28 December 2020

 This week has been pretty exciting. My companion`s mom sent out some filled Christmas stockings and we both got our Christmas packages in time. Before Christmas, members have been known to mispronounce my name, but one member topped it off with "Elder Batman". We got Christmas dinner provided for us, since we aren`t allowed to eat with members, which included ham, potatoes, vegetables, rolls, and apple pie. Also in the package was a Christmas brownie in a jar, which just had the dry ingredients, where we would add other ingredients and bake it. Funny story with the ham, when we were trying to bake it, we put it in the oven and took it out to find out it still wasn`t very warm. After putting it in the oven twice, we found out we didn`t notice the plastic sleeve around it. It didn`t burn the plastic much, and we heard as long as we cut the edge off the ham, we should be fine.

Christmas day was also pretty good. I got to call in the morning, and we got a present from some Sister missionaries that had two ties, with a request to wear it to a meeting we were having that day. We went to the meeting later, and had training and played a few games. We found out the ties the Sisters gave us matched their dresses and masks. We had our Christmas dinner that day, and later, had a devotional over Zoom with our mission, where we heard a few quick announcements and some spiritual thoughts, and then my Mission President put on It`s A Wonderful Life. The whole Christmas time was nice. We reached out to a member and he took our bike to a shop and got it fixed.

Despite the cold, I haven`t felt too cold when going outside while on a bike. The hills here feel really steep, so when biking uphill, it really can get difficult. When I see my trainer easily biking up hills, and me struggling and breathing hard over them, it reminds me that I got some things to improve on.

Another little surprise came yesterday. My companion is getting transferred. I wasn`t sure if he would, he`s been in the area for a while, but I am getting trained. We have a lot of missionaries coming in, so I think I heard more transfers are happening. I am going to get a new companion soon, who will do follow up training. The transfers should be happening tomorrow.

We got pictures of the matching ties with the Sister`s dresses and masks.

Well, that`s most of what happened this week. Bye!

 

 

22 December 2020

 This week has been a little interesting with quarantine. Me and my companion came out of quarantine on Thursday, and got to return to teaching people in person. Before that, we just had to use Zoom. Me and my companion also had a little celebration, my one month in the field, and his one year. We celebrated with cheesecake and ice cream. We still mostly teach members. We got to visit some non members, one of which said we could return later. A mission quarantine was declared by the Mission President. We can still visit members, but can't have rides or activities with other missionaries. In a Zone Conference over Zoom, we got to hear from Elder Gonzales of the Seventy. We also heard from our Mission President that instruments were now allowed on the mission, so long as they met certain requirements. We got a good amount of snow here. It was sticking around pretty well until yesterday and today when it was melting more. Despite the snow, the weather was surprisingly warm. Not too warm, but warmer than I thought it would be. On Sunday, we got to enjoy the Christmas programs. Today, for a District Activity, it was proposed to have a gingerbread house building competition over Zoom. However, none of the other companionships could find what they wanted, so me and my companion were the only ones that did it. It wasn't the greatest, but it stood. Things have been going good for the most part.

 

7 December 2020

 The week has been pretty good. I got my bike. It has been getting pretty cold, but it is hard to focus on the cold while biking. There are a lot of hills, so it is either trying to bike up something steep, or praying your brakes will stop you in time, before you crash. Sometimes my trainer has to wait for me at the top of some hills because I haven't gotten used to biking uphill yet. We are waiting on a member to respond about some of the issues the bike has because we don't have a bike repair shop nearby that I know of.

We have been giving a lot of messages to members. There was a non member family last week we were supposed to teach, but one of them got sick. We have been trying to stay busy, but there are some nights where appointments cancel and you don't know what to do for the night.

Well, that is most of what has happened this week. I think we are giving a Christmas message to a non member today. Thanks for the emails!

30 November 2020

 Hi! It's been an eventfull week, the first full one in the mission. Things have been going good. I got to help my companion give some messages to members, and we are starting the Light the World message. Thanksgiving was good. We met as a district and got trained, then had a lunch we brought and played some games. Later we had a devotional over Zoom where the Mission President talked to us briefly and then we watched The Other Side of Heaven: Part Two. We were provided a Thanksgiving dinner of turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, vegetables, and pumkin pie, which we microwaved before eating. It was pretty good.

It has been a little hard to teach new members because the member population is so high. I think I taught one non member so far, she is young and wants to be baptized. I think I might be able to teach a non member tomorrow.

It is getting a lot colder here. I'm still waiting for my bike to arrive, and I hope it arrives today.

Well, that is most of what has happened this week!

23 November 2020

 

 Hey mom, its been a bit of a crazy week. On Tuesday we arrived, filled out a bit of paperwork, got in a mission van, had lunch went to the mission home, and got trained for about two hours. We had pizza for dinner then a testimony meeting before we left for a hotel for the night. We got up the next day, had breakfast, and headed back out to meet our companions. I got assigned to Elder Gilbert, who is the district leader. We got to do a little bit of shopping that day because I didn't bring food for the week, but I was a little overwhelmed and didn't think too much about what I was buying. The food for the week has been a little repetitive, and I look forward to shopping today. I got assigned to the Cedar Hills mission. My trainer told me this mission was kind of hard, because I heard the member population was about 95%.

For most of the week, we have been giving Member Missionary Messages to members about Temples and the Gathering of Israel. We leave them with invitations to help the work by sharing the message with others, nonmembers.

The next message we are supposed to share is going to be a Light the World message, which we start after Thanksgiving. We have a discussion with a nonmember today, the first with a nonmember I will do. She is young and is about to be baptized. We got to do two service projects last week.

We don't use cars in our mission, and we were waiting until today to pick up my bike, so there has been a lot of walking. Utah in Cedar Hills is, you know, hilly. Lots of hills, some of them are really steep. It does give good opportunity for pictures because you can actually look up and down at places. We also have these big mountains around the area.

Our mission is allowed to visit member homes still. A lot of missions don't have that, and I heard we were allowed to because we stuck strictly to the covid rules. It also means that we are not allowed to accept food from families. There was one point when a family offered us a store bought cake, they talked about how they hadn't touched it or anything... I think I felt a physical pain when we declined. They insisted, and if not for my companion, I would have completely caved.

The area has also been really cold. We do some of our messages at night, and with the long walks, the cold gets kind of intense. I think my coat is completely insufficient for this weather.

Well, that's most of what has been going on. Thanks for the emails!

 

 

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!

1 July 2019

This is officially my third to last P-Day. It still feels like going home is forever away. I don't know quite when that will sink in. Anyways, on to a pretty brief email.

So the missionary work of this week was kind of interrupted and overshadowed by two big things: one, we just absorbed a large chunk of the now-dissolved Virginia Chesapeake Mission, giving us two new stakes and a about 50 more missionaries. That's pretty exciting, we have a mission wide conference tomorrow in Wilmington to meet the new ones. 

The second big thing was the more interruptive. We went on exchanges, and when I came back, my comp and the other missionary were gone. So we called them, only to have Elder Shore (the other missionary) answer and say he was following the ambulance carrying Elder Curtis to the hospital. Soon after waking up, my companion had a seizure, hitting his head and having some pretty bad memory loss. We spent most of the day at the hospital, and he was ordered by the mission nurse to rest and take it easy for a few days. He's better now, but as a result not too much has happened this week. The weirdest part about this was the striking similarity to my training, where I come back from exchanges and my companion is injured/injured worse. Even weirder, I'm in the same area as my training. But yeah, because of that I don't have a lot to talk about this week. Next week should have plenty though!