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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!

May The Force Be With You

I don't know why, but this week I thought a lot about Star Wars. I really miss it... Oh well! Considering right now I am sitting at my study desk and I can see 6 things that are Star Wars, I'm doing okay😄! 

Things this week went pretty well. Every dinner appointment this week has been out to eat! Joy! We biked a good amount this week, but mostly the very beginning of the week when it wasn't too hot. It finally got down in the 80's for a couple consecutive days this week, so that was nice, but then it warmed up later in the week. I can't wait for the weather to get to what it was like when I first came into the mission, it was perfect! It's coming pretty soon . . . pretty crazy! We served at the Corner Table again this week. I always look forward to that, it's pretty fun. We are going to be there tomorrow as well! Yes! Oh yeah! This week was transfers. We got some new people in the district, in fact, Elder Garret and I are the only companionship in the district that didn't change at all. We've got some pretty interesting missionaries in the district now. What's weird to think is that there are four Elders in the district older than me, and four that are YOUNGER!😱 It's almost as if I'm an old missionary, but I just have to pinch myself and then I realize I've only been out for a couple months...right? 

Friday we had district meeting and interviews and Elder Garrett and I helped clean the church, so we were at the church a long time. 

Saturday morning we went and helped someone move. The people we were moving weren't even there most of the time. It was just us and their older parents doing all the work, and of course, right after we had finished moving all the heavy stuff, the owners came and helped. Oh well, at least we got the opportunity to serve right. Then the dad, Brother Mullis took us to Burger King for lunch. Elder Garrett and I are both trying to stay healthy so he got a veggie burger and I got a grilled chicken sandwich. It's not very easy to eat healthy at fast food, but you can find healthy-Er options. We had dinner with the Winters that night (a family we didn't know, so we were excited to get to go to their home right?), they took us out to a Mexican restaurant! I got a taco salad, I'm doing my best😏.  Yesterday was good. A Hmong sister (we call her Momma Vue) came up to me and gave me a little gift bag. She told me she was sorry she hadn't given me a birthday gift sooner! She gave me a sweet Hmong tie! Now I have a Guatemalan tie and a Hmong tie, pretty exciting! We taught Elders' quorum. We talked about temples. It wasn't that good, but that group is pretty hard to work with. They are a bunch of single depressed guys, Hmongs, or the presidency, every other Elder is either in the young men's or primary. 

We were able to see Lizz last night. We haven't been able to meet with her this week, this week has been pretty tough for her. Her son brought home lice from day care, man she's having a real hard time getting them out of her hair. She was wearing a bag on her head when we talked to her. She hasn't read anymore of the Book of Mormon, but she has been reading out of the children's version with her son. So that's good. Hopefully she'll be able to figure out the whole lice thing. Well, that's about our week, nothing too exciting. Have a great week y'all!

Car Week is Over

Well, this week wasn't too bad, probably because we had the car. We had exchanges on Tuesday! Elder Washburn came to Newton with me! He's probably one of my favorite missionaries. He was in Kannapolis when I was in Concord, so I got to know him then. We didn't have a super amazing exchange, we only saw one less active part member family, but it was nice to have someone you can goof around with and talk about old times and Elder Nelson😀. Good times. 

The next day for district meeting we were supposed to have a bake-off between the four companionships, so Elder Washburn and I both made some treats later at night after we got home (he made peanut butter bars and I made red velvet cookies) and that was a lot of fun. But the next morning at district meeting no one else had brought anything, so that was kind of a bummer, but our stuff was good. We then all went out to a NY Hibachi buffet, which wasn't really that good so I didn't really eat much. Then we exchanged back. 

We talked to Lizz a lot this week. On Thursday night we went over with our Ward mission leader, Brother Melonakas, and taught her about the Book of Mormon. It went really well. We gave her a regular Book of Mormon and one of the children's version as well. The next morning, during personal study (about 8:30) she messaged us with some questions about the chapters she had read. Apparently she had read thirteen chapters from later at night on Thursday to early morning on Friday, pretty crazy!She had great questions that we were able to answer and we are teaching her over Skype tonight. I'm pretty pumped for that. 

On Friday we did service at the local library. We sorted books and put them back on the shelves

and other little jobs like that. I enjoyed it. We are going to go do that every Friday from now on. I finally got my suits dry cleaned! The first time on my mission! There is a Hmong family that has their own dry cleaning place and they dry clean our stuff for free! Pretty nice. My black suit doesn't fit me very well though, so I don't really ever wear that one. It hasn't really fit me since Concord. It was okay in the MTC, but I hadn't really gained that much weight at all and it started being uncomfortable. I don't think missionary mall did a great job tailoring the suit, because my gray suit fits me perfectly still, but my black one never really has. Oh well! 

We saw this guy on Friday who was pretty crazy. We were looking for some less active members, but they moved. This guy came out and started talking to us and obviously he was drunk. He told us we should lose our ties and go to Crazy Horse. I thought he was talking about the huge stone monument in South Dakota, so I told him that was too far for us and he looked at me strange and told me it was down the street. He was talking about the local strip club😳! He also offered us a beer. Eesh, people are so crazy out here! 

We went to Golden Corral for dinner with a member on Saturday night. He picked us up in a brand-new WRX! Pretty sweet car. I"m pretty tired of people taking us out to eat though. This month we have had 16 dinners with members, and seven of those have been out to eat! I've eaten at this one place called El Paso four times since I've been here, Golden Corral twice, and then a bunch of other random places. It's so hard to lose weight when you are eating fast food, a buffet, or huge Mexican dishes every other day! I could eat well all day and then we go to dinner, it's crazy. I've only been in six different homes this month for dinner, it makes it really hard to share spiritual thoughts, and that kind of bugs me. That's the whole reason why we have dinner appointments, I could really be okay without the food, it's just a great perk😋. Oh well. 

Transfer calls came Saturday night...Elder Garrett and I are both staying. Elder Garrett has only been in this area two weeks longer than I have so we might be together for a while... Sister Marshall is leaving to go to Winston-Salem and Sister Lovell is coming to Conover. It's kind of funny cuz she was in my last district in Summerfield. Well, that's about it for this week, hope y'all have a great upcoming week! Sure love ya!

Weird Week (15 August)

This week was a different paced week, even slower than usual, if you could believe that. We did service at the Corner Table again this week. There was an interesting lady there who confronted us asking for money. I think I may have a phobia of women with beards (she had a pretty darn visible one) because I froze up and I couldn't get a word out. That isn't the first time that's happened either...interesting.

Anyway that day we biked a pretty far way over to a older lady's house and finished trimming her yard, then biked back. By the time we got back home and got showered, our dinner appointment picked us up. It was with the Setzers. They are probably one of my favorite families in the Ward (not that I have any favorites of course), but they are the family I talked about with all the dogs. They had only got rid of one puppy since I had been there last (which was a month ago, can you believe I've been in this area for a month already! I can't) so they had almost as many puppies this time, but they were twice the size! So that was a blast. They enlisted Elder Garrett's help with giving the puppies shots, and they tried to get me to help out, but I couldn't, I just looked away. 

Wednesday we just biked all over tarnation and didn't get much done or meet any people. 

Thursday was so boring. We were asked to clean out our phones before zone conference, because they were switching services and giving us new phones. So Thursday we got up and did studies, then we did weekly planning. That went until 12:30, we had lunch till 1:30 then I started the daunting task of cleaning out the phone. There were so many contacts in there it was crazy. I had to go through and look at each contact, see if they were still in our records, see if the phone number was still valid and so forth. I did that from 1:30 to 5:30 when dinner picked us up, we were gone at dinner until 7:15. When we got back I started cleaning out the phone again and I finished at 9:15. So I guess I had a busy day, I was doing something I was supposed to be doing the whole time, but it was definitely something I would rather not spend all my time on. 

That night the Spanish elders came and spent the night, then we got up early the next morning, piled in the car, and drove to Mooresville for zone conference. It was a combined conference, with three zones in attendance. President taught about how we might not have it easy, but we should never give up, because when we are rejected and pushed away, we are walking side-by-side with Jesus Christ himself. He also emphasized the online proselyting a lot more and we were encouraged even more to use the technology we have. There were a lot of good ways to use it shared, and hopefully Elder Garrett and I will catch that fire. After the conference, the Spanish elders dropped us off at a restuarant, where we had dinner with two less actives. Then after that we biked home. 

Yesterday was a pretty good day though. We of course went to church, and PEC went very well, as well as all the other meetings. We went home, had lunch. Then biked all round tarnation and couldn't find anyone to talk to.  We were on our way home when we saw that in downtown Newton there was a big car show going on. On the main streets of downtown were hundreds of old, antique automobiles. They had closed off all of downtown to traffic and just a bunch of people were meandering around, looking at the cars and buying snacks and stuff with vendors lined up on the street. It was pretty packed. So we locked our bikes up and tried to talk to people, but trying to talk to these people was like trying to talk to Easton when he is playing a video game. It was virtually impossible, they just didn't want to talk to us. We did see a lot of cool cars though😉. Then we went home and had dinner, then biked around to end the night. We were able to stop and talk to this one lady named Lizz, and she seemed very interested in what we had to say, so we taught her, and we friended her on Facebook and we are going to teach her over Facebook tonight! So we'll see how that goes. I really hope it goes well. 

Well, that's about it for this week. We've had some fun today at the church playing basketball and eating some delicious Burger King! Hope y'all have a great week! Love y'all!

Elders Garrett and Huff boating?

The Hastening of the Work (8 August)

Hickory Zone

So this week has been a pretty good week, A super wet one too! Every afternoon or evening dark clouds roll in and it either rains, or comes close to raining. I think it's cooling down, which is good because we now have the bikes for this week… Yuck. In this area I feel like we are always biking, because we kind of are. 

Tuesday was pretty good. We did service at the Corner Table again,  that's always fun. We drove around a lot that day and we stopped in to a less active Hmong family. We talked to the mother/wife outside and tried to ask whether we could come over and teach her family, but there was a slight language barrier and she ended up giving us these weird squash/melon thingies. She gave us a bunch on a plate and looked at us to see our reactions. We both started eating, and we both pretended that they were really good, when in fact they weren't. They tasted like raw pumpkin mixed with zucchini and a little bit of cantaloupe, oh and maybe some cucumber too. I ate the whole plate, which I didn't think was too hard, but wasn't easy, and Elder Garrett couldn't stomach his whole plate. I probably shouldn't have finished my plate because before I knew it she was getting quart sized Ziploc baggies and filling them full of these melon-squash thingies for us to take home and eat. It was hard but I stopped myself from breaking out in laughter. Needless to say we went home and dumped them out on our back lawn for all the interesting critters that live behind the house to eat. That night we met this guy (super old by the way, with a lot of health problems as well) who was baptized by Dale Murphy (a famous baseball player). He also was on a church committee and he came up with the idea of putting the words, "Another Testament of Jesus Christ" on the front of the Book of Mormon. He also contributed to making the two words, "Jesus Christ" in the church's logo, bigger. So that was pretty cool. 

On Wednesday Elder Garrett got sick, so we had to wait it out a little before going out and working. That night a guy in the ward, Brother Scheller (the elders quorum president, and a dentist) took us to a super fancy restaurant and got us each a $32 steak. It was super good😋. I then had a big piece of key lime pie… Really good. That night to work it all off I push mowed a less active lady's yard, in proselyting clothes. 

I sweated a lot, so hopefully that got some weight off of my body. Which is something I really need. At this point in my mission I've almost gained 40 pounds. Pretty scary huh? I was looking at a picture of me and Elder Buffaloe in the MTC and I was a lot skinnier back then, weird to think that was only 10 months ago. Well we have this thing in the mission called "Six months to sexy." Which basically means our last six months are not only devoted to preach the gospel with increased fervor, but to lose a lot of weight so we look good when we go home. So I still have eight months before then so I'm totally fine… For now😬. 

Elders Garrett and Huff with their double chins

Thursday we did service at the soup kitchen again and then on Friday we had zone meeting. 

It was a pretty big deal zone meeting. The whole meeting was taken up by a big new technology initiative training that our mission is participating in. As of right now our mission is one of the few in the entire world that is using Facebook. So the training was basically to brief us on how to properly use Facebook and other technologies on our iPad. I was excited for this training because I've not really known how to use Facebook for good missionary purposes, but now the mission is really pushing us to stay connected with our investigators and connect our investigators with members through apps like Facebook, Facebook messenger, Skype, and others. It's pretty exciting. The Arizona Tempe Mission was the first mission to get this training and it was extremely successful there. So our mission is one of the few others that has this pilot initiative training. 

In zone meeting I participated in a musical number. I'm doing that more and more and it kind of concerns me... It went well. 

After zone meeting I went over to Hickory because we had an exchange with the zone leaders. I went to Hickory with Elder Grieve. He's a good missionary, but he is kind of a stick in the mud. I kind of feel bad for him though because he is a younger missionary than I am and already a leader over a zone. I think it's kind of got to his head. That's why I am kind of happy that I am not in a leadership position because there's a lot of pressure on you and you have to correct other missionaries sometimes. That's not something I want to do. On the other hand though it's weird to think that he hasn't been out as long as I have, that he has had a lot of leadership responsibilities already, yet I have had none. Not something I'm mad about, but something I'm just curious about. 

Well anyways, we did some service for some elderly sister in the Ward. We did some weed whacking for her. She had a battery powered trimmer, I had never seen one of those before. 

That night we had dinner with a Hmong family. They are awesome. We had a good dinner where most of the food was delicious. They had these things they called "bitter watermelon" and oh boy they were bitter, wow! I had never had anything so bitter in my life. Grapefruit has nothing on this melon, yikes. It's supposed to help with diabetes though, so I guess it had some sort of purpose. Sunday started out pretty interestingly. Ward council was very heated yesterday. It's weird to think how young and inexperienced we missionaries are, but how we are heavily involved in the ward's business, and we get to see all the crazy things that go on in Ward council and people ask us about the status of people in the Ward. Being a missionary is a weird calling.  Well, that's about it for the week. We're just chilling here at the church playing games of all sorts with the district. Well, I hope y'all have a great week! Love y'all!

The Week of Stuff

Oh my goodness! I opened up my package and I had a bunch of letters
from friends/family! Best part of the package! Thank y'all for all the
birthday wishes and encouragement! I love y'all!

Sorry this email might be a little shorter, we had a big zone activity today all the way on the other side of the zone, so traveling back home takes forever. We did the activity at Bo's. We paid 9 bucks and got to do unlimited bowling and laser tag for three hours. It was pretty fun. The laser tag equipment was pretty crappy and didn't work half the time, and I really stink at bowling, but we had a lot of fun anyways. 

This week was a blur. I can't believe it is already August! June and July flew past. This week was full of biking and sweating profusely. I have never sweat so much in my entire life. The humidity is crazy. I am so glad we have the car next week. I think bike week has worn me out pretty good. 

Wednesday we had district meeting, that was good. We are working on memorizing the 42 principles in the Preach My Gospel lessons as well as the baptismal interview questions and scriptures for each of the 42 principles. This last week Elder Garrett and I got really far. I almost have everything memorized. On Thursday we mowed some inactive lady's yard for her. Well, Elder Garrett mowed and I talked to the lady. We were able to do service at the soup kitchen twice this week. On Thursday when we did it, the power went out to the entire city. Since the meals in the oven weren't done, we just made sack lunches and handed them out. It mixed things up a bit. 

Friday we biked all around Timbuktu and didn't talk to barely anybody, just sweated a whole bunch. I got a birthday package though and that made my day! There were so many goodies and awesome cards. It was awesome. I was pretty sick on Saturday so that stunk, but Sunday was great. We had a linger longer after church in the Ward, and the Ward mission leader told everyone about my birthday and so everyone sang for me. The Sisters got me a gift and a nice card. They are awesome sisters. That night we had dinner with the Vues, and the Sisters had told them that it was my birthday, so the Vues had a cake for me and a gift. They got me some socks and a tie . . . pretty awesome. 

Well, I had a great birthday, sorry the email is so short this week. Love y'all!

Hot hot hot hot hot hot hot hot YUCK!

This week was so HOT! Luckily this week was car week, but we didn't get to use the car that much because the previous elders used most of the miles in one week. I have never sweated as much as I have this week my whole life. Temperatures were in the nineties all week long with humidity usually in the eighties, pretty miserable. We biked a couple miles last night and when we stopped and got off, I literally was dripping sweat. I could feel it running down my back, it kept getting in my eyes, and whenever I would try to wipe my hands off on my pants or shirt, nothing happened, because my clothes were soaked as well. 

Well, enough with all the heat, this week has seemed to go by pretty quick. I can't believe there is less than a week until my birthday. I don't want to be nineteen! That's too old for me😅. My sister's gonna be a teenager too! 😱Lauren is too young to be a teenager! Time is starting to go by pretty quickly here on the mission. When writing these emails, I have to refer back to my journal to remember what we did each week. Luckily I write in my journal every night, but sometimes I can't even remember what we did that day. Maybe my mind is just going🤓. 

So Tuesday wasn't too crazy, we did service at the Corner Cafe (a soup kitchen in downtown Newton) and that was fun. There are a lot of crazy people that go there, but it is a fun way to do service in the community. 

We met a Hmong family that goes to our Ward and they gave us a loaf of bread, a box of microwaveable burgers (they actually were really good😋), and a bunch of Hmong candy, just for stopping by their house! I don't know much about the Hmong culture, but I really like it so far!😆 Our Ward has a very high concentration of Hmong people, it's pretty neat. 

That night, the Spanish Elders came and spent the night, Elder Najera and Elder Johnson. They are over the whole Hickory Stake, so they cover all over tarnation. Elder Najera is a district leader (not ours), so they come over and spend the night before each district meeting, so he can be close to the stake center (which is conveniently our Ward building😊). So that's a fun little tradition we have. It's kinda cool to see how Elder Johnson has changed. He came out with me.  I really enjoy spending time with him, he's pretty cool now. 

On Wednesday morning, a man in the Ward, Brother Short, came and picked us up and he took us out to breakfast. He took us to a little cafe, it was pretty good, then he dropped us off at the church for district meeting. We had a good district meeting, and then we went on exchange. I went over to Lincolnton with Elder Piutau and Elder Washburn went with Elder Garrett to Newton. Elder Piutau and I biked a good bit and talked with a crazy guy for a while, who was just talking about philosophy and stuff like that, then we had Ward correlation for the Lincolnton Ward and I just sat there. After that, while we were waiting for our ride, we played around the world, and I won...of course. 

The next morning we visited a less active, then went and exchanged back. I really like Elder Piutau, he's a fun guy. On Friday we did some surprise service for a sort of less active lady. We were biking around and she called us and asked us to mow her lawn, so we went in our white shirts and ties and mowed her lawn. I drove the riding lawnmower, Elder Garrett used the push mower and Sister Buff used the weed-whacker. I got pretty good with that riding lawn mower, it was a bunch of fun. I was thinking Elder Garrett and I should start a lawn mowing company called, "The Guys in White Shirts and Ties." We got pretty filthy though so we went home and showered. 

That night Brother Hurley took us out to a place called Western Steer. It is a buffet that focuses on meat. Man that place was good! I stuffed myself with so many delicious meats as well as other things. We got home and we were so full. The next morning we were still feeling some effects from the night before. But we were fine. 

On Saturday we had a Pioneer Day event at the church, at the pavilion outside. We had food and pioneer games, and we were able to get to know the Ward a little better. A bunch of these people are crazy! It's a good crazy though I guess. They make me laugh. The farther away from the big cities you get, the less western transplants there are, and the more southern people there are. 

We were able to find some new investigators this week. We got a referral from the Conover Sisters and we went by and shared a quick message and asked if we could come back. She said we could, so we went back and taught the whole family. Nina is the mom, Chris is the husband, and Elijah is the rambunctious little boy. We had a good lesson with them and they want us back! Hopefully we'll be able to do so! We'll have to see. 

Yesterday was pretty good. Elder Garrett and I did a musical number in sacrament meeting. We performed Choose the Right. I played the piano and he sang. It was pretty good, considering we put it together the day before and practiced just a wee bit. We worked they rest of the day after lunch, and we went to the more ghetto side of town. I played pickup basketball with a bunch of little black kids, it was so fun. 

Well, what is up with this whole Pokemon Go thing? Is it a big thing out west, cause it sho is here. Everywhere you go you see people walking around playing that game, it's crazy. Maybe I'll have to get is when I get back home😉. 

Well, looking forward to another scorching, sweaty, full-bike week. Stay cool y'all! Love ya!

Elders Huff & Johnson