Down in the Arkansas

Well, it is that time. It's been hard to process that it really is the end of my mission. After 24 months, missionary work has become my way of life, so it's hard to imagine going back to life at home.  With all that said. My last week in the mission has fantastic. The baptisms in Beebe did go through!!! Thanks for the prayers! The baptism in Quitman is being delayed for this Saturday.  Just as what happened in Hot Springs, The Beebe Ward also started sacrament meeting again for my last week in the area. They split the ward in two and one half was invited this week, and the other half next week. I gave a talk. I talked a lot about what I have learned about the Holy Ghost on my mission.  As for transfers, surprisingly only Elder Kitterman is staying in Beebe. Elder Danielson is going to Quitman/Heber Springs, so he isn't even leaving the district. In fact, we went on an exchanges this last week with his future companions. He will be in a trio for a week before one of them,...

I write this email to dispense information regarding the proceedings of this past week. I hope you enjoy:  On Tuesday I lead my last District Council. In all honesty I won't miss that very much. Planning and conducting meetings is not my forte. Following district council, I went to Searcy on exchanges with Elder Hoopes. We went to a lesson with Jmoney, someone they found while interacting with the Facebook community. Having served in Memphis, I would not have been too caught off guard if his actual name was Jmoney. But alas, it was not.  During the course of the lesson, family members would walk in, tend to something, then walk out. But as the lesson progressed, more and more people gathered in the dining room of their double-wide trailer home. They generally acted as if we weren't there besides maybe walking by and looking at us once and going about their business. Except the dad. He comes right in, interrupts, and starts talking about Moses, after which he somehow gets on th...

  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...

Hope you're week was good! Ours was definitely interesting.  Someone we are working with who was on date for baptism had to take herself off date. She is so awesome though. As it says in Preach My Gospel, everyone ultimately has their agency to chose to reject our message. But she is sooo prepared so there will definitely be some missionaries in the future who will be blessed with the opportunity to continue to teach her and help her along the covenant path.  Also, a further progression in the case of the elusive second set of missionaries that are supposed to be in Beebe. Elder Baird, who has been waiting for a companion in Danville, AR, is now being transferred to Bartlett, TN, so that means that until further notice, Elder Danielson and I are the only Elders assigned to Beebe for the time being.  We had a lot of interesting street contacts as well. We went up to McRae (population: 650) to go street contacting and the first and only person we meet (we spoke for an hour ...

So this week is not how I thought it would turn out. But it was super blessed nonetheless.  I had a great least day in Hot Springs. I am going to miss that place. I played Magic the Gathering with my companion and someone we are teaching. He wrecked us.  In between leaving Hot Springs and going to Beebe, Elder Keele and I (both waiting to train) got to spend time with the Technology Specialist Elders. That was fun. One of them, Elder Widtfeldt, participated in the same robotics competition I was in during High School so we talked a lot about that. We also like all the same youtube channels, so we talked about that for a long time too. People in robotics seem to just have good (or really bad) taste in entertainment.  At the end of the orientation on thursday, I got assigned my trainee, Elder Danielson. He is awesome. I barely need to train him. He's ready to go. He is far more prepared than I was!  I was thinking our apartment was going to have four missionaries in it...

This transfer has come to an end, and after 3 great transfers in Hot Springs as a zone leader, I will be training in the town of Beebe, AR for my final sprint. I am really going to miss Hot Springs. The ward is great and I am going to miss the wonderful people we have met and are teaching, but I am excited about Beebe as well.  The last week before getting transferred out of an area has been a blessed week in every area that I served in. Hot Springs was no different. We got a referral from a recent RM who was out doing summer sales. I was half surprised summer sales were still going on with COVID. They can knock doors, but we can't. Lol.  On Thursday we went on an exchange with the APs. I went with Elder Okland to Hope for a baptismal interview and Elders Probst, Mitton, and Phillips went to a lesson with someone. It was going to be our second lesson with him in person. And he accepted the invitation to be baptized! We have not set a date yet but he is progressing. He has been...

Hey  This week was pretty great. I turned 21 months old. Wild to think in just a few months I will be home. This transfer also finishes up next week. We'll see what happens. Time flies, y'all.  This week's events have been pretty eventful. I went down to Hope on an exchange and had a very interesting experience pulling up to a house of a woman they had an appointment scheduled for. As we pulled up, a man on the other side of the street started calling out to us and waving his arms. We cautiously engaged in a conversation. Many things were discussed, most of which I know not of because it was pretty hard to understand him. In the middle of it all he did try to call some phone number, and his phone said the number was not receiving calls at this time. Then he had us call the number on our phone. Turns out it was the Hope Police Department non-emergency number.... The police department blocked this guy's phone number. Imagine what you have to do to have that happen.... any...

The Arkansas summer is in full swing. Full sweat too.  And we actually spent a sizable amount of time outside. One day we went street contacting down one of the city walking paths. It was very refreshing to talk to strangers about Jesus Christ on a blisteringly hot day. Not even kidding. We had some great conversations. One guy said he was into bronze casting and making statues. He then invited us to see them and my expectations were blown completely away. One of his bronze casts was absolutely incredible. Also on Saturday, we participated in filming a sweet video for the Facebook page. It's a street interview style video in downtown Hot Springs. It was about how people find peace. Don't worry! I wore a mask the whole time. There is going to be a lot of editing involved so don't expect to see it for a little bit. We got a bunch of responses, some of them super deep and meaningful. It was so refreshing again to hear the insights of people from all over with very different ba...

President and Sister Hansen have now departed and the baton has been passed to the Cahoons. We got to see them on Wednesday and Thursday. They are awesome. They have a very different personality than President and Sister Hansen but a same love for the gospel, so I eagerly look forward to what these next couple months have in store. They are from Draper, Utah.  Our 4th of July was good! We did some service for someone we met a couple weeks back. He has a bamboo jungle in his backyard and we were sawing down some unwanted ones that were on the fringes and and throwing them into the jungle. We also went to a member's home for dinner and ate hotdogs and made s'mores. It was a great time.  Yesterday we hosted a Get to Know the Missionaries panel with the ward on Facebook. They could ask us questions. It went well. I, being from Minnesota, got asked how I liked the heat and humidity.  1) After service we were driving down Central Ave and Elder Probst and I saw this America...