So contrary to the title of this email I am not in a super flooding area. I'm in El Dorado Arkansas...But it does rain every day here and my stake is in the flood zone. The only flooding going on here is just the grass and a little bit on the roads. Now my stake is a different story. Most of my stake is in Louisiana and a lot of people have lost their homes. But the further south you go the worse it is getting. Next week people from up here are going to head down and see what they can do to help but I don't think we will get to go because that's like a 6 hour drive for us and a lot of miles on the car. So my area is really small. The town is smaller than Vernal and the ward has maybe 40 people when everyone goes. It is a whole different life down here. Because my area is so small we are on a car share so every other week we get a car and the other week we are either walking or riding our bikes. so today after emails I get to go pick out a bike. Pretty exciting stuff.
On Monday we flew into Jackson Mississippi and had dinner with President Olsen and his wife and then we slept at the mission home. On Tuesday we had to wake up early, eat , email, and head to T-point. Since our mission covers so much area you only go to whatever T-point they tell you and there you figure out where you are getting transferred too. I found out I was going all the way to Arkansas. The only city in the state that our mission actually has open too. So I loaded in a Van and headed to Louisiana which was 2 hours away. Once we got there at the T-point there, I met my companion Sister Abril. (Its pronounced sister uhh-bril.) She is really nice. She's been out for a year next week actually. we get along super swell! She's really positive and she's really funny so that makes tracting a lot more fun. - Well from T-point we loaded in the car and drove 2 more hours to El Dorado... It's a very interesting place with lots of churches and people you have to listen really hard to understand.
My first day here we went shopping, unpacked, and then we went out tracting. I was so nervous! And I have never got so many doors slammed in my face before. Well that's okay because it was still actually pretty funny. We now go out tracting every day and that's been pretty nice. You meet some WEIRD people. But we have actually had a lot more progress being made in this area according to sister Abril. We taught about 7 lessons in 2 days and sometimes they wouldn't even get that many in a week? Well we taught this lady names Pam. Now Pam is one of the sweetest ladies I have met. She welcomed us in and was making brownies and she claimed they were the best brownies in the world. So obviously we had to try them. Well they were pretty good but I've been spoiled with good bakers in the family so they weren't the best that I had ever had. Well she used to be a Methodist Preacher for like 20 years. Then one day she got really sick and decided to retire. And she started thinking that there was more out there and that God had something else that he had planned for her- then she met us! And so far the lessons have been going awesome! And she has been keeping her commitments! Then on Saturday we were out tracting and we saw this house that had these really cool chairs in front of it so we went there. Out came a man named Tommy who looked really scary. We told him who we were and why we were there, turns out he was going to be a preacher (like everyone else here) but something fell through and that never happened so he started to try and bible bash with us. I just sat there and agreed with most of his beliefs which kind of took him for a loop. Then His wife Sissy came out. She was so nice. She LOVES us. Well as Tommy is talking to us not really with us she starts talking to me and asking questions. She was super interested. But Tommy wasn't going to have any of that. Then I said something, don't even remember what, and it shut him up for a minute and Sissy laughed so hard. Well as we started having a conversation about God an families we found out that they had just lost their baby 3 days before we had met them. They were so heart broken and lost. But weren't ready for out message so we just told them that God was mindful of them and that they were loved and that's why we have families- so when hard things happened to us we had our support system to fall back on. Then we asked if we could leave them with a prayer. And they actually let us! God softened Tommy's heart just enough. When we prayed with them the spirit was so strong. And I know that as we continue to visit them and pray for them their hearts will be softened enough to hear our message!
That's pretty much all the cool things that has happened. But we are making progress slowly but surely!
PS. My new address is 301 Moorewood Rd. #404 El Dorado, AR 71730
i would super love some letters!!
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