Crazy Week

After talking with y'all we were returning home and we came across a bear that had been hit by a car. It looks like bear city has its name for reason!

Well folks, I have officially finished the first week of my last transfer! What better way to start things off than throwing a new comp into the mix of things. His name is Elder Zachary Palmer and he is from Portland Oregon. His family actually lives like 2 hours north of Spokane, Washington! He's basically in Canada. Elder Palmer has actually been out on his mission for about 20 months, so New Bern south has a couple veterans in the mix and it’s dope!

We did a lot of service for brother House again this week; we went to his house and helped with his humongous garden/green houses. In the same day, we went to the church and upgraded our phone to MAAS 2.0. It sucked because I lost all of my music, but it's okay, I only have one month left, right?! That evening we went to a baseball game for the Kinston wood ducks! The game wasn't very exciting, but when we went to a pitching booth, that made things really intense. Even though my arm was really cold, and I haven't thrown in 2 years, I threw about 74 miles per hour so it looks like I still got it in me!

On Wednesday, we had our activity with the primary kids. It was pretty dope and we all did our own things when making caramel apples. We may or may not have burned a little bit of the caramel, but the kids didn't notice it at all. For a quick spiritual message we related caramel apples to baptism. The caramel represented the water, and the apple represented the kid. When they go into the caramel they must be fully emerged and when they leave the caramel they are sweet and covered in something amazing, i.e. the Holy Spirit.  They all loved it! The only thing that might have ruined it for me was when I got burned by some caramel when I dropped one of the apples. It's okay though, I only got a little burnt:)

This past Friday was very special for Sean… because it was his graduation! He got us some tickets to go and all 4 of us went to some of his graduation though we had to leave a little early. While we were there, I noticed and recognized so many people that I have friended on Facebook! I actually got some messages from quite a few of them saying that they saw me - lol. One of the peeps was Jessica and she is actually pretty cool. We had a great lesson with her this past weekend and we hope to see her and her sister in church this next week!

One of the people that comes and plays Frisbee golf with us is Tyler Martin, and he will be moving away this next week :(  We had dinner at his house for the last time and we actually had so many people come together to play one last round of Frisbee golf with the Martin clan but besides that we didn't have much going on this past Saturday. 

When Sunday came around the 2nd hour was not good at all! The Bishop went on a rant for 40 plus minutes about the proper way to clean the church and when he was 10 minutes in we just took the people that were visiting and went into a different classroom. I was in charge of the lesson and I talked about 3 parables that Christ gave. It was really good and everyone seemed to enjoy the discussion and it was an all-around good time. After church it was perfect for pictures and so I went to Glen Bernie to take a new profile pic. After taking the pictures I was returning home and for some reason there were so many cops in the middle of the road and one of them waved me down and asked for my license. They must have just had that checkpoint to see if people had their driver’s licenses because after he saw my license he said for me to carry on with what I was doing! It was pretty cool and weird but that was a great way to end an amazing week!

I forgot to mention! One night we went to grandma Lois's house to eat some supper.  They really hit it off with Elder Palmer and we had a blast eating so much meat. I went off with Lois to help set up a family search account and get her started. While I was doing that, Elder Palmer was with Johnny and Adam and his friend talking about the gospel/all things you can imagine! It was really fun and I enjoyed my experience. I also invited her to come to church one of these weeks, but we will see how it goes because they are a high risk for covid.

At the end of the week we had a zone conference with president and sister Maura. While we were there I signed a contract saying that I will finish my mission strong. I also gave my parting testimony for my last ever zone conference which was scary, but super cool and everyone loved it!  The week was super fun and passed by so fast. We had so much work to do and we barely had time to eat dinner! I hope that every week can be as successful yet crazy like this one.

Special Softball

These past two weeks have blown by quick. I'll talk about some of the highlights! On Cinco de Mayo, we had our zone council. The entire zone came to Bear City (New Bern) and we talked about how the work is going. Instead of doing a roleplay for a training, we decided we should do a 10min meditation from the calm app. It was awesome! Our zone unity is really good and we all became homies after that day.

On Saturday, we had the opportunity to volunteer for a special needs softball tournament! We were invited by a family in the ward who has a son that participates in the games. We pulled up and another member gave us some customized red shirts with our names on the front. It was really fun and I had a blast getting to know a lot of those participating as well as volunteering to help the players stay on task and having fun haha. 

The last thing I really wanted to point out was something I tried and loved. What I'm talking about is meditation. As before mentioned in zone conference, I have been trying to get into meditation to boost myself spiritually and mentally. The last general conference discourses given by general authorities have really made me ponder about how I should really start setting time aside just to sit and listen. I only did it a couple of times, but it was such a great experience! I haven’t gotten any life changing revelation, but it was still good.

Farman and Himan are heading out this next week so Bear City will really be taking a big hit with this up and coming transfer, but I have hope that this last transfer will be great and that I'll finish really strong!!

Hidden Family in My Area!

We were supposed to do some service for some members on Pday by laying down some pavers in their back yard, but when we pulled up, we were stopped by their non-member friend that was going to help us. The friend told us that we’ll have to do it another day, then pointed out the ginormous gash in her head that she got from falling down their stairs and tagging it on the corner of her house. She got to the hospital safely and got some stitches and we were able to get that service done later in the week.

Our teaching pool is a little up and down at the moment. Jarrell was supposed to watch church tomorrow over Zoom, but was a no show. We had an amazing lesson with Tracie during the week and even got her on date to be baptized May 22nd! She has so much going on in her life at the moment that she hadn't really been able to talk with us throughout the week and she didn’t go to church. She knows how important baptism is and even asked us to start teaching her son and help him to be baptized as well! We thought, "Yeah, we’ll help your son when you actually talk with us more often" haha. 

We had a zone social media conference again over Zoom and yet again... it all could've just been sent to us in an email, instead of taking 90min of our time haha. It's alright, because later that night, we had ANOTHER mission Zoom conference, but this time with the Maurers and their special guest. The special guest was a blind guy that they were friends with back in Australia and he shared life stories with us. He is outstanding on the guitar, a motivational speaker, and an avid cyclist! He was actually the first person to ride a tandem bicycle from coast to coast in Australia. It was dope to hear his testimony and the efforts he has put in to keep his faith strong.

I finished my first of 6 parts of the 'my plan' program and it was a big “bruh moment”. It was basically an overview of what I will be doing in the program and it had me write down three things I've learned in the mission and three attributes of Christ that I've been better at applying because of the mission.

Speaking of applying something better, I really put in a lot more effort into adding people in my teaching area and sending messages when they add me back. I was doing so good in fact, that I got sent to "Facebook Jail" for two days. When you get sent there, you can’t add or message anybody for the allotted amount of time they give you. It's alright, because I was able to find 5 new souls through that in this past week!

To end things off I wanted to talk about the amazing opportunity I had to meet with my Great Aunt Lois, her husband Johnny, and my 2nd cousin Adam! They are 100% southerners alright and they were just as excited to meet me as I was to meet them. We talked and talked and talked. I showed them pictures of the family back home and we talked a little bit of what I do as a missionary. Lois is my great grandma, Gigi’s, little sister. While Lois was pointing out all of their property, I took the opportunity to talk to her. I was talking about how much of a pleasure it was to finally meet her and how I hoped we could all get in contact with the Friedel family again. She actually made mention of her wanting to get all the ladies together at least one more time. I also got her hyped about family history and she said that she acquired the guest book that everyone signed from her dad's funeral! I thought that would be a fantastic thing to start out with. Anyways, that's my awesome week! Be sure to let me know if you need/want anything – t-minus 8 weeks people until I get home!