Down in the Arkansas

Transfer #4 has begun. Elder Jolie only has one more left after this, so he is likely staying in Midtown until the end. Elder Deushane, who got transferred to Little Rock, got sick right during transfers, so his travels to Arkansas got delayed while his illness was tended to. He was shipped off on Wednesday though.  This week was a great week. The cold has past, and it didn't rain a whole lot this week. It was Memphis' spring break too, so kids were all over. We were knocking some apartments and these two 7-8 y/o kids followed us around as we knocked. It was pretty funny.  But yeah this week and the past couple has been a lot of service. We've volunteered with the Mid-South food bank, two community gardens, making shelves with the man who gave us all those Panera Bread pastries a few weeks ago. He is turning one of the rooms of his house into a green room. He's growing all sorts of vegetation.  Also while knocking on Sunday we encountered a man biking fall an...

This past week was mostly spent on preparing for the baptism of Kortavious. It was awesome. We taught him with Elder Deushane and Elder Seastrand, our district leader and one of our zone leaders. Kortavious has really blossomed, and the baptismal and confirmation services were great. It was my first time baptizing someone. I was super nervous because he is like a foot taller than me. But it was good... apparently I overcompensated my strength and went hard on the baptism itself, but Kortavious said he felt good, that's what's most important. Memphis 1st also had a baptism, so it was good to enjoy these successes together, as a district. The confirmation was also great. Elder Jolie confirmed him. I am so thankful for the time we have had with Kortavious thus far. And we look forward to working with him further, which brings me to my next point: Transfer news is in, and I am sure you are all wanting to know what's changing. Our district isn't changing much person-wis...

Yeah. We put someone on date to be baptized. For this Saturday! His name is Kortavious. He has been to church 3 times and we've met up with him. He is really cool and it's great to see the change in him since we met him. It's been incredible! He has been so committed to meeting with us and going to church. He also bore his testimony thus Sunday. It was really sweet!  Also another miracle. A couple weeks ago I talked about the identical twins and how one, the one that had a baptismal date back with Elder Paopao and Perkins, was away for medical treatment and the other, the one we met a couple weeks ago, was away for family matters. Well we were walking down the street they lived on and we ran into one of them (we couldn't tell because they are identical). He identified himself as Richard, the man who was away for medical treatment. He has come back from West Virginia! He is soon to be moving closer to downtown, but he was excited to meet us and told us to come back t...

Until we get out of our current apartment. The apartment is being renovated in May and we contacted the mission office for arrangements to get us out ASAP. The move out date is March 8th. As far as I know we'll stay in the same complex.  This apartment has been an absolute ride. The rat. The twice clogged shower. The dysfunctional AC. The smell. The Sunday morning visitor. The police. The creaky floors that probably bothered our ground floor neighbor. It's the end of an era. This apartment has been in the mission for a long time. Lots of history. I may someday miss its quirks. Probably not though. This week has been rainy. Every day rainy. Two pairs of socks per day rainy. We started out determined to beat the rain, but the rain beat us by the end of the week. Elder Jolie's umbrella broke in the wind, and the Memphis sidewalks are not kind if it's raining. So our finding efforts were not super fruitful, but other efforts were fantastic, which I'll get ...

Ok so first I'm going to address the communication policy change, which I'm sure all of you people who keep up with the church have heard about. If you aren't aware of the changes, just Google it. But the SparkNotes version is pretty much I can communicate through means other than email every week on P Day to family members now. This includes calling and videochatting. That means what was previously just 2 calls a year is now like 52. If you want calls, just FB message or email me when is good and I'll definitely try to make it work. Also unless I have an unaddressed burning concern, an unanswered presssing question, or an unsatisfied deep intrigue, I will probably keep calls to around 10 minutes.  Also I don't know if this policy change extends to friends, but until I am told otherwise I will allow 1 to 1 Facebook Messaging with friends to a limited extent, I just won't call. I will still use email though so that method is still an option.  Alrigh...

I want to start off with some super cool news. So the transfer before I came to Midtown, Elders Paopao and Perkins found a really awesome man named Richard. Richard has been out of town for medical reasons, but still occasionally texts us (he is way excited about coming back and getting baptized, whenever that is). However, I had been having the prevailing feeling to visit his house. The problem was, we could never find it. Richard's dot on the Area Book App corresponded with nothing, and houses further down the street didn't seem to approach his house number. But thanks to emailing former Elder Perkins, we were able to locate his house, and we did, and we met Richard's identical twin brother. And his twin brother is also super excited about the gospel. The everlasting and infinite atonement is something that really resonates with them. Through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ anything and everything that may be weighing you down can be overcome. Sadly Richard's brother h...

Transfer #3 has begun. And it kicked off with some pretty good success. We did splits with the zone leaders and we each found a good number of people; many return appointments. Paired with a lot of people last week with return appointments for this week, the latter end of this week was fixing to be pretty busy with lessons. Sadly, pretty much every appointment fell through, mostly just the person in question not being home when they arranged for us to meet with them. We will be working to find ways to avoid this situation because it really made our Friday and Saturday let downs.  However, we did find a man who came to church this week. He is an older gentleman, lives alone, lives in a run down area, and doesn't have a car. He did like the church service and said he was looking forward to coming back. And he seems pretty interested in the Book of Mormon. Sadly he can't read the small text in the regular copies and large print copies can only be ordered when the person who n...