Down in the Arkansas

Throughout my mission, I have had the opportunity to sit down and teach quite a few different people, awesome people. Each of them have been unique in their own way. Each have helped me gain a different perspective. Although this week I had one of my first real first taste of sitting down and teaching a whole family: mother, father, children. It was awesome to be able to experience that. The spirit the was present as we testified how the gospel brings families closer was strong, and as was our testifying of the Book of Mormon. And this family is super awesome. They have had so many coincidences and contacts with the church (in fact the dad is actually a member, just hasn't been connected to the church in a very long time) that it just cannot be coincidence. And we pointed that out when we taught them this past week. The Lord is preparing people!  We had Zone P Day this past week. We started off with some other games, but pretty much every Zone P Day turns into playing Cha...

This week has been a pretty standard week in the mission. It started with District P-Day, where we hung out at the church building, than went mini gold at the Big Rock mini golf course. Almost all of us scored within 5 points of each other, so we must all be pretty good, or bad together. The park was also completely empty, so we had the whole place to ourselves. We had interviews with President this week. It's weird to think I only have 3 more interviews with him before he is released. He has definitely been an inspired and inspiring leader over this mission. The amount of work and love he puts into this mission has been incredible.  We got to attend a baptism for the missionaries in Little Rock. The sister was being taught by the trio of sister missionaries in Little Rock, and when the sisters all got transferred out or went home, the Little Rock Elders finished teaching her.  Also I met a less active member of the ward who apparently attended the first Woodstock...

This year the weather has been fairly unpredictable in Arkansas. We have had 70s and sunny, to 30, and back to 70s and sunny, back to 30 and raining, all in a week or so. Sometimes in a day or so. It's been an interesting trip. But like a box of chocolates, I never quite know what I am going to get day in and day out here. Except the summer. I know exactly what I am getting there, and I do not look forward to that. I'll keep my unpredictable--albeit predictably snowless--winters any day.  Last year's winter in Memphis was pretty predictably coldish and rainy. I don't know what happened this year.  This week was a lot of driving around contacting people. A lot of appointments that ended up falling through as well. The usual missionary stuff. But we did have a lot of really good contacts too. We talked to this one guy in particular who as we kept on talking, he brought up concepts that are addressed perfectly in The Book of Mormon, especially Alma 32 and K...

2020 kicked off with a great week! It started off pretty adventurous on New Year's Eve. After having dinner with a family out past East End (quite a ways away from our apartment), we went to go contact some members. It was about 8:15 and dark outside and we needed to be back by 9. Me, always looking for the "least miles" route, decided to take the back roads to get back to the apartment. Back roads I had never been on.  We drive down these tiny, poorly kept dirt roads in the sisters missionaries' Chevy Malibu (they were borrowing our minivan because they had to tote a bunch of sister missionaries for Transfers). 5 minutes of driving later, we get to the end of the road: There's a gate. Uh oh. We turn back and try another route. It's a better kept dirt road. But... Gated at the end too. Now its past 8:30 so we give up on trying these dirt roads and we go back towards where we entered in and take the highway. While heading back we pass two trucks going down...