I love this picture

I love this one too.  Thanks, Elder Snow!

Some people have way too much time on their hands!

A Preacher's car...It's ok, we gave him a Book of Mormon

Chapter 27:  Killin it!

How's it going everybody? I hope your doing well. Let me tell you about what went down this past week.

My companion, Elder Overfield, and I are really trying to step up our game and lead by example in our area which is what the District leaders are counseled to do. We have been trying to go and find brand new people to teach and invite to the gospel. So this week has consisted of a lot of tracting and asking for referrals from members. 

Tuesday we spent most of our time serving at the food bank in Tracey City which neighbors Altamont. We then tried to visit as many people as we could in Tracey City and Monteagle which also is by Tracey. Tuesday was a rough day. Mainly, because it was ridiculously foggy outside! I am not exaggerating when I say that it was so bad you literally could not see in front of you! Driving in it was a nightmare. I don't know how we were even able to. I think we probably shouldn't have...but It's okay were alive so...

Despite all our efforts we were able to come back home that day with three lessons taught. That is actually a really good day so booyah! 

Wednesday was our district meeting. We had excellent trainings given about our role as missionaries and the importance of the book of Mormon. In the book of Mormon training all the greenies went up and had 15 to 20 seconds to look for a scripture about a specific thing the missionary doing the training requested. They did a whole lot better then what we thought they would do. We ended up staying later in Jasper because they had two investigators who would be baptized Sunday. I had the opportunity to be the one to interview them for baptism. It was really amazing to see how much they were able to learn and how their faith had grown in only a few short weeks. I am proud to say they both "passed" and we're baptized yesterday. We also had an exchange with jasper so I had Elder Sanders come to Altamont with me. 

Thursday we struggled to find people to teach. We had planned to go and visit someone every hour, but every single investigator we planned to go see fell through so we were stranded with no plans. And it was only 11 in the morning. We thought a great deal about what we could do. The zone has a goal to try and get at least three lessons a day. We continued to pray the we would be where we were needed. We tracked a street and had no success. Some people were relaxing on their front porch and when they saw us walk by they jumped off their porch and ran in their house and locked the door. I have never seen an old lady move that fast in my life! It was cool because we had three dogs follow us the whole way up the street and back to our pick-up. Elder Sanders thought they were the three nephites and we named them Moroni, Lehi, and Teancum. We came back down the road later and couldn't find those dogs again at all! Crazy. I kept feeling like we needed to visit these two investigators. We tried three times for both. The second time for one, they drove right past us in their car. On the third time, one of the doors finally opened. His name is Roni and he was excommunicated. We have been trying so hard to get him to come. We talked about the book of Mormon and he said he has been reading it still and feels so much better from doing it. True that. The other we had no luck with. At the church we have basketball at seven Thursdays. We came up and set up. Unfortunately the last three weeks not one person came. This week we had two people come. And guess who it was? It was the boy we could never get a hold of that day! And he brought his brother. Man those kids are good. What's amazing is how they are both autistic. But they act totally normal. I guess they overcame it pretty well. They remind me of my brother. They had me running up and down the court! He began to ask us about how we became missionaries. We explained the process and also shared the restoration of the gospel with him. He was really impressed with that. We still only had two lessons for that day. I thought of who we could go visit. We eventually came to a less active sisters home that lived by the church. She was in a great deal of pain. We offered to give her a blessing and she graciously accepted. She was very happy we had come to do that for her. We were able to teach her also. So in the end not only did we achieve our three lessons, but we also had our prayer answered. We were where we needed to be that day.

Friday was zone conference. We had a lot of great trainings and motivational speeches. It is always fun to meet the missionaries in different areas and to get advice from them. Unfortunately that took up most of the day and we didn't get to do much later. 

Saturday was rough. We spent the whole day finding, tracting and anything and everything related to that. We had a lot of people tell us off and a few doors slammed in our face. People telling us that the book of Mormon shouldn't even exist and so on. This one crusty old lady told us that we teach Joseph Smith and not the Bible the. Slammed the door. Well that's the Bible belt for you.  Even though there were a lot of rude people there were a great number of kind ones as well. In the end we taught four lessons. We were able to exceed our goal for that day! It payed off. We have been trying to find this one less active forever but could not find him for the life of us! Then one day when we weren't looking for him we got the impression to knock on this door we passed and sure enough it was him! The Lord does give. He did it right there.

Sunday was a great day for us. It was nice to have normal church meetings again after not having them for two weeks. Taking the sacrament felt so good. We taught five lessons that day! One of them was actually in jail! Kind of. There was an investigator who went to prison who gets out in a few days. We went to visit him and gave him a book of Mormon. He said he was going to do things right when he gets out and try to fix his life up. We actually gave a bible to the security guard watching us. Haha. We had a great day though.

The beginning of the week, we were very worried we would have enough people to teach. But by the end we ended up have 23 total lessons with 11 new investigators! I owe that one to the Lord. We have been working really hard to help fix this area up and it is paying off. Eventually things will pick up and people will be getting baptized around here soon. Despite trials and crazy people, we were able to teach a ton of good people. We are working and we are loving it. I hope y'all are doing well. I'd love to here from you and know what's going on in your life. Let me know if I can do anything for ya. Keep it classy!

Elder Weight

(Sorry, this email was so long! I had to make up for my short ones I have been sending out lately. So if you are like me I usually skip the words and look at the pictures first. So here you go.)