A Week of Okayness

This week wasn't spectacular, but it sure wasn't that bad. This week we started running in the morning for exercise and boy am I out of shape. We ran a mile in a little less than 9 minutes (which isn't too bad considering I haven't run that far in a very long time, possibly not even since I've been on a mission) but I felt like I was going to DIE! I ripped a muscle in my calf and it was hurting for a few days, but I feel better now. Hopefully running every day will help me lose some weight, I'm just glad all of my clothes still fit. 

This week we planted some tomato plants at the Neese's. The soil here in Carolina is really weird! It's basically clay. It feels like really sticky Play-Doh and was really hard to dig holes in. It's weird how different the soils are from here to Utah. 

We met with a lady named Melissa this week, she seems pretty interested. Two transfers ago, me and Elder Rothenburger were tracting an apartment complex and knocked on a door. A little boy answered and seemed super excited to see us, he asked us if we were from the church before we even introduced ourselves. We said yes and he said, "Cool! My mom is looking for a church! Can I get your card?" So we gave him a card with our number on it, and months passed and nothing happened. We stopped by a couple times and nothing. So we basically gave it up. But this Tuesday we just randomly decided to knock on her door and she answered and set a return appointment, that she kept. She's really friendly and has a couple cute kids. The conversation seemed really natural and hopefully we'll go pretty far with her. 

We met with the Goins this week and it went pretty well, the kids are now progressing investigators. We're excited for them. 

Well, we talked to this inactive member this week. Last week he got a call from his cousin, who's an active member of the church, and his cousin told Brother Rowland to talk to the missionaries. Rowland said he didn't really want to and kind of blew it off, but about 30 minutes later he was driving down the road and saw us, so he took it as a sign so he met with us. He told us his whole story. He's on his third marriage and his wife is 30 years younger than him...weird. He's a kinda funny guy. 

We mowed a lawn this week! For a less active family. We went out with a member of the bishopric and saw the Jessup's, and she talked about her yard (which is HUGE) and how her son hasn't mowed it yet and it's getting really long. So as we were driving away, Brother Bagley said we were going to mow her lawn, so we picked up a trailer, his riding lawnmower, a weed eater, and two of his five boys and we went and hammered it out. I got to use the lawnmower, it's pretty nice. It got dark before we were done. 

Well, nothing much more to talk about this week. We have bikes for the next two weeks and we've had bikes for the last two weeks, because we ran out of miles. Yay! 

We got to teach a youth Sunday School, that was fun, but made me miss my old Sunday School class, well, that's about it. Love y'all!

A Wonderful Day in the Neighborhood

Elder & Sister Zwick, President & Sister Alexander, and a bunch of missionaries.  Can you find Elder Huff?

Hello y'all! How ya doing! I'm doing alright alright alright! We started off the week on Monday by totally rearranging our apartment and deep cleaning. It took a while but it was fun. 

On Tuesday we had an eight-hour meeting with four zones in the mission. Elder Zwick and his wife came and did some trainings and role plays. President and Sister Alexander both spoke and gave trainings as well. It was a really good meeting. They covered so much. He talked about the mantle of our callings and how the Quorum of the Twelve and First Presidency pray for us every day and how we should pray for them as well. He has a grandson who is preparing to go on a mission and he came. The kid's other grandpa is Henry B. Eyring, goodness. Well the meeting was really good.  Elder Murray got to talk to a lot of missionaries he knew while I kinda stood off by the side. I feel like I still don't know anybody in the mission. I guess I'm just not a very impressionistic guy. Oh well. I did get to see the three sisters that were in my MTC district, so that was fun. They seem to be doing well. Two of them are companions, and it made me think about how Buffalo's doing. I wonder how good of companions we would be. So that meeting was great, and afterwards while we were cleaning up, the AP's told us that the Alexanders and Zwicks were coming to inspect our apartment!😬 I'm really glad we deep cleaned on Monday. We went up to President and asked how he wanted to get to our apartment, he told us he would just follow us with the Zwicks in his car, then he looked at us and said, "Is your apartment...presentable?" We said yes and he said, "I knew I could count on you Elders." So we all went to our apartment and they were super impressed! Yay! They said it was one of the cleaner apartments they have been in! Yay! It was kind of cool to have a seventy and President in our apartment and to be able to chat face to face with Elder Zwick. He's a cool guy. Well, that was very exciting, and know I can say our apartment has a stamp of approval by a seventy! 

Right after they left we did an exchange with the Guilford elders. I went to Guilford with Elder Randall. It was pretty slow in Guilford, even slower than our area. We kind of just wandered around the UNCG campus and talked to random people. We had a long exchange too just because Elder Murray wanted to extend it so we had a 36 hour exchange instead of a 24 or less hour exchange. So I got back home on Thursday and had a long weekly planning day. Things are picking up in this area, and hopefully soon we'll see some baptisms! 

So we got transfer calls yesterday! Elder Murray and I are staying for another 6 weeks! In fact, most of the district is staying the same except for the Summit Sisters. Sister Goodrich is going home and Sister Brown (who just got emergency transferred here two weeks ago) is leaving as well. So all the cool sisters take off and the Guilford Sisters both stayed! Yay! Whoopie! Splendid! Goody Goody! Oh well, it's all good. Hopefully we'll kill it this transfer! I finished my journal this week! And I'm almost 200 days into my mission! Yikes! Oh man! Well, love y'all, have a great week!

We were riding on a Greenway and we found this. I asked Elder Murray
to take a picture of me and while I was rubbing it a bird pooped on
the IPad screen while Elder Murray was holding. Good luck my foot.

How-Dee-How-Dee-Doo-Dee-Doo

Logan with his new tie from Guatemala!

Hello Everyone! 

This week was crazy, and seemed to last forever!! Monday was pretty calm, but Tuesday it really picked up. We started off the week with exchanges with the Guilford Elders. Elder Hulet came over to Summerfield with me! Beforehand all four of us and the Sagers went to a big food warehouse and did some service. We put together bags of food for less fortunate kids. Basically, this place takes all the leftover foods from places like Panera Bread and Little Caesars that they would've just thrown away and packages them for kids. You'd be amazed at how much food these places just toss away! There were HUGE garbage bags of assorted Panera Bread items!  And a ton of them, too. And also stacks upon stacks of Little Caesars Pizza! It's amazing how much food in this country just goes to waste. 

The exchange with Elder Hulet was good (especially because I got to drive the car😉), we were able to get in contact with a part member family! The next day we went to district meeting (I gave a training on our calling as missionaries, I thought it went pretty well) and it went well, and at the end of the meeting the Assistants show up! They were going on exchange with the zone leaders, but since there are three of them, one decided to come with us for a day!😬 Yikes! So Elder Clarke came back home with us...He's a super nice guy and he has a crazy life story, but we still were on edge the whole time. Not that we had anything to hide, but we aren't really proud of the area we are working with. We had planned to go tracting that day, but he shot that down, 'cause tracting is just a waste of time. So we just wandered around all day talking to people. We also played a game of pick-up basketball with a kid on the street. It was fun. That night we took our beds into the study room and put them on the floor, and Elder Clarke slept on the couch. We stayed up till about 12:30 just talking, which is something I don't do very much because I fall asleep so fast. That's something I've gotten really good at on my mission, sleeping, anytime, anyplace. Now, I could fall asleep in a less than two minutes. It's good for short power naps😀. He then had weekly planning with us and he set our goals really high for this week. Too high. Oh well, trying isn't gonna hurt. We then gave back Elder Clarke🖖🖖 and had a pretty good Thursday. 

We then did a bike switch-a-roo. So Sister Brown's bike (She's new. She got emergency transferred here because in her last area someone got murdered in a room just next door to them. Needless to say, there are no more sisters in Salisbury😬) broke, and they asked the Guilford Sisters to borrow a bike from them. The Guilford Sisters said yes, but they said that the Summit Sisters had to find a way to come and get it, which wasn't very fair to the Summit Sisters, because they were on bikes, and the Guilford sisters had a car and they have plenty of miles to do things like that because they are STL's. So we (we don't get any extra miles by the way, even though Elder Murray is a district leader) had to drive all the way to the Guilford Sisters' apartment to pick up a bike, then drive all the way across Guilford and Summerfield to get to Summit to drop off the bike😡, wasting a ton of miles. I just love those Guilford Sisters... We took Sister Brown's bike with us (the derailer had some problems) to take it to a shop we knew of. While we were driving around, we drove on a freeway (I don't know if it should be called a freeway if the speed limit is only 55😴) onramp, and while we were on the onramp, one of the tires on Sister Brown's bike just fell off!!!! Ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!! Nooooooo!!!!! We didn't see where it went so we never found it. Needless to say, we felt really bad. We took it to the shop the next morning and we had to buy a part for it to re-fasten the derailer, then buy a new wheel, tube, and tread for the bike. Yikes! It cost a good chunk of money, so I have $14 for the rest of the month! Yay! Oh goodie! It'll be fine. We have a lot of backup food in the apartment. We then dropped off the fixed bike, then had to drive back to Guilford to drop off the other bike. 

Well, we were able to meet a lot of new people this week. Mostly part member families, and we started to teach one. He is a less active member and he had three girls, two of which are baptism age and have not been baptized. We'll see what we can do. So we finally have things to do, which is good, we'll see if it lasts🎉. 

So this week was good, but long, and now we have no money. I think it was a great week! We accomplished a lot! Hopefully this next week is even better! Love y'all!

Our district, from left to right, top to bottom: Elder Sagers, Sister
Sagers, Elder Hulet, Elder Randall, Elder Murray, studMcmuffin, Sister
Goodrich, Sister Krummenacher, Elder Wilde, Sister Sherwood, SisterGodfrey, Sister Brown.



If you're interested in Elder Huff's missionary bag, here's a video:

Another slow week in Summerfield . . . EXCEPT FOR CONFERENCE!!

We followed a greenway straight to this, I didn't want to risk biking
on it, though I'm sure Brian Thomas could have pulled it off😬😀

Yay! I just love General Conference. For us missionaries, it's better than Christmas! We get to sit in a stake center for four to six hours a day and listen to the inspired words of the prophets and leaders of the church. They are awesome men and women. I loved being able to just sit back, relax, and listen closely. It was so great. Now it's over...😥. But hey! Elder Holland told us all to enjoy tomorrow and to not dread it, and tomorrow is today! P-Day!😆 So yeah, conference was great. The Guilford Sisters, bless their hearts, actually had an investigator to bring to conference (unlike the rest of us). His name is Jeff, and he is super solid. He said General Conference changed his life! He came to all five sessions! Which is better than a lot of Mormons. Between each session, he went out to the pavilion or a classroom and studied the Book of Mormon. We had a pizza party before the priesthood session (Orson Scott Card bought a ton of pizzas) and he shared his testimony with us. It's crazy! How did the sisters find him! WHERE'S OUR JEFF!?!?!?!  He has to be out there somewhere right? Man, we just can't find our Jeff. He must be hiding from us or we are really blind. 

This week was pretty rough. We only taught two investigators this week, and we didn't find any new people to pursue. There were bright spots in the week though, as always. We had interviews with president this week. They went pretty well, almost too well😄. President said that if I improved this next transfer as much as I have improved this last transfer, I'll be one of the better missionaries in the mission. I don't buy it. Considering I've been in the mission six months now and I've never taught the fourth lesson with any investigator, I don't feel like I've really done that much at all. I wish I saw the improvement that President saw, cause I just don't... But it was good, and he gave us some suggestions we'll have to follow up on. 

This week we also got to teach the Abdelhaq family, a great returning member/part member family. We showed up and they invited us in and to dinner. The father invited, even though we had already had dinner, so we ate more. We got to know the husband better though. He is a Muslim and a super nice guy. I don't know why he married a Mormon,  but they work it out. They are a cool family. 

Well, not much else happened this week. I went on exchange with the zone leaders. Elder Pottle came here to the wonderful snailish land of Summerfield. He called it that as well. We had a lot of fun and I really like him. 

Well conference was great, the work is slow, and I will be out six months on the 7th. Yikes! I'm 1/4 through the mission! Weird. Well, I'll talk to y'all next week. Love ya!

This is like most of the roads in my area.
Skinny lanes with no shoulder whatsoever.
I wish I could've included the speed limit in the picture.
It was 45. Yay!