Hola family,

This week we had 6 elders living in one apartment. The Charlotte Central Zone Leader's dishwasher pipe exploded and when they got home one night it was completely flooded. Like an inch of water all around. So they had to come live us. Then the Reedy Creek Elders apartment need to be carpet cleaned, but the people took like 5 days to get over there so they had to live with us too. It's been an interesting experience. I'm realizing now this is what my college life will be like. Speaking of that, when will I find out who my other room mates are? After hearing of Luke's roommates I'ma bit worried.

On Saturday we went down to the local market and this member that runs it got us a bunch of food. It's kind of a maxi market, but the food there was sooooo good. She got us tortas, sliced paprika mangos, corn on a stick, and funnel cakes. It was the best!

I also went up to Hickory this week and on the way back we had to stop in High Point so I stopped at the Crouse's to say hello. I really like them a lot, they're so nice and humble.

Right now we're at this really high end Hilton hotel up town. There's a member that works at this little barber shop in the gigantic lobby that cuts missionaries hair for free. We've got to be looking fresh for when Elder Cook comes. This barber is like a world class guy. Everyone that comes in is like super high up CEOs and he's totally pals with them. He said his business has really taken off lately and I could tell because we had to wait like an hour because every time it was about to be our turn someone new walked in and asked if he could
cut their hair.

Yesterday we re-contacted a former investigator named Darwon. We were teaching him for a bit and then he fell of the grid for a month or so. Turns out he was in Sweden visiting his girlfriend who's a member and while he was there he went to church and met with the missionaries. Now he's pretty interested in being baptized. He and his girlfriend are both from Liberia so I'm not sure how one ended up in Charlotte and one ended up in Sweden but if they get married in the temple like they want to it doesn't really matter.

I'll thank you in advance for what's in my birthday package. One of the recent converts that got baptized my first week here is feeding us that night. He's from Columbia so he's making us some really good Columbian food. I'm pretty excited.

Love y'all

This week went real quick. I went on exchange in Reedy Creek with Elder Jackson. Started off the exchange right with all you can eat sushi at Pisces uptown. It was the best thing ever. Then we taught a few people and went to go contact a referral who just happened to live next door to their investigator, Mupeni. As we arrived I could hear screaming and wailing from one of the homes and Mupeni's brother came out to greet us. He informed us that Mupení had died two hours earlier. The whole family just moved here from Africa and couldn't speak a lick of English. They had us come in and sit on their couch and they were just absolutely hysterical. It was really sad. All the women were singing and yelling in Swahili and the men were all somber just staring at the floor with wet eyes. It was really a miracle we just happened to be there that night because of the referral they received. It was comforting to be able to hug them goodbye and tell them it would be okay because they'll see their brother again. It was pretty awkward though because while we were sitting there the mom, who was this gigantic African women, leaned hard core onto Elder Jackson and just sobbed all over him. 

I also went on exchanges with Elder Hampshire. It was fun to be with him again. We hit up the crepe shop in High Point, best crepes ever. They had a super good Zone Meeting, the Alexander's grandkids were visiting and they went too. Their 12 and 14 year old were better teachers than some of the missionaries in the room. Some real protégées there. The theme was of course, the family. Particularly ohana and focusing on making sure none of our spiritual brothers and sisters get left behind. At then end we all sang the EFY theme song and it was pretty spiritual. Everyone was crying. 

Yes, Selena was baptized!!!! It was pretty great. Her mom is a member but doesn't ever come to church and her neighbor/close friend Leticia just got baptized with her family in December. The missionaries have tried with her for a long time, but it never really clicked until she had a close friend to go to church with. Now we're teaching her other friend Ariana and their other neighbor too.  

Alright I love y'all! 

Sup guys.

So I had no idea they were going to teach Aliyah in our home so when I Skyped in the other night I was kinda surprised. Luckily President is still cool with it as long as we keep it purpose driven and don't let it get me home sick or anything.

This week was kinda weird, I went on exchange with Greensboro and Gastonia. It involved a ton of driving. I listened to this talk while we were driving called "The True Meaning of the Atonement" by Cleon Skousen. It was super good. I really enjoyed it. When I was in Gastonia I was with Elder Brown who's from Sandy, Oregon. He played water polo for Sandy which means we played each other a few times. Small world. I also met the new office couple today and they're really good friends with the Carrs in our ward. The Deweys, the other office couple, used to live in Corvallis and they know the Schultzes.

This next week S is getting baptized. She's come along pretty well. It's been really nice because L is really good friends with her. L's whole family just got baptized and we've been teaching S at their house. G is on the stop smoking lesson again. He's doing alright with it. Yesterday we stopped by after church and caught him smoking. He'd literally been home like 3 mins from church and he lit one up. Dang it, G. Then when we left his place we waited down the road and like a minute after we left he came out and went to ask this bum hanging out outside for a cigarette and we pulled up really quick and he saw us and hid behind a tree. It was pretty funny. He still went to ARP that night and called us this morning to stay accountable. He's doing pretty good now😂

Maxwell flipped a cow when he found out an apostle is coming. It was really funny. He wants me to record his life story and write a book about it so I'm pretty pumped. If you can send the audio recorder by the first week of March that'd be great because Elder Cook will be here on the 10th.

Today we played sand volleyball and rugby with the Zone. That was pretty dope. This week I'm going on exchange with High Point! I'm pumped for that. I can't think of much else that happened. Pretty fast week yet not much happened. We did go to this super great crepe place! It was delicious. Okay I love y'all!

So perfect timing on the $40 because today is our 'treat yo self' day. Honestly I think I prefer the money over a package. We're at South Park mall living it up. I bought a new suit, and it's slick. Got a super good deal on it, 20% off and it's some solid material. I tend to wear a suit like every other day here and with only two suits I'm running out of variety. Plus I want them to last and it'd be good to get another in the rotation. Elder Peterson and Elder Everett both bought the same suit as me so we'll all be twinning. Oh yeah totally forgot to tell y'all. Last week when we were driving back from Greensboro we got a call from an unknown number. It's Elder Klebingat of the 70, he gave a really good talk in conference titled 'Approaching the Throne of God With Confidence'.  Anyway he wants to get a hold of President asap but Pres is in interviews with missionaries so we give him Sister Alexander's number. The next day we find out Elder Quentin L. Cook of the Quorum of the Twelve is coming to our mission in like a month with Elder Klebingat. He's having a big meeting with our whole mission on Saturday and then Sunday all 7 stakes in our mission are going to a giant conference in Charlotte. I'm gonna hear an apostle speak in the  Bojangles colosseum!!! So of course we all had to get new suits and the rest of 'em are buying new shoes too but I just got some so I'll hold off.

Transfers happened last week. We picked up the new missionaries and brought them to the mission home Monday night. Had dinner there and told them what North Carolina was like. Then the next day we got up and trained them and sent them off with their new companions. We also had MLC this week which was pretty crazy because they happen once a month and I feel like we just had one. I conducted and Elder Peterson and I trained on the Book of Mormon. After that I went on exchange with Elder Murray. He's from Idaho and goes home in a few weeks. We taught a ton of people, which was super nice, and even found a new person to teach! The next day we drove up to Mt. Airy (aka the place Andy Griffith was filmed) and went to Elder Zesinger's district meeting. And then after that we went to this Mexican restaurant and the owner loves missionaries so he have us all like a huge discount! It was great.

We also dropped Elder Blanco this week. I was pretty sad, but I'll see him soon. Took him to the Holy Stake and Hoagie, best sandwich in town. I'm actually on my way there now #TreatYOSelf.

Alright time to play some bball. Thanks again for the Valentine's money! Hope y'all have a great week.

This was the busiest week of my life. We had three Zone conferences, transfers, and a baptism. Don't tell anyone, but yesterday we both laid down for a 30 min nap during our lunch, and woke up 2 hours later. I was so tired. But all in all Maxwell still got baptized and S accepted a baptismal date for February 25th. It's really quite amazing, all this success in Matthews. 4 months ago this place was not so successful. We used to make fun of the assistants because they hadn't had a baptism in like 9 months and they were supposed to be the examples to us. Elder Clarke and Elder Blanco really put a lot of hard work into this area while they were here. And now Elder Peterson and I are fueling it further. February is going to be the 4th month in a row Matthews has had a baptism every other week. (Or twice a month). I'm just praying and trying my best to keep up the trend. Hopefully I'll finish my mission here, I'd hate to have to spend my last transfer somewhere else, unless it was Danville of course. Speaking of Danville, Elder Beaulieu is getting transferred there!!!!!!! I'm really happy for him.

So here's how my week pretty much went:

Tuesday was super quick because we had to spend a big chunk of the day preparing for Zone conferences in the office. Then Elder Monteleone took us out to lunch at Moo and Brew, a burger place uptown. He's our favorite office missionary. He and his wife live in the Weddington Ward and are over housing and bikes. They're hooking us up with a new apartment soon because ours is pretty old and gross. Anyway, that day flew by real quick because we spent the evening teaching and helping G quit smoking.

Then Wednesday we had the two Charlotte Zone conferences together. It was a little rough because some trainings took a lot longer than others but we got through it alright. In the evening we drove up to Greensboro and stayed the night with Elder Everette. Remember him? The one I trained in Danville from Alaska that's kind of a wild animal? Yeah him. He made me a tie and baked us brownies. It was nice. He actually just got transferred down here to Reedy Creek and will live in the same complex as me so I'm pretty stoked.

On Thursday we had the Zone conference in Greensboro with the Greensboro, High Point, and Winston Zones. It went a lot better. That night we drove back to Matthews for our dinner and to check up on G and then up to Hickory to stay the night with Elder Hatch and Christensen because the next day (Friday) we had Zone conference up there with the Hickory and Gastonia Zones. It was kinda odd sitting through the same 6 hour meeting three days it a row. The theme was the plan of salvation and President taught us all the doctrine of the lesson so I learned a ton from that. Each time my understanding of the fall deepened. The fall has been one of my favorite study topics lately.

On Saturday Maxwell was baptized. It was a fantastic service. Brother Yessay baptized him. He joined the church in Liberia so they bonded pretty well. Maxwell cried a lot and it was a pretty spiritual meeting. Afterwards we went and got giant nachos uptown with the Reedy Creek ZLs and then went over to President's to finish up transfer business. Well by 5 that evening President wasn't quite feeling right about the transfers (he'd go in his room and pray about it, then come out and we'd make a few changes and he'd pray some more.) so we went to our dinner and proselyted till about 8 and came back. By then he was feeling pretty good and we went through the leadership calls he'd need to make and typed it up for him. We got out of there about 9:30, got to the office around 10 and then started working logistics for where everyone would meet to get their new companion. That was a lot more complex then you'd think because you have to chain each companionship until you get a full circle of companions that are all swapping companions. Add in missionaries going home, training new missionaries, and a few car changes and we didn't leave the office till 1:30 am! Then at 6am we got up and called all the zone leaders to give them the transfer news for their Zones and hurried to church at 9. Maxwell was confirmed and we came home and took a nap. Last night we also had the mission president's fireside. G came and I think it helped him a bit.

Alright here the pics from the week:

It's been a really good week. Last night we had dinner at the Alexander's with Maxwell and afterwards he was interviewed for baptism. It was an interesting night. We sat down in their living room and President asked Maxwell to tell us about himself. He started off by telling them about the time he was in prison and they only had a bucket to use the bathroom in so the whole cell smelled terrible and they'd have to get up on their tippy toes to suck fresh air out of the small barred window in the wall. Then he told them the story of how he got his name as a young boy and about how his mother died when he was a child and his father's other wives didn't like him so he was sent off to another village to go to school. The school was super strict so he ran back to his father and his father sent him back to the school. For some reason he needed to change his middle name when he went back to the village and now his name translates to 'slave of god'. While he was telling this he'd get up and jump around and stretch his arms out to tell his story. President and Sister Alexander were just like 'what's going on?'. I was dying laughing inside. So then he tells us about how he ran away from school and went to another city where they mine for diamonds, and all the different odd jobs he did to stay alive, and about this lady he met that had no children so she adopted him and she was super wealthy.  Then he told how he was falsely accused of harming the village chief's wife so they threw him in prison but his adopted father went and spoke with the President of Sierra Leone and he got out of prison. Somewhere along the way his original father and stepmothers tried to poison him so they could take his inheritance from his adopted parents and then he got married and then the civil war broke out, and on and on. We were seriously listening to him for an hour or so telling us about his story of how he got here. Finally President was just like "Maxwell, can we carry this conversation over to dinner?" So at the dinner table he tells us about how he forged documents so he could flee the country and the UN put him in Russia where it was so cold that 'your pee pee would freeze before it hit the ground'. He explained the miracle of him getting a job there and finding a new wife and finding a Christian church and then how when the Soviet Union fell they started killing foreigners so he fled again wanting to go to Canada but he ended up in North Carolina all so he could find the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. There's a ton of details I left out, but it was quite the story. I was actually thinking about recording him telling it and then writing it as a book; it'd be pretty good. So he goes into the interview and they're in there for a bit while we talk with Sister Alexander and then after 30
mins or so he comes out. President is smiling and Maxwell throws his arms in the air and screams "praise GOD" "thanks be to GOD!!!!!!". He had this huge grin on his face and was so excited and he ran over and hugged Sister Alexander. It was pretty funny. So he'll be baptized this week by Brother Y who's a convert from Liberia.

I also went on exchange with Elder Richins this week. He came out with me and we stayed in the same room in the MTC so that was a fun reunion. He's in Greensboro, which is a 2 hour drive from here, that was terrible. But we found 2 new investigators and I got to play basketball in the morning with Elder Everett! He had a baptism on Saturday.

We also did a lot more transfer planning and had a broadcast on Wednesday from the missionary department. They changed some things up in our schedule so we're planning in the morning now instead of the evening. They also lowered the amount of key indicators we report from 9 to 4. Now we're only focusing on new investigators, Sacrament, baptismal dates, and baptisms which our mission was already focusing on so not a big deal. We really like the new schedule though, it's been a nice change.

Today we went to the Charlotte Museum of Southern History. It was a pretty good deal and only costed $5! This week we have Zone conferences so I'll be driving around the mission a lot.


Love ya!

Hey there, 

It's been another super busy week. D was baptized on Saturday and confirmed yesterday. That only took like 18 months. (Speaking of 18 months, I was reminded by Elder Ruth and Elder Christensen, two Elders that came out with me, that yesterday was my 18 month mark!) President Alexander interviewed him on Tuesday night at the mission home and it was pretty apparent he's a repentant man. Last Friday Elder Rasmussen and I went over the baptismal questions with him and he was like "I used to drink to get buzzed" and then he picked up his Book of Mormon and said "this is my buzz now!". Then on Sunday of last week he didn't show up for church and we got pretty concerned and went to see him. Turns out he got really sick, it was kind of a Zeezrom deal where the memory of his sins made him physically ill. So we gave him a blessing and then everything went smooth from there. He and G, his brother who is a member, are moving back to Daytona Beach this week to be with their parents. I'm a little bumed to see them go so quick, but D really wants to share the gospel with his parents now so it could turn out to be a good thing. D moved up here about two years ago to get away from some bad things he was getting involved with in Florida and it seems like his time in North Carolina was just what he needed to turn his life over to God. Now he's going back and all his friends are going to see a huge change in him, and that's what the atonement is all about. Not a change of outward actions but a change of inner character.

We've also been transfer planning this week a bit. Elder Peterson and I go over to President's home where he's got a huge T.V up on the wall that's hooked into his lap top. It used to be done on a white board with magnets, which apparently was a lot of running from the board to the mission president for the assistants, but now it's all done over the internet. It's been an interesting experience hearing President talk about all the missionaries and what we can do to help them succeed. It makes me feel like I need to get to know the missionaries better. 

I also went on exchange to Gastonia. It's a town just west of here. Elder Johnson and I talked a lot about studies. I think that's one of the most valuable skills you can develop on a mission. I hope I don't turn into one of the RMs that gets home and never studies the scriptures. Luckily I've got Elder Hampshire to keep me in check. He and I are going to have a get together every Monday night at BYU and talk about all the deep doctrine we've been feasting on throughout the week. I'll have to hold my ground because he's looking at becoming a CES instructor.

How was Trump's inauguration? There were tons of people watching it on Friday morning while we were trying to find people to teach. They'd all tell us we were missing history and we should find somewhere to watch it. Somehow I feel like we weren't missing much. 

This week will be a lot of transfer planning and preparation for the Zone Conference Trainings we're doing. We'll be focusing a lot on planning skills. 

Alright I'm off to Ming Fu and Urban Outfitters, should be a good P-day!

Love ya!

Elder Earnest