Last full week of September

I can't believe September is almost over! And as a result, that means the transfer is almost over as well as the first half of my mission! What!!!?? Craziness. It's weird to think I've been out that long. Well anyway, this week wasn't too shabby. We did a lot of service again this week. We do it a lot. We went to the Corner Table to do service twice this week then we went to the library on Friday and helped out with that. Service is always pretty fun, I really enjoy it. 

We taught Don again twice this week, he just has to resolve his concerns about the Word of Wisdom and pretty soon he'll be eligible for baptism, but he's having a hard time with it, so we'll see how things go. 

Tuesday we helped a family move right after we ate at a pizza buffet with some members. It was a pretty gross place. I mean, the fresh pizza wasn't bad, as well as the salad (it's hard to go wrong with a salad), but everything else was not great. Well, we moved a piano and that thing was heavy. Jeesh, it took four grown men and me to move that thing. 

On Wednesday we got a phone call from this guy named Joshua Mount. Elder Garrett took the call and he literally got 30 or so words out and the call lasted 18 minutes. The guy just did not stop talking, and he couldn't understand what he was saying either. He wanted us to come by his place and teach his friend the gospel. We thought he was on speed so we kind of forgot about it. The next day we went with some Elders down to Statesville to go to zone conference, and one of the elders (he was on exchange, I think his name was Elder Cannon), after we had told the story, said he knew Josh and Josh had called him before. So Josh is a schizophrenic dude, as well as bipolar, so we hoped he would never call us back, but sure enough he did. He requested that we go see him, so we decided to go visit him one time to gauge the situation, and I really wish we didn't. He had a "friend" who he said wanted to be baptized. Anyway, we went to his adult housing place and had to sign in. The place was full of sketchy looking men, pretty scary. Anyway, Josh does not stop talking. We ended up being there for almost two hours, listening to him talk. His "friend" is a super quiet guy that Josh can boss around, so Josh has basically forced him to accept the gospel. So weird. I'll send a little video I took. That'll explain the situation a lot better than my words can. He's a good guy, just crazy, which isn't really his fault. So yeah. 

Anyway, we taught in Young Men that night, and I think it went pretty well. We basically just talked about how we prepared for our mission and what we wished we would've done. It was good. Thursday we got up and we drove down to Statesville and had zone conference. It was really good. I got to see a bunch of good fellow missionaries like Elder Christiansen, Elder Skinner, Elder Hulet, Sister Vasquez, Sister Sandy and more. We had some good trainings and a good lunch. We got home late cuz our ride had to stay after to talk to Pres so we went straight to dinner. Other than that, this week has been pretty tame, nothing really much to report. By next week I'll know transfer business and General Conference will have already happened . . . crazy! Love y'all!

Busy Week

This week wasn't too bad. It was busy, so that's a positive, I alway like being busy more than sitting around wondering what we should do. On Monday we did some shopping at Target this time, to switch things up a little bit. We got yelled at by a lady (our neighbor). When we're about to head out of the apartment to go to dinner, she knocks on the door and of course, we answer it. She tells us that we go up and down the stairs too loud… Really? That's two times in the last week! We haven't been walking any different than we have for the last two months. So we're kind of confused about why she is suddenly always getting mad at us for being too loud on the stairs. We've also seen the neighbors talking to each other in the parking lot, and pointing at our apartment. Yeah, so… We're trying to be friendly and nice, we don't really know what's going on but we're rolling with it. 

Anyway, we had family home evening with the Corey family that night and we had a lot of fun. The little boy, Ryan, had a Lego set that he couldn't put together, and his family wasn't willing to get into it, it was a kinda bigger set, not really that big, but he asked if either of us could do it. Elder Garrett looked immediately to me and I jumped at the opportunity. It was easy🤓. Got it put together in no time at all. In that set, there was a little piece that you could put a mini figure on and launch him. So we kind of made up a game on the spot. I'll send a video of it. Pretty fun😊. 

The next day we did service again at the Corner Table and as always we had a blast. That evening, our dinner appointment had agreed to pick us up at five, so we got home and waited...and waited...5:30 passed...we called, texted, nothing...6:00...6:30...and we gave up and made our own dinner, which I'm glad we did because we got a text right as we were going back out to work that she had fallen asleep. Oh well. 

Wednesday we had a district meeting. The second to last one before the transfer, kind of crazy. After that we had a lesson with Don. We taught him about the law of chastity and the word of wisdom. He doesn't have any concerns about the first one but the second is another story. We will have to see how he does. 

Thursday we helped set up tables, chairs, and lights for a wedding reception at the church and that night the Spanish Elders slept over again and Elder Washburn came to Newton on an exchange with me. Elder Washburn is awesome. It's sad, he goes home in a couple weeks😢. I'll miss that guy. He said we were going on another exchange before he goes though. Elder Washburn and I had a good exchange. We had a really good religious discussion with a religion teacher, then did service at the Library. The sisters dropped off some fried chicken they got at the Corner Table and we went home and had that for lunch. It was pretty good. We had dinner with the family that had fallen asleep that night. We played a couple different games (they are huge into games). That night Elder Garrett came back and Elder Washburn went back to Denver. We taught Don again on Saturday morning. We taught him the plan of salvation. We talked to a couple less actives then Brother Turner picked us up and took us to a really fancy restaurant. It was delicious. We helped him move a mattress out of his house then he took us home. 

Church was good yesterday. Donna was there again and Elder Garrett gave a talk, it was pretty good. There's this weird gas crisis of some sort going around here in North Carolina. I don't exactly know what happened, but it has to do with some gas leak in Texas or something like that. There are a bunch of gas stations down here that have run out of gas. They put a zero on the price sign and put bags over all the gas pumps. Kind of weird. There are still a lot of gas stations that have gas, so I don't know what the deal is. 

Today has already been a big day. Right after study was over we did a quick shopping trip, went home and changed, then drove out to Baker's mountain.  We did a hike there with the district, and that was really fun. When we got to the top of the "mountain" (Pretty much just a big hill), there was a lookout point and we were able to see for a long way, which is something you don't see very much here in North Carolina because there are trees everywhere! So yeah, that was pretty cool. Afterwards we went to a place where the Hunger Games was filmed! Well at least a little bit of it. We went to the little town where District 12 was filmed. It was really cool. We got to walk around all the little houses and go inside and explore. It was cool to see some things that I remember (which isn't much) about the movies. We took a lot of pictures this morning, but I don't have all of them now, I'll get them to y'all probably next week. I'll send a couple pics that I do have. 

Well, that's about my week. I'm looking forward to zone conference this next week and general conference coming up pretty soon! Yay! Love y'all! Have a great week!

Pho

So, this week wasn't too shabby. We served at the Corner Table twice this week, Tuesday and Wednesday. That was fun. On Wednesday we also helped a member in the Ward with some yard work and we ate dinner with him. After that we went to the church and had a meeting with all the

Ward missionaries, then after that we went home. So a pretty different day Wednesday, but it's good to get out of the monotony sometimes, especially during bike week. 

Thursday we both did Facebook posts and I had fun with mine. I talked about football since the NFL season started that day and how it can compare to us needing to be on the winning team, God's. That was fun, a lot of people complimented me on it at church yesterday so that's good. 

Anyway, that night the Spanish Elders came over and that's always fun. The next morning we got up and got ready for zone meeting. We were getting ready when someone knocked on the door. It was a lady that lives next door and she told us to not be so loud going up and down the stairs. Really? We weren't being loud or anything, just going up and down the stairs like regular. We are always hearing huge loud thumps from that way anyway. That's the second time they've complained that we were too loud, and we were just walking around like normal. Oh well. They always have the cops over at that apartment, so I don't know if they are all there. Zone meeting was good. We talked a lot about the Doctrine of Christ. I thought what a senior missionary said was pretty interesting. She said that repentance wasn't just changing from bad to good, it could also be changing from good to better. I thought that was interesting and pretty thought provoking. We also talked about being master planners, finders, teachers, etc. The zone leaders dressed up as ninjas and did a little fight to start their training. 

No wonder people think missionaries are weird. We are just a bunch of crazy 18-19-20-year-olds living and working together with little adult supervision and guidelines that ask us not to do things that normal 18-19-20-year-olds usually do. Of course we're going to be weird in one way or another. Anyway it was good. 

Speaking of weird, I went on Exchange with Elder Galbraith after the meeting. He's a good kid though, he means well.  He has served in Newton in the past so basically the whole exchange was looking for people he used to teach, which was good. On Saturday we taught this guy, Don Dollarhide at the church. We are pretty excited for him. Last Sunday a member in our ward came up to us and talked to us about Don. Don is his brother in law and has investigated the church on and off now for years. He now is having some trouble in his life and wants to investigate again, more seriously this time. So we got his number from the member and called him on Friday. He didn't answer, but 10 minutes later he called back! He said he had a question for us then he talked about how he was driving in Conover, which he said he knows like the back of his hand, and got lost. He kept on driving, trying to find himself, and he ended up in the church parking lot. He asked me if that was a sign from God. I told him that sure was! We set up an appointment for the next morning at the church and when we got there (10 minutes early) he was already there! We taught him and he accepted it. We set a date for him to be baptized on October 29th! He also came to church the next day. We have an appointment with him this week and we'll see how things go from there. 

After we taught him we biked home. Elder Galbraith had gotten in contact with a guy he used to teach and became good friends with, John Yang. John picked us up in his nice BMW and took to a place called Saigon Garden for lunch. It is a Vietnamese restaurant and we all got eggrolls, spring rolls, and Pho. It was pretty good. John's a cool guy, he didn't get baptized because of his parents, but he still goes to Institute and the singles Ward sometimes. After we ate he got us some bubble tea (doesn't have tea in it) which was super good. I got the coconut flavor. He then drove us all the way to Denver to drop off Elder Galbraith and pick up Elder Garrett and then took us home. 

Yesterday was a good Sabbath day. Don was at church, Elder Garrett and I got to bless the sacrament. I haven't done that in a long time. Then during third hour we were responsible for filling the baptismal font for a boy's baptism. That's a lot of water. Took up almost all of the time we had to fill it up. Then as we were filling it up the mom asked us to sing some hymns between when her boy got baptized to when he was ready. So we did. We thought we would only have to sing one song, but we ended up singing four. It's a good thing we're both musically talented🎶🎶🎶🎶 They really liked it, I was glad we were able to do that. 

Anyway, that's about the week. I'm sad BYU kept up at the one thing they are consistent at: losing to Utah. I hope that they fix things up, if they don't, they are going to have one rough season. Hope y'all have a good week! Love ya!

Blah

New district: From left to right, front to back->
Elder Garrett, Sister Johnson, Sister Lovell, Elder Mastin, Elder Galbraith ,
Elder Turner, Elder Washburn, Elder Mecham, Elder Jefferson, me, and Elder Grieves

This week wasn't very exciting. It just...happened. We served at the soup kitchen again, that was great as always. That day was Sister Johnson's birthday, and that night right before nightly curfew, we dropped off a gift for her (A lot of chocolates😋). We had district meeting on Wednesday. Elder Garrett and I did a training on helping people keep commitments, and I think it went pretty well. Elder Garrett and I have a new morning routine. Sometimes we have trouble getting up quickly in the morning and exercising, so we got these little Nerf guns. What we do in the morning is as soon as the alarms go off we have to get up, turn off the alarms, make our beds, and go get our Nerf guns. We have a quick sudden death battle then we go out running. I really like it. It really gets me up and awake so much faster in the mornings. It's fun too! 

Anyway, Thursday morning we got up and went and mowed some lady's lawn. She gave us some pound cake and some cherry tomatoes but they both smelled like smoke so we ended up throwing them away. We did service at the library again on Friday, that was good. It was super nice on Friday, some people were even wearing jackets it was so chilly, but of course, we get the bikes this week and it's going to get into the 90s again, even this whole last week was nice and cool. Argh. Oh well. We met a super cranky lady on Saturday. We were walking down the street when we saw a lady doing some yard work. So naturally we stopped and offered to help. She looked at us, shook her head, and said, "I don't need any Mormon  help!" Elder Garrett responded, "Oh, sorry about that." And she snapped back, "Don't be sorry, I know my savior Jesus Christ! Do you?....NO!"  So we walked away. Yesterday we had a good day at church. Both of us bore our testimonies and we taught young men.

Elders with Young Men

 We had a delicious dinner at the Moukassa's, oh my goodness, that lady can cook! We had some of the best, least chewy, most scrumptious pork chop I've ever had. Really good potato salad too! A great way to end the fast for sure. But that's about it for the week, pretty boring. Hopefully we'll have an amazing week this next week! Love y'all!