03/18/2019 I Like Lizards

Transfer #4 has begun. Elder Jolie only has one more left after this, so he is likely staying in Midtown until the end. Elder Deushane, who got transferred to Little Rock, got sick right during transfers, so his travels to Arkansas got delayed while his illness was tended to. He was shipped off on Wednesday though. 

This week was a great week. The cold has past, and it didn't rain a whole lot this week. It was Memphis' spring break too, so kids were all over. We were knocking some apartments and these two 7-8 y/o kids followed us around as we knocked. It was pretty funny. 

But yeah this week and the past couple has been a lot of service. We've volunteered with the Mid-South food bank, two community gardens, making shelves with the man who gave us all those Panera Bread pastries a few weeks ago. He is turning one of the rooms of his house into a green room. He's growing all sorts of vegetation. 

Also while knocking on Sunday we encountered a man biking fall and bend his bike rim. While trying to help him fix his bike we got into a gospel conversation. He got into very passionately reading Daniel 7 and Revelations 13 to us, and during that, two more people emerged from their apartments, and before you know it, we had a small gathering of people discussing their testimonies and religion. That was pretty interesting. It's those types of things that do not happen anywhere else in the world. Just the south. 

We came across one apartment complex where one building must have caught fire at one point. But the other buildings in the complex were still being lived in. According to a member who used to love there, it's been there a while. No plans to fix it. Adds a little bit of character to the area I guess.... 

Apparently I'm pretty good with chopsticks? We had a chopstick game at FHE (the senior couple runs an FHE for nonmarried or child-less couples in the branch. We've gone twice) were you picked up as many jelly beans or M&Ms and I won by a pretty large margin.

Pics

1) we ran into this monument one day. It was very cool

2) the Mississippi has been pretty high from all the rain and snow melt. It has even receded a bit, as you can tell by the line of debris. I almost made it to the parking lot for this park. 

3) we found a few of these lizards while helping a neighborhood garden. I like lizards. According to mother who has done some research, it's a southeastern 5 line Skink. Nice