08/26/2019 Just up the road

This upcoming week will be the start of a new transfer, and the Lord seeth fit to send me away. But just up the road to Benton, AR. Not Bentonville, AR where Walmart is headquartered, but Benton, a city just out of Little Rock. We helped move a member from Arkadelphia to Benton, so not everyone will be a stranger. My new companion is Elder Critchfield, a missionary that was in the Birmingham mission and got moved here with Tupelo. So I have never met him. 

Interesting fact I learned from someone at church: Benton is the exact geographic center of Arkansas. Middle of my mission in the middle of Arkansas.

I have loved my time in Arkadelphia. I loved the small town missionary work it offered. You see everyone you know at Walmart (the only time I have ever liked running into people I know at the store), and everyone knows each other, especially some of the members of the church. Almost without fail everyone in the town knows at least one member of the church. I liked being close to a university (two universities in fact, but I'm partial towards Henderson). It's been good to be able to become friends with so many cool people my age in college and talk about the gospel with them, especially since most of them have strong faiths. I have made some friends in Arkadelphia that I will miss greatly. 

As for this week, it was really good. We visited a less active older sister. She has a really strong belief; health issues are the main reason she has not been able to attend church. She has a granddaughter who is 9. The family has been discussing baptism, and so we set up a schedule to teach them on Sundays to prepare her granddaughter for baptism. That was super exciting! 

A lot of service was done this week. We helped a family build a deck. It was good to get out the power tools again. We also pulled some tension wire on a chain link fence. And did some work to help decorate a home. The weather is also slowly but surely starting to cool down, which made working a little easier. Maybe it's just because the rain we got, but I hope the cooling down continues onward. 

One thing that was difficult for me over the past couple weeks was that Karl, our recent convert from a couple transfers ago with Elder Green, was not in a good mood for the past couple weeks and didnt really want to meet with us, but we stopped by yesterday and he was a lot happier, was still going strong in some of his trials and temptations. It was a super awesome goodbye to the area to see him on a happier note. 

Pics

1) lifeguard Turkey will save you if you drown. 

2) had an exchange with Hope. I was with Elder Rivera in Arkadelphia. Here we are at a member's house. She has 6 dogs. Here is just two of them. And Elder Rivera. Also fun fact, I have been in Elder Rivera's zone his entire mission so far. 6 transfers. And 4 transfers in his district.

3) our district plus our zone's Sister Training Leaders: 

Back (from left to right): Elder Andreasen, Elder Brendle, Sister Saldivar, Sister Bresee

Middle: Sister Brendle, Sister Hyer, Sister Dove

Front: Elder Rivera, Elder me, Elder Hamblin