Hey there!

Right now I'm at our 4th of July zone party playing basketball with Elder Everett like good times. 

We've had a super busy week. On Tuesday I went on exchange with Elder Dortch. He's going home in a week so. It was fun to chat with him and learn the most important things he's learned. Then the next day we went on exchange with the Assistants. I went with Elder Clarke.  It was his birthday, and he never even told me. I was so mad. On Thursday we helped the Weddington Elders move some people. The family consisted of two Hispanic ladies that spoke no English and kept yelling at each other and their son that was high as a kite. He kept laughing to himself and was acting super weird. Also they had a ton of stuff and just one little moving van. It was pretty rough. We helped them move all their stuff in the van and then helped them haul it off to their new place which was really far away. The only fun part was hearing the son, Frankie, talk about all the crazy places he's been. He likes to just get a backpack and take off to live in different countries for a few years. He's been all over the world and can speak a ton of languages. It was pretty neat. If I didn't want a family and a house, I'd totally live that life. 

While we were talking to Frankie about backpacking around the world Elder Watson and I got the idea of going backpacking somewhere foreign. His mom works for Jet Blue and can get us tickets super cheap. We're thinking maybe Ireland or India or something. Could be a fun place to go backpacking.  

We also found quite a few people this week! The mission has been pretty focused on finding lately, but we can't seem to find anyone that'll come to church. Kinda stinks. Also I don't think we'll be teaching Allen anymore. He's really great and all, but won't keep any commitments. We're still going to keep stopping by, but as of right now he's not really teachable. We haven't been able to contact Erica this week either, not sure what's going on there. But our one lady on date is progressing really well! Her name is Patti and she would have been baptized a long time ago but she can't really walk. She's had tons of surgery on her hips and she's finally walking and coming to church this upcoming week. She's also coming to this big stake luau we're having on Thursday. We're pretty excited for her. 

One of the other cool people we met was a boy named Taye. He's 19 and the night before we met him he said he had a dream missionaries came to him. Then the next day he was praying we'd come, and we did. However, we were on our bikes and didn't hear him calling out to us so he gave us a bird call. Like his hands around his mouth and went "caw caw!!".  He's reading and praying, but won't come to church and has a lot of other hold ups. 

Also this is story I sent to Chase Earnest. He messaged me and wanted to know what the mission was like. I'm not sure if I already told you about this is, but it's pretty neat. It's really cool to see how the Lord works in mysterious ways. I've seen many unexpected ways Heavenly Father has brought the gospel to others. For example: when I first got into the mission I met this guy in my ward named Brother Farmer. Brother Farmer was a recent convert that had lived a pretty rough life and sadly got pulled back into his old ways and ended up in prison about two weeks after I got there. So flash forwards 8 months and I'm leaving my first area to come down to Charlotte. We had a ton of success teaching and baptizing there and one of the people that got baptized was a lady named Quill. Quill had a boyfriend named Sean that we'd tried to teach, but he wasn't really into church stuff. Well, some stuff went down in their neighborhood (it felt like there were shootings there every other week) and Sean got accused of being involved and had to go to prison. Out of all the people in the prison, Sean's cellmate just happened to be Brother Farmer and now he and Brother Farmer are reading the Book of Mormon together everyday and Sean wants to join the church when he gets out of jail! It's crazy how Heavenly Father has a plan for everyone.

Zone activity! See if you can spot me: