You're probably wondering: "How's that weird guy doing who moved to Virginia a few weeks ago?" ...well that would be very rude if you thought that but very reasonable.
IM IN VIRGINIA! Crazy! I know! Never thought I would actually get to this point because it always seemed like something I talked about for my future, but now my future is the present! I'm living by myself with someone I've known for about a week. It's kinda weird and honestly one of the most challenging things I've ever had to endure through. I love my area! I will say there are a lot of other areas I could have gone to but, the area I'm in is super clean, well looked upon, everyone around us are just nice people. There's an elementary school right next to our apartment complex so super chill, nice, safe neighborhood. But the hard part is I keep thinking to myself that this is just a couple week church camp and I'll be home anytime now, but it's not...I'm out here alone with my companion, don't really know anybody and it's like what am I doing with myself?! But, I'll tell you this, as I've read "Adjusting to Missionary Life," and talked with my comp and with a lot of my friends and even some people in the ward I've learned that I am uncomfortable but I'm never alone. In times when I feel like there's nobody who cares about me and I can't turn to anybody, I remind myself that I can turn to God. I've never really looked at my relationship with my heavenly father like that but he is watching me, he wants to see me happy, he is constantly filling my heart with love and it's our job to constantly reach out to him especially in times where we feel alone because that's when we can feel his love the most.
'Aight time for the cool stuff! We are teaching a lot of people already, I mean I haven't taught a lesson because everyone of them have fallen through and canceled BUT, we have two people on date to be baptized. One on November 12th and one hopefully at the end of this month! Other than those two fantastic gents we have a few others that are very very likely to be baptized soon. There's this girl named Kailani who's boyfriend is on a mission and she's been coming to church like a lot these past months. As long as we can teach the lessons she should be set any day. A couple others we have in our teaching pool I'm hoping we can get teaching and keep them on their commitments and they will be ready hopefully by Christmas. Then there are some other people who are super super nice and seem really interested so hopefully we can start them up on lessons too. I know that was a lot but I'm so excited to see how much we can accomplish by Christmas!
Speaking of Christmas, our mission leader is implementing a goal for us to come to know Christ and encouraged us to make a goal to help others know Christ. He wants us to literally stretch ourselves to the maximum. Our goal is 5 baptisms by Christmas! I think it's honestly super achievable but I'll keep y'all updated on that in the next few weeks.
I'm sorry that this is a long email but these past couple days have been long yet fun! On Friday we went to do service at a lady named Miss Judy, and she is the meme of the area, everyone loves her! She is the funniest, yet most nice lady ever, she has raised a really old farm that if we weren't here it wouldn't be running so she is honestly super grateful for us. This is where my poop scooping skills came in to play. I had to scoop like three horse stalls of poop and then had to feed all of them and give them water. It honestly wasn't that bad. I will say though, after sitting in the apartment for a day or two...and just not doing anything I'm comfortable with...manual labor is the greatest thing in the world! Doing farm work, scooping poop, feeding horses, all that jazz was literally one of the highlights of my week. We go back to the farm tomorrow and I'm so hyped.
'Aight that's pretty much the jazz of the week. Met some really cool old dudes who are super passionate about missionary work. Some old lady in our ward walked by me and said, "Ooo we got a new Elder! And a good looking one too!" So yeah I'm basically the hype of that generation I guess. Had a crazy emotional roller coaster of fear, loneliness, happiness, and just messin' around vibes all week. And I might be buying a guitar soon to give me something to do when we aren't doing anything lol.
Oh yeah!!! I'm writing this just after someone bought us dinner!! Me and my district went to Cracker Barrel for Pday and as soon as we sat down someone walked over and said, "ELDERS!" We talked with him for awhile, he's visiting his daughter from Utah and he was like, "You know what, I'm gonna pay for y'alls food!" Crazy right?! Never thought that I would be in this situation but we were all like literally so grateful for this guy, we had an amazing delicious dinner and it was all free. Almost made me cry because I just really loved the food, not because the guy was extremely nice and I will forever remember what he did for us.
But anyway! The most important thing I learned this week and the thing I'm trying to work on the most is just patience. It honestly has been a struggle adjusting to the fact that I'm here for two years. On Thursday I felt like crap cause we had meetings over zoom for like 5 hours and I didn't get to do much and I just kept thinking to myself why am I here, I'm in the middle of Chesapeak Virginia, nobody around me cares about me, I'm living with someone I met two days ago, and I'm supposed to do this for two years? I didn't think I was even gonna last till Christmas. But as I've thought about it, I'm never gonna fully adjust to being a missionary right now, but as long as I keep thinking and reminding myself that everything is gonna be ok, God is ALWAYS watching us, literally anytime we may feel like nobody around us cares, God always does. And because we have the gift of the holy ghost, we can always feel that love from the savior and from heavenly father because that's the thing that will keep us going. What a blessing it is to always have that constant friendship and companionship of the spirit.
'Aight lemme know how life is with y'all, I really wanna hear how everyone is doing, it will keep me from going insane because I have nobody to talk to so email me if you want and I would be very happy. Enjoy y'alls week!!!
4 October 2022 - arrived safely in Virginia and met President and Sister Hutchison!
The two wards at our building had mission prep and this was the last one they had till January
I'm absolutely gorgeous in this picture and I found a sign that said elder so that's cool
If you tell me that's not a bottle of pee I will call you a liar
Caught a fish today :)
No comments:
Post a Comment