Fishers of men

Hey Y'all!

We've had a nice week here. Allen had us over for breakfast Saturday morning and I made him 7 layer bars to thank him for his kindness. He's also having us teach his kids now and seems to be pretty interested in the church.  We're really excited for him and his family.

We also had zone conference on Wednesday. President talked a lot about repentance and how we need to make sure we're teaching repentance before baptism. A lot of missionaries are so focused on getting someone baptized they don't even think about teaching repentance first. So he did a training on teaching different commandments with repentance as the focus. He also told me and elder Snyder he wants to come out teaching with us this week which would be super fun, so I'm looking forward to that.

Today we had district activity. I got one of the less active returning members to take our district out fishing. We went to this stocked pond in a neighborhood just across the street from where we live. There were tons of blue gills and most of the missionaries caught one. There were tons of turtles, too, so Elder Watson and I got this great idea to use one of the small fish we caught as bait to get a turtle. Worked super good and we ended up catching this giant turtle. All in all it was a really fun p-day.

Earlier in the week Elder Snyder and I rode our bikes by this lady trying to break into her car. She had locked her keys in there and was using a coat hanger to pry it open. We stopped and offered to help.  Turns out Elder Snyder is really good at breaking into cars! She said she was really familiar with our church and we left her a pass along card so who knows, maybe she'll want to learn more now!

We were also teaching this guy named Tommy who went to this Christian high school around here that won't let Mormons go to school there and pretty much indoctrinates it's students with anti-Mormon info. He gave me this list of "false" prophecies from Joseph Smith to look at to prove he wasn't a real prophet. On our way back from dinner we looked at them with Brother Anderson, a really smart seminary teacher in our ward,  and literally all of them were actually fulfilled or were taken way out of context. So that should be fun going back to tell him they're all garbage and if he isn't interested in joining our church we can't meet anymore.

Welp, I'm off to have dinner with the Clowards! Hope y'all have a great week and can't wait to here from yins soon!

Shopping in South Carolina "'cause it's cheaper":

Staying busy

Hey Guys!

It was nice talking with y'all yesterday. Kinda weird how long it's been since we actually spoke, but I guess that's missionary life.

This week we taught Allen again (the single dad of four kids). He's really great and is more in tune with spiritual promptings than any other investigator I've had. I'm fairly positive that if he keeps reading and praying like he's doing, he'll be baptized next month. My district is doing crazy good all of a sudden! Literally everyone in the district has a solid baptism lined up for the end of May, except for us. Weddington had an absolute miracle with some lady and her daughter randomly visiting our church and now they're getting baptized in two weeks. The sisters have a really good investigator named Helen from Nigeria getting baptized and Pineville baptizes about every month anyways. So that's got me feeling pretty good!

The guy we had lined up to get baptized this week is kinda falling off. I don't think he wants to quit drinking coffee and I'm starting to think he's not ready to be baptized. He's come to church every week since June so not really sure what to do with him.

On Saturday we did a ton of service. In the morning we went to the Whitmans' and pulled weeds. It was pretty fun because I got to talk to Brother Whitman all about law school. There's a ton of lawyers here and I've learned a lot about law schooling and jobs and whatnot. I've been thinking if the whole animation program doesn't work out that might be a nice back up. I can get a degree in physics or chemical or nuclear engineering, and then go to law school and be a patent lawyer. There's a ton of demand for them right now and I'd be able to study something I love and still make money.

I had Elder Dortch come here on exchange this week. He's from Idaho and is just about done with his mission. We had a really good exchange! I received a few spiritual promptings that we followed and ended up with a Book of Mormon placed and found some new people to teach. That's been something I've been really working on, recognizing and following spiritual promptings. It's been nice on my bikes these last few weeks because it gives me a lot of time to think and feel out spiritual promptings.

We've also got zone conference coming up this week. It'll be fun to see president Alexander and Elder Clarke. The stake has been asked to start making goals with us in ward council and I'm hoping he'll give us some training on it. The mission is really starting to focus in on sacrament meeting attendance and new investigators. I think Elder Zwick gave a bunch of council on that when he was here.

Today we've got zone activity at the church, should be pretty fun. Looks like we're playing volleyball😏


Here's a baptism picture of a family I taught for a long time in Danville. Elder Everett (the one I trained form Alaska) is on the left and Elder Galvin is on the right (Canadian)

And then there's Sam holding a baby raccoon...I hope it isn't rabid...

I guess he's allergic to fish...

This week was great. We've really been putting a lot of effort into planning and finding and it's starting to finally pay off. On Friday we were talking to this guy who was fixing his car and some other guy walked out of his apartment and call over to us. He came up and introduced himself and asked us a bit about what we do and then requested for us to come and teach him later that day. That kind of thing literally never happens unless they just want to bible bash with us so I was pretty much convinced he was just a preacher that wanted to anti us. At lunch I was tabbing all my theological warfare bible verses so I could be quick to the draw if I need to defend myself. (I've been antied before and it's way more fun when you're winning). So we show up to the appointment and he invites us in and has us sit down in his living room. We start chatting, trying to get to know him a little better, and it turns out he's been searching through churches for a long time and just feels all the ones he's been to are corrupt. Now he's looking for more truth and wants to hear what we have to say. So we taught him the restoration and he ate it up, absolutely loved it. We taught him again last night, about the Book of Mormon, with a member and he can't wait to have us back again. His name is Allen and he's a single father of four and like the best investigator I've ever had. And it's totally heaven sent that we met him because there was really no reason we should have been up there that day. It was only because all of our appointments fell through and we were desperate for someone to talk to.

Earlier in the week I went on exchange with Elder Watson. He's from Sandy, Utah and was trained by my MTC companion, Elder Hampshire. When he was 13 he got leukemia and almost died and has a super strong testimony. It was a great exchange. As we were walking up to one of our appointments we noticed a raccoon poking its head out of the chimney. When we asked the member about it he told us it's been clawing at his walls and asked us to go get it out of the chimney. The only reason we agreed to help was because Elder Watson used to work for his uncle's company "Critter Wranglers" and has some experience in raccoon removal. So we start rummaging around the back yard looking for some kind of rope to use to get the raccoon out but all we could find was an extension chord. We tied the extension chord in a slip knot and Elder Watson stuffed it down the chimney and started bouncing it up and down. Then he looked at me and was like "he's ticked off" and he pulls super hard to try and snag it, then he yells "crap he's charging!" And runs back towards me. It wasn't until that point I thought about what we were planning to do if we actually snagged the raccoon. The raccoon didn't end up coming out of the chimney and we eventually gave up due to poor equipment, but next time we'll come back more prepared.

We also had interviews with President this week. He told me I'm about to "light this area on fire". He also used the phrase pistol whip somewhere in our interview and I remember thinking it was pretty funny but I can't remember the context.

Last night we had dinner with a great family in our ward, the Tousas. We showed up and I could tell by the smell we were having fish. Mom: I remember telling you a few years back I was allergic to fish because I had salmon that one time and threw up that night and you told me it was just bad salmon. Well you were wrong. I am most definitely allergic to fish. So I'm sitting at the Tousas and they pull this huge salmon out of the oven and put it on the table and just by the scent and sight I know my stomach doesn't want any of that (remember it was fast Sunday too so it wasn't just I don't like fish because I'll eat just about anything when I break a fast). I couldn't be rude though so I just took a little and put it down with mash potatoes. Bad idea. We get on our bikes after dinner and start heading back towards our apartment and I'm feeling pretty queasy. By the time we got back I had a killer headache and was definitely going to throw up. IM FREAKIN ALLERGIC TO FISH, MOM!!!!! The thing that sucked is we had a solid appointment with Allen that I did not want to miss
so I was like, whatever, I've got to magnify my calling. So I go in the bathroom and try to get it to just come up stream, but it ain't coming. I was scared to death we were gonna show up at Allen's and I'd puke everywhere so I sat down and just relaxed a bit. I was still feeling really sick as we walked up to Allen's but I just held it in
and toughed it out. Ended up making it out alright and never threw up, but I was still feeling pretty sick this morning when I woke up. I'm never eating fish again, that was awful.

Sunday we're eating dinner with the Grants (hopefully not fish), and they said we can FaceTime from there. (Side note:  Mother's Day and Christmas day are the two days each year missionaries can call or FaceTime their families.)  The Grants are probably my favorite family here, they've got a ton of little kids and a blast to eat dinner with. I attached pictures from when they took us out to ice cream. 

I love you guys and can't wait to talk to to y'all in a few days!

New investigators

Hey y'all! It's been another wonderful week. We crushed our total lessons goal this week and had a ton of members out teaching with us, it was wonderful. We've got one guy preparing for baptism soon.  It might take a while for him to quit coffee though. I also conducted my first district meeting! I feel like it went pretty well.  I talked about contacting and gave the example of Nephi who dropped Laban because he wasn't keeping commitments and how he went and found a new investigator named Zoram. Today the Weddington Elders used some of the contacting  practices I trained on to get two new investigators last week so that made me pretty happy.

We also found quite a few new investigators this week. One of them is a woman named Alesha with no home, no friends, and no legs. She literally just had two bloody nubs poorly wrapped in white bandages. I guess she had  diabetes so they had to cut them off. The only people left in the world for her are her kids that live with some foster parents and she pretty much just bums around at a gas station all day. As you can image she's pretty depressed but she's reading the Book of Mormon now and she's coming to church next week! One of our stellar member missionaries, Abel, was with us when we found her and went back that night with his family to sing her a hymn and give her a backpack full of soap and food and money. I love when members do missionary work☺️

Not much else happened. Just working hard! Interviews are this week, oh yeah! I conducted my first baptismal interview yesterday! The Zone leaders have a baptism this week and I interviewed her for baptism. It was a really cool experience! One of zone leaders, Elder Blanco, is from Columbia.  His mother introduced a boyfriend to the gospel in Columbia when she was young. The man and his wife and kids moved up from Columbia and then Elder Blanco got sent here to baptize the rest of the family. Kinda confusing to follow, but it's a really cool story I promise!

Well, I'm gonna go play spike ball! Sure love y'all!

Goals and GAs

Hey guys! 

This week has been bombin'!  We finally hit our transfer long goal of 20 lessons in one week, and just in time because that was the last week of the transfer. We've been finding lots of new people to teach, and getting great referrals from members. Best of all I'm staying in Providence for another transfer! I'm really starting to like this area, it just took me a little while to adjust. Elder Snyder will also be staying here with me, which I'm pretty happy about because we've been seeing a lot of success together as of late. I also went on exchange with the zone leaders this week and got to see how they're running their area in Pineville. (It's nothing like Prineville.) They gave me a ton of great ideas for how I can build Providence and it was super nice to see a model of how Providence should start looking. I was really impressed with how they do member missionary work, so that will be a focus of mine. The next day I got a phone call from President Alexander asking me to serve as the new District Leader in our district. So that's gonna be a ton more responsibility, but I'm excited to serve. 

We had a really good lesson with one of our investigators this week named Steve. He finally understood the apostasy and the priesthood which is important for understanding the need for a restoration. It was really cool to finally see things click in his head. Now he's reading the Book of Mormon with real intent because he actually gets why it's important! Such a great lesson, and better yet we had a member out with us who's gonna be a great fellowshiper for Steve. We also took a recent convert named Abel out teaching and he walked up to this guy and they started talking to each other in Spanish for like 5 mins and then Abel looked at us and said: 'Can you guys come teach him on Friday?' Luckily the guy speaks English but, man, would Spanish help me be a better missionary. 

The Elder Zwick conference was great! I got to see Elder Hampshire, who's also a district leader, and a lot of other missionaries I've served with. The training was amazing, Elder Zwick is a Seventy and was on the missionary board when they made Preach My Gosepl. He shared a lot of cool stuff about how they made PMG. The 9 years it took to fully create it were the only 9 years in church history that no one from the Quorum of the 12 or the presidency died and had to be replaced. He talked about how both Maxwell and Joseph B. Wirthlin really should have died during that time but Heavenly Father kept them because they needed to write certain parts of Preach My Gospel. (Wirthlin was pronounced dead twice and still lived on.) He also shared some really neat things from his notes he took in a meeting a few days back with the Quorum of the Twelve and a few of the other Seventy. He said they meet every Thursday and discuss the needs of the church and then take the sacrament and that he's been invited quite a few times. Also when I was in the bathroom during the break he came in and starting using the urinal next to mine and asked me what I was learning. So yeah...I had a conversation with a general authority while peeing in a urinal.  

Thanks so much for writing me every week, it really means a lot. 

I love you guys! 

 

This has been a great week. We taught a ton of people and hit most of our weekly goals. Found a few new investigators and handed out a German Book of Mormon. I've found that if I could speak another language here I would have a huge advantage as a missionary. I feel like there's so many people we run into that don't speak English.  Vietnamese and Spanish are most common, but there's a lot of Eastern European, Korean, and Portuguese speakers here too. The German guy was really impressed we actually brought him a Book of Mormon in his own language. Hopefully now he'll read it! We also had members out teaching with us almost every night this week, which was amazing. Last night we had dinner with the Delgado family, who are from Mexico, and they fed us some of the best Mexican food I've ever had. The fact that it was fast Sunday may have helped, but dang that stuff was good!

This week we're having Elder Zwick come visit our mission and we have a big mission conference with him on Wednesday. I'm pretty excited for that, last time when Elder Kopishke came it was a blast. I'm hoping he'll teach us how to find some more prepared families to teach. One of the members in our ward actually served in Peru when Elder Zwick was the mission president and he was telling us how great he is.


Elder E

Cars, Cockroaches, and Conference

Hey Guys,

This has been quite an eventful week. On Tuesday I went on exchange to Weddington with Elder Dortch. We had a great time, Elder Dortch is a great missionary and he also trained Elder Galvin so that was super cool too. Anyways, while I was gone Elder Snyder got in a car crash and totaled our car. It was at an intersection where the light had just turned green so he was good to go through, but the car in the lane next to him had been waiting at the red light and signaled a lady to go through on a left turn just as the light went red for her. So she went through and Elder Snyder and Elder Sherman were going 40 mph through the intersection, below the speed limit of 45, and couldn't really do much. They smashed into the side of this white mini van and when they got out to make sure everyone was okay they learned there was a special needs person in the van. Luckily, as far as we know, everyone is fine and no one had to go to the hospital or anything, but a full two days of proselyting was wasted. (One on the day of the wreck and one when we had to go get our new car).

The only nice part of that is when we went to get our new car there were a ton of other missionaries there getting new cars (most because their cars hit 50,000 miles) and I saw Elder Hungrige and Elder Masoe from Casswell (where the Battens live just south of Danville). Elder Hungrige is the district leader now and he told me 6 of the people I taught in Danville are getting baptized within the next few weeks. That was super exciting to hear. Sadly, I also heard some bad news about Quill. She messaged me on Facebook a few days before, and Elder Hungrige confirmed it. Quill went into labor way early (she was due sometime this summer) and her baby died shortly after birth. She's in a pretty dark place right now and won't talk to anyone. She did contact me about it though, which kinda surprised me, but I was able to try and uplift her with my response. Quill's gone through so much already and I'm really worried about her now. So that's been on my mind a lot lately.

We also caught two huge cockroaches in our apartment this week.  The first one we baptized by water and fire (threw him in the toilet and burned the crap out of him with old spice body spray and a lighter) and the second one was caught after the conference session where Bednar talked about how baptism by water was pointless with out the baptism by the Holy Ghost. We didn't feel he was worthy, so we threw him in the pool in our backyard and gave him half a baptism. Today I will be buying a plethora of chemicals to kill ALL cockroaches in our apartment because I want to vomit just thinking of cockroaches.

Conference was absolutely wonderful! I have about 10 pages of notes to go back through now. My favorite talks which I started to re-read right away were Henry B. Eyring's Saturday opener (I could see the closed captioning for the Spanish and understood enough to know he went WAY off script. That's why he smiled and paused. I'm guessing the Spirit prompted him to say something different and he did), Dale G. Rendlund's (who's probably one of my favorite speakers now), David A. Bednar's wonderful talk on baptism and the sacrament, Russell M. Nelsons killer talk on the priesthood, Henry B. Eyring's priesthood session talk, Uchtdorf's Sunday morning talk, Dallin H. Oaks' talk on opposition, and of course Holland's. My favorite one was probably Bednar's though. I thought it was strange how short President Monson spoke for, but I really liked his story about commanding the ship to come back around. As a missionary, conference weekend is probably my favorite weekend. It's like a two day spiritual party.

After conference last night we went to go see some former investigators and Elder Snyder got another flat tire. It's like his 8th this transfer and we've only had 3 bike weeks. He was really frustrated and tossed his bike into the trees and walked off. I just kinda stood there like "really?".  I wasn't mad or anything because I knew he was upset. That exerpt from the Rendlund talk ("Latter-day Saints Keep on Trying" from April 2015 General Conference) you sent me came to mind and I just patiently waited it out. 

Today we had a zone activity. Elder Clarke was there and I got to talk to him a bit. We played a ton of spikeball and had a blast. My good friend Elder Prado was also there and I stuffed him in basketball.

Well, I'm hoping this week is a little more fun than last week. I want to see people get baptized in Providence sooooo bad. Hope all is well back home,

Elder Earnest

New friend?

The car after the accident

Hmmmm.....