President's Day

Hey everyone...

Yesterday was Presidents' Day so p-day got moved to today. They wanted us out proselyting because people would be home from school and work.  Sadly most of the people we teach are not in school or employed. Sunday night it snowed and then all day yesterday it was freezing rain which meant we couldn't use the car because the roads were a sheet of ice. So we walked around and delivered cookies and had FHE with the Webb's.

Yesterday we were talking to Quill and she said she's going to make me some real "ghetto black southern food" before I leave. They said they're making pig's feet, chitlins, turnip greens, fried okra, ox tails, and pig's face. Like literally the face of a pig. That should be an interesting night for my digestive system...

Johnny was in the hospital all last week because his leg got infected, but he should be going to the temple this Saturday along with Quill and Robert. Robert was ordained to the office of a priest on Sunday and we're really excited for them to all go do baptisms for the dead. 

It was really cold here for a few days, but now it's in the 50's and really nice out.

 

I wish I had some good stories for ya'll but this week was pretty bland. I do want some stories from dad though! I realized I don't know like any of his mission stories at all, so if he has a chance I'd like to hear some. Also I wanna know if he ever trained or was a district leader or anything like that. 

I can't think of anything else to tell you guys about. Next week should be better. Thank you so much for all the love and support you've shown me! I really appreciate all the letters and packages you've sent me. Till next week,

Elder Earnest 

Cold baptisms

This week we had two baptisms! We ended up having to get special permission for Robert to get baptized because he had only been to church twice, but a few weeks ago church got cancelled because of the snow. We have a temple trip coming up and we want him to go, so President Alexander said we could have him baptized. This was the guy that's reading Jesus the Christ and has already finished a ton of church material so he was pretty ready.  Baptisms for missionaries are pretty stressful. Robert showed up 30 mins before the baptism as
planned, but the baptismal pants we had didn't fit him. So me and Elder Everett scrambled around for about a half an hour looking for baptismal pants in his size. Luckily, a guy in the ward had some we could borrow and it all worked out. Elder Everett baptized Robert and Bishop baptized Shequilla. I confirmed both of them yesterday. We also messed up on the water temperature and it was freezing cold. That was pretty funny to watch.

I also had interviews with President this week. He gave me the feeling my Danville days may be over soon, but that's okay because I'm starting to wonder what the rest of the mission looks like. Seven and a half months is a long time to be in an area.

Okay funny story: so there's this guy in our neighborhood we've talked to a few times named Larry, AKA the local drunk. And me and Elder Everett were walking on the sidewalk and see him stumbling along ahead of us. He's got a beer in one hand and a cigarette in another. He keeps swaying back and forth because he's super drunk and then all of a sudden he just stops in the middle of the sidewalk and we see a pee stream splatter out between his legs. He's literally peeing in the middle of the sidewalk on Washington Street.

I've always loved the parable in Mark 4:26. It applies really well to missionary work in that we plant gospel seeds and invite people to do things, but ultimately the spiritual growth is out of our hands just like the planter can't really control the sun and soil of a plant. All that we can do as missionaries is invite. Then it's up to the investigator to act. I've been really fortunate to have been able to find a lot of people here willing to act. Heavenly Father wants to bless us more than anything, we just need to use our agency so he can do that for us.

Sure love ya!

Elder Earnest

Some beautiful (but unidentified) buildings in Danville:

Still alive

I've had a pretty good week here - the snow finally melted so we could actually get out and see some people. We've got a baptism this Saturday and another one on the following Saturday which is pre dope.  Yesterday our recent convert, Johnny, was given the priesthood. That was super exciting for me. We starting meeting with him at the beginning of December and now he's going to the temple to do baptisms for the dead at the end of the month. I'm so grateful for the opportunity I've had to watch his conversion. One of our investigators that is getting baptized next week, Robert, is progressing really, really well too. He's keeps telling us how this is going to be a lifelong thing for him and how he wants to progress in the priesthood and he's read the Book of Mormon and the Gospel Principles manual and the Howard W. Hunter Sunday school book and now he's on Jesus the Christ. So you tell me.

Last night Elder Everett was sick. That was fun... The best part was we had a dinner appointment with Sister J, who's an amazing cook, so we still made him go. He took a nap on the floor the whole time, way to take one for the team buddy but today he's been feeling really crappy so we'll  probably have to stay in all night.

I can never remember what I wrote last week, but I finished the Book of Mormon last week, great book by the way, and I've made a goal to read it again by Easter. Our stake has stake intervals where every three months they have a new challenge or goal, and this interval is to read the Book of Mormon by Easter. I didn't think I was going to do it because I had a late start having to finish it first, but this morning I realized I only have to read like ten pages a day, which only takes a half hour, and I can be done before Easter. I'm pretty excited for that. Me and Elder Galvin have also been reading 4 pages of Isaiah every day and talking about it, which has some REALLY good stuff in it and also some stuff I really don't understand, but I really want to read all of the Bible by the time I finish my mission so I figured this was a good was to jump on the Old Testament.

Being with four missionaries in an apartment is so fun. We're always getting in fights or throwing sweet potatoes at each other or shooting each other with my cross bow. Elder Galvin is a true homie. We've been
writing music together in our free time and the four of us have been playing some pretty intense games of Munchkin.

But yeah I'm still alive and doing well.

Sure love ya!

Snowin' in VA

We got a ton of snow! It started Thursday evening and didn't stop snowing 'til Saturday night. I think it was like 18 inches that fell and we obviously couldn't use the car so Elder Everett and I went around shoveling snow for investigators and less actives. The missionary work was a bit slow, but we made the best of it. It was really funny though because everyone here is terrified of snow so when they heard it was gonna snow they went and bought  ALL the eggs, bread, and milk at the stores so when we went shopping today they were completely out. We were also trying to set up return appointments earlier in the week and people would say "you know it's gonna snow right?" or once it snowed people would be like "what'chu doing out here in the cold? You gonna catch a cold and die!"  Like we couldn't have lessons because it was snowing outside. Anyways, it's super sunny and nice here now so I doubt the snow will last long.

The four of us are having a great time. Our new missionary is Elder Galvin from Calgary Canada. He's a fantastic missionary so I'm really glad he's here. We ended up having a bit of a "draft pick" over our investigators to see who would teach who, but we still have plenty of people to teach. Elder Galvin also has pretty similar music taste
as me so it's been fun talking about bands and music and poking fun at him because he's been out longer than me so I've heard some newer music he hasn't.

Church was cancelled yesterday which kinda sucked because a few of our investigators' baptism dates had to be pushed back, but what eves. We had permission to take the sacrament, though, which was really nice and really spiritual. We had a mini sacrament meeting among the four of us; Elder Andersen conducted and Elder Galvin and I gave talks.

As far as investigators, we've got a few on date, one of which has already read the Book of Mormon and is definitely going to be a temple worker one day. It feels really good to be baptizing people you know are going to stay active.


I thought I might fill ya'll in on some southern (Danvillian) slang. A lot of people here use the phrase "I'm in the process" like "I'm in the process of moving" or "I'm in the process of recovering from a surgery". Another great one is "thing of it is" like "thing of it is, they gonna shut my lights off". "Fixin to" is another great one; "I'm fixin to buy me a new one". But my favorite one is "white truck". Literally every car in Danville is a white truck, or at least
that's what they refer to it as. For example: we were helping a lady with her groceries at the food bank we volunteer at and we asked where her car was and she said the white truck over there. Elder Everett said "you mean the grey suburban?" And she said yeah. I thought it was just kind of a weird thing, but it happened to us a bunch that day and none of them were white trucks. Not really sure what that's all about....

Jonas's video was great! Tell him we all had fun watching it. 

Okay here's some pictures to clear up who's who. I love y'all

Elder Everett (my Alaskan companion):

Elder Andersen (from Eugene, OR):

Home, sweet home:

Quadpanionship:

Still in Danville....

I'm staying in Danville! Pretty stoked. So Elder Andersen is getting a new companion. Elder Everett and I will be together, but Elder Andersen and his new companion will be here in Danville too. There's just too much work for one companionship here so they decided to put another set in. We'll be in the same house still, which should be fun, and I'll be finishing Elder Everett's training. So now I'm locked in to being in Danville nearly 8 months. 

This week I've been studying the atonement a lot.  My understanding and appreciation for the atonement has exploded this week. I'm also almost done with the Book of Mormon! It's funny because I really want to finish just so I can read 1 Nephi again; the books in Nephi are my favorite.

We had a district meeting in Casswell and afterwards we went to a member's house for lunch. I guess he's  really into antiques because his home was like a museum. Everything in there was antique.  I was scared to sit down because I thought the chairs were going to snap! He made us really good banana pudding (I think that's a southern thing) and he showed us all his old stuff. He also has a couple of old cabins on his property that he had moved and rebuilt there. The one in the picture was made in the 1700's. I think Uncle Danford would have really liked this guy.  He lived just up the road from Danford's parents so he may know the guy.

Other than that nothing much exciting has happened. I bought an electric razor today, that was pre cool! Let me know if there's anything else you want to hear about because I feel like I can never think of anything

Sure love ya!

Sam

Hey Ya'll!

This week flew by! We had a meeting in Charlotte on Tuesday and another meeting in Greensboro on Thursday. On the way to Charlotte Brother B almost ran into a barrier and light pole at 50 mph. Brother H was riding passenger and yelled at him and pulled the wheel. We did a nice little skid out Fast and Furious style. After that we stopped at a gas station and Brother H drove the rest of the way. Brother H said the only reason we didn't crash was because we were in the car. There was only about 15 feet of stopping distance and we should have hit that pole. Honestly I wasn't even scared, just at little confused and tired because it was 6 A.M. Both of our meetings were really good though! There's also a worldwide mission conference a week from Wednesday that I'm pretty excited about. 

Can't remember what day this was, but we had to call the police for the third time on my mission. One of our investigator's wife went missing for 12 hours and she was mentally unstable.  He was too distraught to call so we called for him to see if anyone had found her anywhere. Elder Andersen dialed the wrong number, though, so someone got a call from some Mormon missionaries wanting to file a missing persons report. It turns out she was at the hospital the whole time and no one notified her husband. Kinda weird that they didn't tell her husband,but she's doing a lot better now which it good because now she can get baptized with him!

It's actually sortta getting cold here! Like low fifties, high fourties, however yesterday was beautiful! It was really sunny and nice out, felt like it was still summertime.

On Friday night our high councilman from our ward took us and the Casswell elders (he's from the Casswell Ward) out to eat. Casswell is also in a trio and consists of a 260 lb Samoan, a six foot tall 240 lb whiter than white Utah elder, and a 180lb military cut Californian. Even with us Danville shrimps we weighed close to 1500 lbs all
together, and he took us to Buffalo Wild Wings. Heavenly Father must have known I'd be too tempted to watch "worldly entertainment" though because the only thing on was WNBA...

(In response to Mom's questions:)  I've been cooking a bit more for myself lately. Made a few chicken pot pies and lots of rice and soup. I've been studying the Book of Mormon and the New Testament, I wanna read the full missionary library by the end of the year so that's kept me busy.

Anyways I love ya'll

Elder Earnest

 Pot Pie

 Johnny's baptism

Busy missionaries

Glad to hear ya'll had a good New Year! Mine consisted of playing some indoor spike ball, going to bed at 10:30, and then getting woken up at 12 by people going crazy on my skreet.

It's been a pretty rad week. Yesterday between investigators and less actives we had over 20 people come to church. A good chunk of them were investigator's children, but that was still really great to see. We finally got the overflow doors opened in sacrament which was a big deal. Made me pretty happy.

We also got over 20 Bible referals last week (that's just when people order free Bibles online and we go to drop them off). We were out of Bibles so we axed the zone leaders to grab us more at MLC in Charlotte. They brought us four. Apparently that was all the mission had left, so we've had fun deciding  who gets Bibles and who doesn't
for now.

Grandma Ann will be happy to know I started Johnny up on family history. He started from scratch and traced his main line all the way back to 300 A.D. I guess it's way more fun to do family history when most of it isn't already done.....he's also interviewing for the priesthood on Sunday!

So I thought of one other thing about the sacrament I didn't mention last week. Moses 3:5 says "this is my work and my glory; to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life or man." Immortality requires overcoming physical death and eternal life requires overcoming spiritual death. The bread and water in the sacrament is symbolic of
Christ's body that died for us (allowing us to overcome physical death) and his blood that was shed in the Garden of Gethsemane (allowing us to overcome spiritual death). So by taking the sacrament you qualify yourself to overcome physical and spiritual death and literally take part in God's work and glory. Neato right?

So I took plenty of pictures for you this week. Here's us trying to fix a busted headlight fuse, giving service to Brother B, and me making myself a grill cheesed sandwich. I'm living the real exciting life.