Elder Smith in South Carolina

 Hey everyone! This week was more than crazy, but it's been so much fun. Holy cow things have gone off the rails.  Jaylin's whole family got sick so he hasn't been meeting with us or attending church. This has forced us to move both his and Quinton's baptismal dates back. We've been trying to meet with him over the phone and get him to watch church but that has been fruitless. If everyone could pray for him and his family that they can get better and be motivated to progress that would be awesome. We got to go on exchanges with one of the zone leaders this week which was really fun. The zone leaders are in a trio so the only exchange was Elder Warren coming to our area and making us a trio for the day. We got some quality work in and we were able to show off our teaching skills which was probably my favorite part.  Miss Luke had to leave to Atlanta while she waits to go to court over her divorce. If y'all could pray for her too that would be so awesome. She'...

Hey guys! This week was pretty uneventful for the most part. I got to meet a bunch of new Elders, two of which are just starting their training. It's weird to think that I'm not the new guy anymore. Lyndon has been progressing well and will probably be baptized this transfer if he continues to recover from his stroke. The climax of this week was probably Saturday when I got to play frisbee with some friends. They were pretty good, but nowhere near as fast or athletic as the kids at BYU, which made things a lot more fun for me. It felt good to get back on the field and win some games cause I had just gotten smoked by my D1 recruit companion in volleyball.  My companion is the new DL which means I'm gonna get to go on exchanges weekly, which will be a total blast, especially with all the new missionaries. I also got several opportunities to mend relationships with the other Elders in my district which was great. Little backstory: all the other Elders hated me all ...

Hey everyone! So sorry this email is late I didn't know my P day was getting switched to Wednesday this week. Energy has been low in most of the district because of transfers. For some reason some missionaries feel that if there is a chance they are leaving the area they don't have to do any work there anymore. Overall, it was still a great week though. We were able to put Quinton on date for September which was super awesome! Quinton is Jaylin's younger brother. He is not built like Jaylin but when he gets in rhythm he is an unstoppable lights out shooter (that's a basketball thing mom). We taught him about the Restoration with Jaylin's help and that was super awesome. I definitely think having his brother there helped him understand what we were saying.  Like I said before, transfers are this week and it was super exciting seeing who was leaving and who is staying. At first I thought it was like a sports draft, but really my mission call was the draft this is more...

 Howdy y'all! So some behind the scene extra bonus stuff happened this week. We met a guy named Win a little while back and he's crazy. He admitted to us that he smoked pot and does tons of other super fun stuff. We showed up at his house to do service after calling him an hour prior to make sure he was good with it. When we got there, he was long gone and the cops were interviewing his girlfriend and her daughters so that was sketchy. We did end up doing service for him a little later on and that was fun. Also, he's really into the Norse mythology and stuff so he has tattoos of Thor and Odin on his arms and tons of other significant tattoos all over. He's also a biker and he keeps two bikes parked in front of his house like a total boss.  We were walking down the road near a friend's house another day and we knocked on a couple doors. The first was a young guy who was cool. His baby son kept waving at us and making faces which was awesome. His neighbor a couple doo...

 Hey everyone! This week has been pretty legit! We had a meal with the bishop and his family and I got to teach the Elder Smith translation version of the Ammon story to the kids. Ammon is definitely one of the stories I enjoy telling the most now. We had really good chicken and potatoes with the bishop too which was absolutely bomb.  When I was in the MTC I wrote down some attribute of each of the elders and sisters in my district that I wanted to use on my mission to impact someone and I finally got to use one of them! It was musicality, which I honestly thought would be one of the last ones I'd use. We met with Lyndon (the older gentleman who had a stroke and can't really talk) and we decided we were gonna teach him the story of Ammon. He is a super smart guy with a super great member wife and she's been working hard to get him to get baptized. We asked him if he wanted us to sing a hymn before we taught our lesson and he said yes. After a moment of thought, we all agree...

  Hey everyone! I'd like to clarify before we get started that I did not eat any dogs for dinner and no dogs were successful in eating me for dinner. This last week was so jam packed with stuff it's been hard trying to decide what is worthy of the main email. We set a rather ambitious goal for finding this week and the Zone leaders told us that if we reached our goal they would get us donuts. We saw so many miracles this week as we worked hard to reach that goal. The first miracle I can think of was Wednesday while I was on splits with Elder Woodhouse. We had a lesson fall through that was right next to a park so we decided to stop by the park and hit the bathrooms before our next appointment. When we got to the park there were 5 people that looked about our age crowded around the bathroom. We talked to them and it turns out they are super cool people. After throwing around a football for a few minutes and discussing their interests we got their numbers and they seem interested...