Down in the Arkansas

Hello. This week has been a lot of ups and downs.  We had zone conference on Tuesday. Zone conferences are always really good. We talked mostly about the various things we have been trying to implement in the mission and how they all fit together.  Overall the work has been going slower. A lot of missed appointments and people not being home, and even when we promised cookies, people didn't come to church. We got to eat a lot of cookies on Sunday.  However, we set a man on date to be baptized! His mom is a member and he has been to church a handful of times in the past. He has had a lot of spiritual experiences in the past and is so ready to be baptized! On Friday we went to Hot Springs for pretty much the entire day. We had district council and President Interviews, then had exchanges in Hot Springs (to save miles. We don't have very many left). We taught a man who is currently living in a tiny house. And I don't just mean the house is small, it literally...

Hello. This week was pretty nice. We opened with the mission P-Day in Jacksonville, AR. It was pretty crazy trying to find rides there and back, but we did it. The Little Rock side gathered together for a good time, the Memphis side the next day. Since this is my first transfer on this side of the mission. There were quite a few missionaries that I had not met before.  The Arkadelphia area only really has one sizable city. And the other towns are over 15 miles away, making frequent stops there difficult on miles, and are much more spread out anyway, so missionaries over the years have mostly stuck to the city of Arkadelphia to do missionary work. And because Arkadelphia is still rather small (and especially small in the summers when many of the college students go home), Arkadelphia has been well tracted. We will be out and about talking to people, find someone new to teach, and it turns out the person is already recorded in our system and has been taught before. Every single p...

I may not be able to attend my brother's wedding this coming week, but I got to go to one this past Saturday. A member of the branch got married. It was a nice ceremony, of which I got to hold the rings and man the hymn player on the piano. We want to start teaching the husband so they can eventually be sealed in the temple. To both couples, have fun being married!  And also happy mothers day to mothers. I gave a talk in the Arkadelphia Branch on Mothers. I think it was the first talk in church I have ever given that actually folled the 15 minutes allotted. I have the tendency to rush through talks, and overestimate the length of my talk. I didn't do that this time.  School got out for Henderson (and Ouchita too I think?) This week, so the town is going to be a little less lively now with a lot of the students going back home for the summer. Well see if I stay long enough to see them come back.  Knocking doors this week we ran into a member who had fallen off ...

Hello all. We had a really cool week here in Arkadelphia. We were getting a little discouraged this week because by Sunday we only had one new person to teach. We had gone out and worked hard, but just no one was coming up. Then on Sunday, after serious prayer, we found 4 people! That was a really cool miracle for us. Our goal for the week was 4, so what we thought was going to be a pretty unsuccessful week turned out pretty great.  We also taught a man named Keith, who the Elders have been working with for a while. He is the boss of one of the members here and is a real honest seeker of truth. We had a long but good discussion on the topic of grace/faith/works, a very common discussion here in the south.  We've been using a lot of miles this past week for a myriad of reasons ( for those unaware, in a mission car we have a limit on miles per month),  so one day we biked. 15 miles in the hilly countryside. We made a journey out of biking to a dinner appointment...

Arkadelphia is beautiful! There are hills and trees everywhere. The city of Arkadelphia is a small college town. With a population of 10k, there are two universities, Henderson State and Ouchita Baptist. So about half the population either goes to or works at one of the universities.  While I am in the Arkadelphia area. I spent a full day in Hot Springs before Arkadelphia. We had an exchange on the day after transfers, and I was with Elder Short in HS (yes, he is taller than me. I am Elder Shorter). Hot Springs is also very scenic as it's right next to Lake Hamilton and a national park, so it very much felt like a resort town.  My companion is Elder Green. Like I said in my last email, he only has 2 transfers left. He is very tall as well. He is my first companion from Utah. I made it half of a year before having a companion from Utah, which I think is an accomplishment.  The apartment is very nice. 2 bathroom/baths, very quiet part of town, forest right o...

After 4 transfers, I have been called to a new area. I loved my time here in Memphis, but I am excited for my new area: Arkadelphia.  No I did not make up that name. It is a place that exists. It's a small town in Arkansas, southwest of Little Rock. As a small, rural southern town, it's going to be quite different than the middle of Memphis. My new companion is Elder Green. I haven't met him, and he only has two transfers left, so I'll probably be his last companion.  Anyways, I want to pay tribute to the Central Gardens Branch. I cannot thank the members of the Central Gardens Branch enough. They are fantastic. Every time a new person came to church, they were incredible at welcoming them and helping them with whatever. And Kortavious. Special shout out to him. He's got great things going for him. Very determined, loyal, optimistic, and willing to learn. He's gonna a go places. Also to the senior missionaries, the Davises and Steeles. They are champs. The...

It's been almost exactly half a year since I left home for the MTC. It's crazy how much has happened in the last half a year. I am thankful for all the people I have had the pleasure of meeting so far: companions, members of the branch, other missionaries, church and mission leaders, and the countless many people we have met walking the streets of Memphis.  This past week has been interesting. I spent two days outside the area on exchanges. I went to Highland Heights with Elder Rivera. We had a guy try and steal our bikes. We walked up with our bikes to talk with him and he walked to us and grabbed my bike (which was actually Elder Hunt's, E. Rivera's usual comp) and said he just wanted to see how fast it goes. As we biked off I turned back and said "it goes this fast." We also got threatened of being drop kicked over the phone. That was funny. Then the next day I went to Millington with Elder Broadbent. That was also good. It was nice to be doing miss...