Down in the Arkansas

My new companion is Elder Smith. He is from Utah and has been out for two transfers and right out of High School, so he is pretty fresh. But he is really good at talking to people so we work well together.  It's weird because I feel like I know very few missionaries in the mission now. I've been in the Little Rock stake now for 7 months, and most of the missionaries who were in the stake have either finished their missions, or have also stayed within the stake, so I see names or pictures of other missionaries and I just do not know who they are. We had another lesson with Eddie. We showed him the Our Eternal Life video. It's funny how a lot of people have a concept of true doctrine like premortal life despite that concept not being officially recognized by basically any other Christian religion. Same with families having the ability to be forever. We have run into that on the mission very often.  Thats kinda it for this week mostly. Hope thanksgiving goes wel

This week was a cool week. So Michael's baptism went great! I performed the baptism and a member in the ward, the one who would give him rides to church, did the confirmation on Sunday. Some of the missionaries in my district/ward also brought people they are teaching/trying to teach to the baptism, and the mission President, President Hansen was there for the baptism. He was doing interviews (he had done ours while waiting fir the font to fill), so he popped in to watch it. It was a great event Elder Critchfield and I also made Chocolate Chip cookies, which have been a hit for our two transfers together. One if the friends that another companionship brought to the baptism said "Betty Crocker ain't got nothing on you!" I guess I take after my dad, who makes really good CCCs. But that's it. That is the extent of our baking skills.  We also had a super cool miracle at Zone Conference this past week. We were practicing for the upcoming Musical Tribute. As we

I really appreciate all of the great members I have been able to work with. Obviously with dinners, but then also other things, like rides, supporting missionary work. This week was the second time on the mission where members, unprompted, have bought clothes for people we are teaching who are getting baptized. It's really awesome when they do things like that.  But yeah, Michael is still on the schedule for this Saturday to be baptized. He is doing super well. We also had a lady come to church who hasn't been to church in probably 15 years. She got out of contact with the church when she moved here, then some missionaries found here, recorded her address wrong, and she fell out of missionaries because no one could find her. Then we ran into her a month or two back, and she finally came back. It's great how the Lord has provided a way for the the missionaries to find her. Even amongst documenting the wrong address. She really liked coming back to church too!  Those

Hope everyone reading this had a good Halloween. We did here in Benton. Our Ward Halloween party was on Wednesday, and we got to be the judges of the chili cook off. I've heard stories where the judges picked canned chili from the store as a winner. I don't think Elder Critchfield and I made that blunder, luckily. But I was nervous we would. I don't consider myself a chili connoisseur.  We didn't see a lot of trick or treaters on Halloween. There were a lot of Halloween events and trunk or treats advertised outside churches. Sadly it may be a dying activity. And we didn't go knocking very many doors on Halloween. We stuck to delivering candy and cookies to people we are working with.  Also really cool news! Michael, who has come to church twice now, is on date for baptism on Nov 16th! He is a really cool. It's been awesome to work with him thus far. We are excited for him.  It's starting to cool down here thankfully. We also got our car back on W