Elder Sam Earnest: Queen City

Happy Easter from Queen City! Sounds like you guys had fun! My Easter was very rainy and foggy, but it was still pretty rad. We had dinner at the Grants and were able to teach a few people. Brother Grant is the young men's leader and is a super cool guy. They have 5 kids all under the age of 7 so we had a pretty hectic house too, reminded me of home. They also has a friend over who teaches contemporary dance at UNC and wanted to know everything about what Bend is like. Bend, Oregon seems to be pretty popular here, lots of people either are in love with it or are dying to go there soon. One of the guys we taught yesterday was pretty interesting; he claimed Muslim but believed that Christ was the son of God and was 100% convinced that the wheel in the sky described in Ezekiel's vision is a giant city that floats around in the sky and the United States is denying the existence of it. He did committed to read and pray about the Book of Mormon though so I'm pretty curious was our next appointment will be like. Also, thank you so much for the Easter package! I was looking pre slick in my new tie yesterday and it was really fun to build Legos. I'm not sure if told you guys already, but back in Danville I started a tradition of buying a Lego set the night before every baptism so maybe this is a sign

We had a pretty cool experience this week. Me and Elder companion tried something called Harvest where you lay your area's map on the ground, pray to know which half of the map has a prepared individual in it and then receive an answer. Then you pray to know which half of that half you need to go to and so forth until you get down to a few streets. Then you go there and pray for more advice and then go knock on a door you feel prompted to and find a new prepared investigator. So we tried this out and were lead to a really nice wealthy neighborhood, classic Providence. We didn't feel particularly prompted to go to any specific house so we started walking around and knocking. We went on getting rejected at every door for about an hour, and then went in for dinner. Both of us were pretty confused because we really felt we were lead there for a reason. I thought maybe Heavenly Father was just testing our obedience and wanted to see if we were willing to follow promptings. So two days later we were praying about where to go and I got this feeling we should go back to the area, so we did. We parked our car and walked up to the first house we saw and the guy listened to our message, took a Book of Mormon, and promised to come and visit our church soon. It was crazy awesome! So if you get a prompting to do something and it doesn't make sense or seem to bring any fruit do it anyways.

I also finished the Book of Mormon this week! Very exciting. I started over again today and this time I'm going to read through it very slowly, looking at all the footnotes and focusing a lot on how the Bible and Book of Mormon support one another.

This week we taught a guy that's super into Charlotte's African American history and I learned a ton! So Charlotte used to be an Indian trading post and played a big part in the Revolutionary War. When the British reported back after losing Charlotte to the colonists, they said "they were all over us like hornets" thus the Charlotte Hornets. The actual name of the city is named after Queen Charlotte who was an African princess that married into German Royalty so that's why they call Charlotte is called Queen City. All the street signs have a queens crown on it, check out the picture.

We're starting to see this area grow and I'm really excited! Danville was in a pretty similar situation when I got there so I'm really hoping I stick around Providence long enough to see it get to the point we had Danville at. Also I had horchetta for the first time at a recent convert's house this week! It was SO good. This family was baptized about a year ago and they are so converted to the church, it makes me want to baptize a family here.

Well we have district activity today so I'll write you guys next week!