time for some plates of cookies, but was unsurprisingly outbid every time. Someone evidently took pity on the missionary budget though, and gave us a plate of the cookies I had bid on! So just a good day overall. That was also when they had the Easter Egg hunt for the little kids, and they had laid them out all over the place. They also had a scavenger hunt, and they dragged us in on one side. That was pretty fun, but when we got to the chest that they had locked, the lock was jammed and we couldn't get the key in. Well, that ended up getting cut off. You know that all activities end best with someone breaking out the bolt cutters. And yes, they had them on hand because you know, it's North Carolina. But that was about all the fun from the activity. Time for pictures! 

15 April 2019

This week continued to keep it interesting here. Firstly, we were eating lunch with our district Wednesday at a Wendy's when some random Hispanic man walked up to us, and started talking. Now, there are three companionships in our district, and only one speaks Spanish. So the other two just watched silently as we had a five minute conversation with him, where we found out that he has gone to church twice and is neighbors with the first counselor! We set up another time to come by and talk with him, and started teaching both him and his wife! I wasn't personally there for this, I was on exchanges at the time. We have a new thing in our mission, the Spanish Training Leaders.  They're a couple of the more experienced Spanish missionaries who go around and help train and evaluate the missionaries, kind of like zone leaders but for all of the Spanish elders in the mission. They came and really helped us out with our miles as well, because I had to go to Fayetteville and do a baptismal interview for the sisters in our district. The STLs have unlimited miles, so we went in their car to Fayetteville. I really enjoyed the interview, the person being interviewed (Kenzie) is a 15 year old girl who has been going to church for over a year now, but just hasn't been taught before. She was super excited to be baptized and knew a lot more about the church than your average convert. The sisters say that she's actually already planning out her temple marriage with her member boyfriend in the Hawaii temple. It was a cool experience. After that, Elder Rasmussen and I went to try to contact a few people in a trailer park. It reminded me why I don't like trailer parks after dark. This huge dog started running at us while his owner shouted "No les hace nada!" (He won't do anything to you!) We stood there until he stopped with the owner chasing him and calling him to stop. The dog backed off, then came at us again when we had turned around. He called it off again, and we started walking past the truck (the STLs drive a weird car for missionaries) when the dog took off after us again. The owner was screaming again, "NO LES HACE NADA!" At this point, we weren't feeling very trusting in his ability to hold his dog in check and I ended up on top of the cab of the truck and Elder Rasmussen ended up in the bed. After that, the dog backed up and we decided that it was expedient that we leave the trailer park at that time. Reminds me of Alma 55:23. 

In other news, Elizabeth went to church again! She says that she likes it more and more every time she goes. We're going to invite her to baptism this week, and we're super excited for her! Damaris is also doing well. We invited her to be baptized, but she said that she wants to know if the Book of Mormon is true first. Still, we're going to keep working with her, and trying to involve her oldest kid, Joseph. We had a little object lesson with them where we copper plated a nail  and related it to the Atonement. It worked out pretty well, and actually managed to hold his attention for a while. 

I think that's about it for now, see y'all next week!

8 April 2019

Another conference has come and gone again! There were a ton of really great talks, and some of them are really going to help with missionary work. My top three were

1. Takashi Wada

2. Jeffrey R. Holland

3. Dieter F. Uchtdorf

Also, President Nelson calling all of the men of the church to repentance was pretty crazy.

But this week was pretty good. We had another lesson with Damaris about the Plan of Salvation and she had questions as always. Brother Navas is always a great help with her and her questions, and this time was no exception. She said she would be baptized if she came to know the church was true, which is exciting!

We also got a Book of Mormon referral named Elizabeth. Her brother is a member in Virginia, and said she'd be interested. We went over the Restoration and she really liked it. She watched Conference as well, and said it was definitely different than other churches she had gone to. Overall, she's doing really well! We're visiting her again this week.

And now for the fun story of the week: I got bit by a horse! So we were coming back from a service project and went around back where there is a large fenced off field, only to see a horse standing maybe 20 feet in. So, naturally, I called it over and pet it. Then, I took a picture with it. It apparently really wanted food, and at about that moment decided that my arm resembled it closely enough and went ahead and bit me. It wasn't much, but definitely got my attention. Not every day that you grt bit by a horse! That brings my animal bite count on the mission to

Dogs: 3

Cats: 1

Horses: 1

Fortunately, only two of these drew blood. Have a good week y'all!