The Week of Weird Weather

Oh man it's freezing, oh wait, it's nice and warm, oh, it's chilling down again, nope, never mind, I'll warm up again. That's basically what this week has been. When I emailed last it was in the teens and we were wearing big coats and by Thursday we were biking around in almost 80 degree weather wishing it was colder. North Carolina weather is strange, that's for sure. 

We had a pretty crazy week. We had our good days and we had our bad. Tuesday was great, we were able to catch every single bus that we went for, some were super close and we probably shouldn't have made it, but we did! We were also able to find two new investigators that day. We saw one, Mike, last night again. He doesn't have amazing potential, but we can hope. We are seeing one of them tomorrow with a priest in the Ward, so I'm excited for that. 

This week was one of the only weeks in my mission we didn't have one meal in the week. That's probably because of the fact that church was cancelled the previous week due to the "dangerous" conditions. 

I lost two more pounds this week. I'm getting closer and closer to where I want to be. 

We did service again this week and of course had a blast again. I'll make sure to send the pictures. 

On Friday we as a district helped move a friend of a less active member who got evicted from her house. It was a mess and a long day. We had to pack everything up, the sisters mostly did that, then we had to move everything down to the truck and pack the truck. We then drove to a self storage place and had to take everything back out of the truck and move it into the unit. It took most of the day. We started in the morning and got home at about dinner time. Kinda crazy. It was fun though. 

We were on the busses a bunch this week because it was bike week. 

Elder Fox came here on exchange and it turned into a 48 hour exchange, it was pretty fun. Elder Fox and I biked across all of Charlotte to get to service because we missed a bus. Today was pretty fun. We had a zone activity and played a huge game of volleyball. It's a fun sport. 

I had a couple members text me last night and one of our investigators called me and all of them mentioned the Green Bay Game. I guess it was a pretty good one, and they are in the semifinals, that's pretty fun. The investigator told me all about the teams going for the super bowl. I

bet Drew is happy to hear that the Falcons are doing well this year and they play the Packers next week to go to the super bowl. Anyway, I guess I talk about football a little too much with people😬. Oh well. 

Well, I had a pretty good week, and I hope for a great week this upcoming week. Love y'all!

The storm has come and it's pretty cold, but it won't last for long

So, that's right, this week we actually had snow! Yay! On Friday night things started to get pretty cold and it started raining/hailing and we woke up on Saturday morning with snow on the ground. It was only a couple inches, and the sun came out pretty shortly after that and melted most the stuff off the roads. Charlotte is also a little better at clearing off the roads than Greensboro was last year, so it didn't affect the work that much. It's hit the single digits here the last couple nights, and the last three days have not gone above freezing. But it's supposed to warm up this week. By Friday it's supposed to be close to seventy degrees! The weather here is so wacky, it can't seem to make up its mind. 

This week the work was pretty slow. Just a combination of people just disappearing and bad luck. Friday was one of the most unlucky days I've ever had. We had weekly planning and then we had lunch. I was super tired so I told Elder Toone I was going to take a nap, and either stay up and wake me up when it was time to go, or set an alarm and take a nap too. Well, he took a nap, but he didn't set an alarm, so we ended up sleeping 30 minutes past what we were supposed to. We then hurriedly got ready and ran and caught the bus to Uptown. We got to the transportation center and it turns out we missed the bus we wanted by two minutes, so we ended up waiting at the transportation center for 30 more minutes. By the time we got to our appointment, we were lucky to be only about 20 minutes late, but unluckily the guy who we were going to meet with (we called to confirm that morning) wasn't there. So we barely had missed the bus back when we were knocking on the door, so we decided to walk to another bus stop for a different bus and we ended up waiting for that one for 30 more minutes, and it was raining, and cold. But we caught the bus and had to catch another bus that only brought us halfway home, so we waited in the increasingly chillier rain for our dinner appointment to pick us up, and he got stuck in traffic, so it took longer than expected. During dinner we got a text from our appointment for that night telling us that he couldn't meet with us. Luckily the members we were having dinner with are awesome, so that made up for it. 

We did service again this Tuesday and Thursday, and that was fun as always. 

And we found a couple new investigators yesterday, so we're pumped about those (even though we gave one away to the sisters cuz she is an older single lady). But just looking forward to the warm weather this upcoming week and the exchange we have set up for this Wednesday. Hopefully y'all out west aren't freaking out about the snow like the people out here, because I've heard y'all have been dumped on with snow! 

Well, things are good, hopefully they'll get even better! Have a great week! Love y'all!

Transfers Again

So this week has been pretty crazy. So Monday night, after email time, we were driving home, and President called and guess what!? Elder Richins was called to be a zone leader in Greensboro, sad sad day. And guess what else? Elder Bingham got called to be a zone leader in the Charlotte Central Zone. So then Tuesday night we figured out who was coming....Elder Toone...oh boy... Elder Toone came out the same time as I did and look at us now...oh well. 

On Wednesday we went around so Elder Richins could say goodbye to all the awesome families in the Ward. Sad sad day.

Elders with the Klein family

 We spent the night at the Huntersville apartment and reminisced on some good times we had together. The next morning we got up and a member in the Huntersville Ward drove us all up to Salisbury and we did the transfers😢. I'll miss Elder Richins and Elder Bingham. 

Richins, Huff, Fox & Bingham "The Squad"

We got Elder Toone and Elder Guandinign  (?I don't know how to spell his name?) and we went back. Elder Toone is a good guy, he's just...quiet. Needless to say, I've had to take the reins in this area and do all the talking. It's kind of a big switch for me, but I'm liking the part of talking more. It's really actually kind of fun. We had district meeting on Friday. It went well. It turns out Sister Valentin is in our district now as well, which is kind of cool because Sister Valentin, Sister Vasquez, Elder Toone and I all came out together, we make up half the district and we are the oldest missionaries, too. It's my first district I've been in where I am the oldest missionary, (but three other missionaries are also). Anyway, It's good to reconnect with old MTC buddies like Sister Valentin and Vasquez. 

This week was pretty rough missionary work wise. We had a bunch of appointments lined up for people, but they all fell through, kind of sad. So we've just been running all over the place trying to contact potential investigators but we never seem to be able to catch anyone. 

This year for New Year's Eve, we weren't told to stay in our apartments, just be careful. So we worked all day, and we ended up getting stuck in the Uptown Transportation Center at 8:30 at night, because the bus that was supposed to take us home didn't show up, so we got to see a little bit of the craziness going on in Uptown. There was a very strong police presence and a lot of people walking around. We finally were able to catch a bus that took us close to our apartment, and we then had to walk a couple miles to get home. 

Church was yesterday. Our ward switched to 9:00 church now, so that was good, because it gives us more time to work afterwards, pretty great. Well, anyways, today we hung out with the Mtn. Island sisters and the Huntersville Elders. Elder Fox is having a hard time with Elder G (I'll just call him that from now on). I feel bad but there's not much I can do, just be his friend whenever we are together. Well, that's a wrap! Love y'all! Have a great week! 

Merry Christmas!

Elder Richins and Elder Huff in the street on Christmas Day

Hello y'all! Email this week will probably be a little shorter cuz I did talk to my parents yesterday ...so...yeah. Christmas was great of course. I had the opportunity to confirm Edward yesterday on

Christmas, so that was a great opportunity to give a gift. 

We were able to have Christmas dinner with the Duncans and they are such a great family. 

We had a Christmas Eve activity at the bishop's house as well and that was pretty fun. We had our mission conference on Tuesday as well. It was great. I was in charge of putting together all the musical numbers for our zone, and it turned out pretty well. Some Elders came an hour late so they weren't able to practice with us beforehand and they messed a couple things up, but other than that it was pretty good. We were able to do some service and build food boxes for some less fortunate families, and two of those families were in our area, so we got to deliver those boxes it was pretty fun. Well, anyways, we are still waiting on transfer calls, transfers have been moved to Thursday, so we'll see what happens. Love y'all, hope you had a great Christmas!

Elder Garrett wanted a picture of his past companions at the Christmas conference.
We decided to do some of his favorite poses