Down in the Arkansas

  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 fri...

  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 ...

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...

Hey this week was amazing! Hope yours was too. We did a lot of service, so the week went by super quick. But usually when you do a lot of service, you aren't able to do a lot of teaching and so at the end of the week you don't feel as spiritually uplifted. Well, the Lord provided us with so many opportunities to be spiritually fed. We have began to teach someone who is living with a member. We watched the movie Joseph Smith: The Prophet of the Restoration with them and invited them all to pray about it. The roommate opened up and said she hadn't prayed since she was 9 years old. So she agreed to say her first sincere prayer in over decade. And during our later visit, she testified of the inexplicable joy and peace that came over her as she prayed. And at a home sacrament meeting with them on Sunday, another friend was there and the roommate was testifying of how answers about our message came to her. It was definitely one of the best moments of my mission thus far.  Right a...

  Remember last week how I said "until further notice there will just be two missionaries in Beebe."  "Further notice" came about 3 hours after I sent that email. We got notified that we'd be picking up Elder Schuerch (pronounced "shirk") and Elder Kitterman, a reassigned missionary who flew in that morning. We got to drive down to the mission home that afternoon and pick them up. We took the opportunity to stop at Popeye's and get some fried chicken because Beebe doesn't have a Popeye's.  So now there's four of us! It is my first time in an apartment with 4 missionaries. The dynamic is very different. Food is depleted pretty quick. But we have done pretty well. The members have been great at supporting us.  We have done a lot of service. We make furniture for one of the members here who owns a flea market. It has been satisfying my urge to build something.  Sunday was a struggle. One of those days where you have a bunch of stuff planne...