Easter week

Elder Huff with his Easter tie

Well...Easter is over. Oh well. This week has been super busy, but not necessarily successful😥. This week was bike week (thank goodness it is over!!😄!!) We biked A LOT this week. Added it all up on Google maps and we biked over 60 miles this week! 25 of those miles were in one day! I'm so happy my bike is awesome, but it's starting to wear. The gears are shifting slower and slower and the brakes are getting softer and softer. I might have to get a tune up relatively soon. We'll see. My bike isn't the only thing that's wearing out. My shoes are getting there too! I think they'll at least last me to my year mark, and possibly (hopefully) longer. My blue Costco pants have a bike seat outline on the seat, but they'll last me longer(I'm just happy all my clothes still fit 😬). Now I've seen how winter wears the clothes out, I am not excited for summer😣. 

Well, this week was pretty slow. We met this guy named Erik tracting and he let us right in! We taught him a lesson and it went really well, then he told us he was just visiting a friend! He actually lives in Maine 😡. Who lives in Maine? Come on!! So we sent another referral out of our area, when we still don't have anyone to teach. 

We did have a pretty cool miracle story though this week. We got a Book of Mormon referral from this guy named Jack and we went to his apartment complex and knocked on his door and he wasn't home. There you go, that's the miracle story! Just kidding. Anyway, the next day, we were walking in to the complex toward the building he lived, and we passed this guy and didn't plan on talking to him (even though we should talk to everyone, and we usually do) then we felt that we should turn around and give him an Easter card so we did, and we got to talking about how he always wanted to know about Mormons and he just doesn't trust the Internet and how he wanted a Book of Mormon to find out for himself. We asked what his name was and he said it was Jack! We found him. Also, the address we had was the wrong address. So we never would have found him if we didn't talk to him. Crazy. Anyway, he wouldn't give us his new address or phone number, so the ball is in his court, which stinks because people aren't very good at doing things they say they will, especially when they are talking to missionaries. We'll see if he ever contacts us. 

Well, I had a pretty good Easter. We went to church then went to a member's house afterward and they, of course, stuffed us full. This ward is gonna kill me. It's impossible to stay a healthy weight in this area! The members associate us with eating a lot of food so they prepare huge dinners and expect us to eat it all, and then they have us take the leftovers home and eat them! They also randomly give us junk food! For example, on Saturday we went and did service at a member's house with a lot of the priesthood dudes from the ward. The sister bought 6 dozen Krispy Kreme Doughnuts! And when only four of the six boxes were finished and everyone went home, she gave the last two dozen to us! Not cool! I now understand why my mom wouldn't buy many treats at the store or make any other than on calorie free day! Because if you have them in your house, you eat them!! Let's just say they are all gone now. Another example is after church yesterday, a young women leader gave us the leftover cupcakes from young women! Aargh! They are gone too! But I would also have you know, I buy a big bag of lettuce, a lot of cherry tomatoes, and at least 12 bananas a week, and they are all gone at the end of the week too. It's probably the only reason I am not dead right now. I also think part of the promise that missionaries will be protected is that somehow God prevents us from having heart attacks. Speaking of protection, I am so glad the missionaries in Brussels all are okay. It's terrible that things like that have to happen, but I just got to realize, its not really because of God, it's cuz people are not nice.

We got kicked out of another apartment complex this week by a very unpleasant unhappy lady. She approached us in a complex while we were heading over to a less active's apartment and chewed us out! She kept going on and on about how she could call the cops (even though we were just visiting a person, not tracting, and the cops legally couldn't have done a thing) and get us arrested and put in jail! It took a lot of restraint not to talk back to her and get angry but we just smiled and told her to have a nice day. She then started talking about how it wasn't very Christlike to be in jail and stuff like that (which isn't very valid because if you remember in the scriptures a lot of extremely Christlike people spent time in jail {Paul, Aaron, Joseph Smith, and even Christ himself} even though I still don't want to go to jail of course) so we just got on our bikes and rode off. I don't really know how we'll see the less active, maybe we'll just have to be sneaky😉. A lot of crazy calloused people in the world, but hey! They're all God's children, no matter how troublesome they are. 

Well, things are going okay in Summerfield, transfers are coming up! 🙏🏼 Love y'all! 

Happy after Easter!

Elder Huff and Murray with Easter eyes

Hello

Well, this week was okay...I guess. We didn't really get that much done this week. We did some service for people. We spread pine "straw" for a lady. It's really weird. Since when are pine needles wanted? It was really weird throwing down pine needles on someone's yard when back home we just tried to get rid of them. Well, we got some pizza for it and some soda as well and the lady was super happy! She put this post on Facebook about how she loves how the yard looks. The only problem is people are seeing the post and asking us to do some pine straw for them too. Oh well, at least we'll have a lot of service hours right?

We helped out the Neeses around their house this week as well. The Neeses are hilarious! They are an old weird couple that are always yelling at each other and telling us weird things. They crack us up! This Friday was Elder Murray's hump day! He's been out a year! He's on the downward slope now. We didn't really do anything special.I made a cake and a member gave us some ribs so we celebrated that night with cake and ribs. 

Mmm, so healthy!

Well, Steve was in Jersey this week and Nancy and Lucas were "never home" so we didn't see many investigators this week. We mostly worked with less actives and recent converts. We were finally able to get in contact with a returning family this week, well just the dad and son. So that was good.

The stake put on a really good Easter musical program. The people are really talented and the choir sounded so good. We were asked to usher at both Saturday's and Sunday's performance so we were able to go to both. It was really good. Did you know Orson Scott Card can sing? Really well? He sang a solo in the program, his wife also conducted the choir. They are very active members of the church and I think that's just so cool. The building that we go to is the stake center, and he donated a lot of art to it so the church has really unique art in it you won't see anywhere else.

Well, I can't really think of anything else we did, this week wasn't super exciting. Hoping for a

better week this next week...

A week of not so good luck

Well...we don't really have any investigators anymore. They all moved away. That actually is almost a true statement. You see, one person we found out wasn't in our area, so technically they didn't really move away. Ah man! It's painful! We don't really have anyone to teach anymore! Aargh! Well, this week was pretty goofy. Elder Murray and I are pretty goofy together. We should probably work on being more dignified, but we're mostly just goofy around the apartment and in the car. We are kinda like brothers, so we get along very well at times and then we get in some tussles as well, but they usually are goofy tussles anyway. Oh well, we'll work on it.

We're having a hard time with this Ward. We can tell the bishop doesn't really like us that much as well as our Ward mission leader. Considering this Ward hasn't baptized in over a year and the last person it baptized now avoids the church like a plague, I can see why there isn't much trust. We're trying the best we can to work better with the members and establish that trust again, but I feel like that trust will come when we baptize, but we have a hard time baptizing when we don't have great member support. Oh well, we'll figure it out.

We had zone meeting this week, and that was mostly good. The new senior couple, the Sagers,

gave a really good training on the doctrine and gospel of Jesus Christ and how any question an investigator or less active member asks can be answered by one of the principles of the doctrine of Christ. It was really good. They are good teachers. I played "Ye Elders of Israel" for a special musical number and that turned out well. The only part that kinda bugged me was the Guilford Sisters training and zoned in on obedience, and though they didn't say it, they basically targeted me. Not that I'm a disobedient missionary, they basically just don't like how I played James Bond [on the piano] in the church on P-Day. I didn't know that that was against the rules but I guess I do now. Oh well, they are good missionaries and maybe it's an indication to me that I need to look for more ways to be more obedient.

We gave a church tour this week! It went really well! We took Steve and his girlfriend Dana to

the church and gave them a tour! They were really interested! Then we went by their place two days later and they told us they are moving! Yay! Just as they were really moving forward! Yay! They don't know exactly when they are moving so hopefully we'll be able to get them to church before they go!😐 Other than having no one to teach, things are going pretty well. I'm excited to go and find new people to teach, we just have to find the right place to knock. We also have a new tool to find people this Easter season. #Hallelujah!  I love the church holiday initiatives and the times of year. People really love Jesus down here so hopefully we'll be able to share the video with a lot of people and baptize someone because of it! Only time will tell. Onward and Upward! Love y'all! Have a splendiferous week!

Hahahahaha

I spent along time laughing last night after I heard that dad is the second counselor in the bishopric. Did I know it was coming? No. Am I surprised? Not at all. This week was not great, but not bad. We were able to see the Ellingtons, the family I was talking about last week, on Monday. They are super elect and ready for the gospel. We were going to go and meet them on Thursday, but their apartment flooded, and we didn't want to bug them in all the craziness. The stinky part is they are moving just barely out of our area soon, and when they do that, we won't be able to teach them anymore😩.

We are also teaching Nancy and Lucas, but we haven't been able to meet with them this week because they are out of town. But the good part is that they actually remembered our appointment and called us from out of town and told us they were sorry and promised us they weren't avoiding us😊. So that's good. 

Speaking about avoiding us, there's this less active member we've been trying to see ever since I've been in Summerfield (Elder Nelson actually baptized him when he was here). He's avoiding us. He never answers the door even if he is home and he also never answers his phone for us. We were over there on Saturday and we knocked on his door and of course he didn't answer (he was home too, both his cars were there). So we tracted his street and we saw him drive right past us. We waved, but he made sure not to look at us. Later we were walking back to our bikes and we saw him driving toward us on the way to his house. He must've seen us because he quickly turned into a driveway, backed out, and gassed it. He ran away from us! Wow, are we really that ugly? Well, maybe Elder Murray is 😜. Yeah, we meet some weird people. Why doesn't he just come outside and tell us to never come back if he really hates us so much?

We met another strange man on Thursday while we were tracting apartments (You meet all the weirdos in the apartments👹). He opened the door and we told him we were sharing a message about Jesus Christ. He said, "Who is Jesus Christ?" We told him that Jesus Christ is the son of God. He then asked, "Who is G-O-D?" We were confused, so we asked him who he thought God was. He came outside, and closed the door behind him. This guy had dreads going down past his waist, and they were HUGE and did not smell very good. He started talking about how Ethiopians were the first "Christians" and how he's Ethiopian, and how Ethiopia has the real Bible translated from Geez, an ancient dead language that his brother can speak and translate BTW. Then he talked about how Jesus sounds like Zeus, so Jesus is a mythical person as a result. But there is Jesus (Jess-us), who is like Jesus. And then he finished the conversation by saying that he is Jesus. He then told us he needed to go inside to feed his baby and we should come back some other time. Poor baby...I wonder what his future will be like.

Anyway. Transfers are gone. We have some new people in the district, but they don't seem that cool yet, but we'll see. Well, bike week is over thank goodness, just in time for it to get warm. We always have the bikes during the cold spells. Oh well. It builds character right...whatever. Well, things are going well, hoping to find some more people to teach, and getting excited about the semi warm weather, as well as dreading the summer. Love y'all, I'll talk to ya next week!