Down in the Arkansas

I write this email to dispense information regarding the proceedings of this past week. I hope you enjoy:  On Tuesday I lead my last District Council. In all honesty I won't miss that very much. Planning and conducting meetings is not my forte. Following district council, I went to Searcy on exchanges with Elder Hoopes. We went to a lesson with Jmoney, someone they found while interacting with the Facebook community. Having served in Memphis, I would not have been too caught off guard if his actual name was Jmoney. But alas, it was not.  During the course of the lesson, family members would walk in, tend to something, then walk out. But as the lesson progressed, more and more people gathered in the dining room of their double-wide trailer home. They generally acted as if we weren't there besides maybe walking by and looking at us once and going about their business. Except the dad. He comes right in, interrupts, and starts talking about Moses, after which he somehow gets on the

  Greetings from Arkansas!  This past week the weather has been beautiful! I even needed to pull out a jacket one day. Arkansas has flipped the switch to autumn. Tell tale signs of fall: the leaves slowly changing colors and the Hogs starting their season.  To celebrate the Razorback's season opener, our Elders' Quorum President invited us and some of the people we are teaching to a barbeque. He smokes a good rib!  Trust me, we didn't watch any of the game. We didn't stay too long anyways. But apparently the Hogs got decimated.  No surprise.  The bishop also invited us to a youth fireside on Friday! Literally, it was a fireside. We all sat in his yard around a fire and did a missionary Q&A panel. There is a Sister in the ward who just submitted her papers, and a brother from Cabot who just returned from his mission, and us four, all with varying degrees of time in the mission. It was great. We had someone we are teaching come to it as well since her friend is a yout

  Hello! Good day to all.  This weekly hasn't been outrageously eventful. I did go on two exchanges. I went to Quitman/Heber Springs with Elder Eccles. His first name is also Matthew, and his last name also starts with an E, so we bonded over that. Having the initials of M.E. is an honor. Thanks, parents.  I also went to Searcy with Elder Christensen. He was one of the district leaders in the zone when I was a zone leader in Hot Springs, and now the tables have turned. I am one of the district leaders in his zone. He's awesome, so I am glad to be working with him again.  While I was off in Searcy, one thing  Elder Danielson and Elder Hoopes did was create a poll in a community Facebook group page. They asked the question: "Do you believe God would answer the prayer of a 14 year old boy, even through a vision?"  Around 90 percent of the people who voted responded in the affirmative. Hopefully to all those people who answered positively, we can meet with and share with

Remember how last week I said the Sisters in Heber Springs/Quitman were being switched with Elders? Well, we were expecting Elder Neff and his greenie to be the new missionaries in Heber, but not get there until last Thursday because of the new missionary orientation. Well, on Tuesday, we get a call from an unknown number saying "Hey this is Elder Eccles and Elder Bitter in Quitman."  You can imagine my confusion. Apparently, a second set of Elders got assigned to Heber Springs/Quitman. So now there are eight Elders in my district. Zero sisters. That's a lot of testosterone in one district.  That aside, the week has been very good! We had great lessons with those we are teaching. The woman who was supposed to be baptized last week was not able to, but she should be in the future. She is still eagerly anticipating it!  Another person we are teaching and had a date for baptism a month or so ago also gave us a great surprise. She invited us to dinner with her family! Family

Tomorrow brings a new transfer! The big number 17. All four of us in Beebe are staying. I figured as much since we all just got here. We're excited for what this next transfer brings. I have really enjoyed Beebe. While Elder Danielson and I have been going to a lesson each week on Saturday morning, Elder Kitterman and Elder Schuerch have been attending the weekly Flea Market in Beebe. For less than $10, you can rent a booth at the flea market and sell basically anything you want. Some of the regulars sell their usual stuff: clothes, flags, leatherworkings, knives, pottery. Then some people just rent a booth to sell the old junk they found during spring cleaning, so basically as close to selling belly-button lint as you can get. On an exchange with Elder Schuerch, I went to the weekly flea market and had some pretty great experiences. We met two relatives of members in the ward just walking around. In a COVID world going out and meeting people is harder, so being allowed to go to

  Another week has come and gone in a flash.  I haven't given a weather update in a while, and this week was a little bit more reportable: the vestiges of Hurricane Laura swung up here in Arkansas. We were told to go to our "safe house" for the day, but the parents of our safe house were at work..... so we just stayed in our apartment (with permission, of course). There was a fair amount of wind and rain. We lost power for 1 minute. Not too bad. Also we have had some brutally hot days this past week. High heat and high humidity. That's about it on that front.  Hah, get it? Front.  ok We spent a lot of time editing a video. If anything, the storm keeping us inside has given us some time to work on it. If you ever have wanted to learn how to do video editing, kdenlive is a really good software. It's free and it's pretty good quality.  We had more really good lessons this week! Someone we are teaching is so awesome. She convinced her mom to let us go to her mom&#