Down in the Arkansas

Sadly the title of this email did not actually happen. Almost. On Tuesday, we got a special treat. Elder Bednar joined in on our mission-wide zoom call for a little over an hour! He, having lived and raised his family in Arkansas and taught at UA in Fayateville, loves Arkansas and asked at the very beginning of the call "should we call in the hogs?" Sadly we didn't end up doing it. Most missionaries in the mission do not know how to call hogs anyways. The call was really good. He shared really good insights, especially on listening to what the spirit says and not particularly on what the speaker says. Because you want to learn by the spirit, not just learn what the speaker is saying. He likes to through down on people taking notes on what people say in General Conference because he says "you never look at them ever again and usually lose the notes anyway." Take notes on what the spirit tells you. That will be most important than the details of the info...

After just a few weeks, I am now in a new companionship. On Monday we drove to Little Rock and dropped Elder Ashworth off at the Mission Home. It was the first time I had been at the Mission home since I entered the field. There I would pick up my new companion: Elder Probst! We have both been the mission for the same amount of time. He was just in a different MTC district, so I didn't meet him until we were leaving for the airport. He is from Utah. Neither of us have previously been Zone Leaders before this transfer so we're a mess.  We had a great week! We have been getting a lot of referrals, both member referrals and online ones. Last week a member met a guy selling life insurance and had the prompting to invite him to meet with us. We had two lessons this past week, and he is really cool and clearly understands everything we say and has a lot of feedback for our lessons. Very sharp guy. He is from Wisconsin, and he sounds like it to. I immediately recognized that he wa...

Happy Easter everyone! Here in Hot Springs we had a good Easter. Our church services are done in our Districts. With the self isolation and the things we are doing because of it, the districts in our mission have grown a lot closer and united because we see them almost every day. For part of our service, we watched President Monson's talk "He is Risen." It is really good!  Elder Hakes went home this past Wednesday, and Elder Ashworth goes home tomorrow. I am getting my new companion later today. However, I do not know who it is. I am used to that. For the past 3 weeks, I have not known was tomorrow was to bring, so I'm not even mad. We had a great time in a trio. We were basically the three stooges.  Also so one thing we are doing as a mission is creating these sweet Facebook pages for different regions of the mission. We share uplifting posts and videos, and we get experience managing a social media page for when we are all on the marketing team for a multi...

Good day everyone! I hope you had a great General Conference and were able to Hear Him as I did. I thought it was really good, especially the Sunday sessions. Elder Holland, Elder Christofferson, and Elder Oaks gave great, memorable talks. I also liked Elder Anderson's because he talked about the upgrades to the SLC temple foundation, which I learned about some of the methods of foundation design they are implementing while at BYU. We have been able to keep fairly busy. It may be good that I am a zone leader actually, because we do stay busy helping the zone out. Otherwise I may be getting driven up the wall with all the monotony. I still have no idea what I am doing. As for our teaching, Elder Ashworth found a guy on a Bible group who asked a question and we offered to DM him answers. The man is from Liberia and had some questions about the atonement. Elder Ashworth explained the atonement a little bit, and the man's response was "have you experienced this Jesus?...