Hey guys!
We had a pretty good week; tons of interesting things happened.
On Monday a former investigator took us out to dinner and to listen to a doctor give a political speech for the Habersham County Patriots. These Georgians are sure getting riled up about politics and the economy. I don't know how it is in the rest of the nation, but people here are trying to do their part in supporting their beliefs.
We talk to people and meet people daily who bring up the subjects of "The world these days..." and politics. They are trying to get involved--that's for sure. There is SOME passion. I live up in the GA mountain country so most people are Republican (I'm pretty sure that I've only met one Democrat since getting here haha). They all LOVE Glenn Beck. It's really nice for us to be able to tell them that he is a Mormon haha. They all get so excited. I usually don't bring up the fact that Harry Reid is LDS too, but if I ever get transferred closer to Atlanta, I'm sure I'll tell the more liberal people that hahahaaha. It's just weird to see how firey these guys are getting about politics. They say that times are different now and they are willing to do whatever it takes to keep America free. Everyone is excited to see how the Congress votes turn out.
Tuesday was district meeting as usual. We meet in Commerce, GA because that is the most central location for the 3 sets of missionaries. So anyway, we went down there, but the Sister Missionaries forgot to tell us beforehand that they wouldn't be able to make it to the meeting and didn't arrange for anyone to unlock the building for us, so we just decided to have it in our car! Haha It was pretty funny, the 4 of us missionaries singing and praying and trying to study in a small car because it was raining outside. It was prettyyyy difficult to stay on task haha. Tuesday night we went to a funeral for a man from the Cornelia Ward. We sang in the Men's chorus. I never knew the man because he has been extremely sick and in a nursing home for the past while, but it was a very nice funeral and we were glad to be able to help by singing in the choir.
Wednesday was our ward Halloween party! It was tons of fun--the church was packed! A few of our investigators came, there were tons of less active members, and then all of the active members were there too! It was raining so the Trunk-or-Treating was brought inside from classroom to classroom. There was a chili cook off competion and about 35 different types of delicious chili. I dressed up as a nerd and Elder Whitehead dressed up as a Christmas elf; everyone loved our costumes haha. It was tons of fun.On Thursday we brought a sofa that Bruce was throwing out to a poor family in our ward. They were very grateful to get that because it was a nice sofa and they lost all of their living room furniture when their trailer burned down.
Brother Shaver, a good friend and ward missionary, took us out Thursday night to meet a less active man whose records got transfered to our ward. He drove us to the address that we were given in the middle of nowhere. When we got to the front porch we asked a woman who was standing out front if Dustin was home. She said that she had never heard of him. We told her that we were told that he had just moved there and were from the church trying to meet him. We gave her our card and asked her to go to Mormon.org and call us if she needed anything.
We started heading home and 5 minutes later we got a call on our cell phone from a blocked number. I answered it and a lady started getting all upset at me saying that we came to her momma's house looking for her husband. I was bewildered so I told her that I was sorry but had no idea what she was talking about. She told me that her momma called her 5 minutes ago scared to death because she didn't know who we were. I apologized and then explained to her that we heard that Dustin moved in and we were trying to welcome him to the church. She told me that Dustin had lived in the same place for 11 years and that he stopped being a Mormon when he moved to GA, and then she asked me why we were asking her momma about Dustin's child support! I apologized to her and assured her that that subject was not brought up and that we were missionaries from the church.
Apparently the lady we talked to on the porch lied to us because she thought that we were the FBI and we were trying to nail her son-in-law for not paying his child support! After it happened we had a good laugh imagining us as FBI agents with copies of the Book of Mormon trying to put people in jail for not paying child support. hahaha good story good story.
On Saturday we teamed up with the Hartwell Elders and set up a booth at the Fall Festival in Martin! It was tons of fun and pretty successful. We set up a canopy tent, a table with a TV and lots of our literature, and then we took turns walking all over handing out mormon.org cards. It was tiring because we were there all day, but a good time. It's interesting to see how small the world is when you are Mormon. We met members there who are from Atlanta, GA, and from the states of NC, SC, and Tennessee. We found a few people who had moved to our ward boundaries but never had their records transferred. We handed out a few copies of the Book of Mormon and some pamphlets and whatnot. It was fun having people stop at our booth. It was fun making friends with the people from the booths next to us and just going up to random people to talk to them about stuff. This week when we were tracting I realized that I don't feel awkward whatsoever talking to someone that I don't know anymore, hahahaha it's great. We met this kid at the festival who kept wanting to hang out with us. I was talking to him about fishing, asking him where he went and stuff. He said, "Me an mah diddy go fishin in Circa Lyna" and I said, "Where?" and he said, "Circa Lyna." I asked him again and he said the same thing. So I asked where that is and he said, "You know, just across the other side of Lake Hartwell!" I finally realized that he was trying to tell me that he and his father fish in South Carolina. hahahahaha I love these un-understandable southern accents.
At church on Sunday we gave the youth a survey to fill out that asked them to tell what things are difficult to explain when talking about the Gospel at school. The Mutual leaders asked us to do a missionary fireside soon so we want to know what to speak about. It was very beneficial for us and super funny what some of these kids put. On the question "Is it difficult for you to talk to your peers about the Gospel?" one of the kids put "It is if they aren't Mormon." Another question was "What is the hardest part?" or something like that and a kid wrote "It's hard to cast pearls before swine."
Reading their answers was like watching "The Mouthes of Babes", just super cute and funny. Some kids are super fired up about missionary work and then others are scared because they don't know how to do it. It is important for us to help them because member referrals are our best resource for missionary work.
Anyway, I had a great week! It is now November first, the leaves are falling off the trees here and you can now see what lies behind them. I hope you guys are happy and healthy at home. I love you so much. Thanks for everything.
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