The Dying Cat

This week was a pretty average week. Some of the highlights were going on exchanges with the Zone Lords (zone leaders). I spent the day with Elder Overfield who trained Elder White (Elder White is my friend from High School. We played football together and he's in the TN mission)! Overfield is such a good missionary! He taught me how to really do some good door-to-door teaching. We are trying more to teach the gospel of Jesus Christ more than the actual restoration of the priesthood. It is called the restoration of the gospel of Jesus Christ for a reason. We have found more success in talking about faith, repentance and baptism a lot more than just talking about apostasy and stuff. We had a fun time playing a game called "loaded questions." It was awesome!

I feel like I haven't given much info on the goodness I eat down here. I have gained like 15 pounds here in Linden. I know it is crazy! Pretty much everything is fried. I could eat fried okra and this fried corn stuff all day. We have had a lot of Mexican food for some reason too and you know how much I love burritos! I have learned how to cook some good potatoes and other things so I have been cooking in the mornings (told you mom, I can cook somethings). It isn't as good as my little brothers cooking but it is good.

My story for the week is when we went over to Sister Pulley's. Brother Davis was there, keep in mind Sister Pulley is sisters with Vincent Gonzales. These two make me laugh and cry every time I talk with them. She has a little girl about 13 months old. Brother Davis had the little girl in his lap and he was playing with this little ceramic baby and the tiny plastic bathtub. He went to make this crying baby sound and all I heard was this strange sound like a cat that fell out of the dumpster into a puddle then trying to call for help. We all just started dying with laughter! The sound was awful.... haha! I got a video of it and hopefully you can hear it.

I am giving a late birthday shout out to grandpa J! Happy birthday!
Thanks y'all for the gifts and letters! Have a blessed week and see y'all next time.

Love, Elder Q

Hunt'in Trip

Howdy y'all! So I just wanted to say that the gospel is true and it really does change lives. We saw multiple instances this week were it has made a mighty change on people. There is a principle in the restoration lesson that is the gospel blessed families. That one was always the hardest one for me to teach because it is so straight forward and not much to go on. Now that I have seen the effect the gospel has on families it has made it a lot easier. I was nervous to teach the word of wisdom because I was nervous they wouldn't want  to be baptized. I need to have more faith in the Lord and the gospel. After we were done teaching we asked them to kick some of their hot drinks (tea and coffee) and they straight up said,  "Yes!" These people are so prepared it is ridiculous. I am just so glad I am here to witness it. Since we have been teaching them they have said that the home has become a ton more peaceful and full of love. I can feel it too when I am there! The gospel is so awesome!

A couple of cool things happened this week. On Valentine's day we tried our new referral technique. We did this awesome activity and the family got super stoked for missionary work.  They were so excited, they gave us referral! Most of the time if you straight out ask for a referral they don't have anyone in mind but this activity gets things going! Missionary work is addicting!  If we can get them thinking of people all sorts of things start coming out. As missionaries we are to help members do their missionary work. I gave my training on this and it went super well! We don't have anymore district meetings because the zone is doing something every week the next 3 weeks. Can you believe the transfer is already half way over!? It is going faster and faster every week. We went looking to play some basketball with the local kids. The Lord blessed me with basketball skills because I knew I had none but most of my baskets went in. They said they would come to church if Elder Benich could do a backflip and so he did. I was pretty impressed myself.

The story of the week was our hunting trip. We were teaching this guy and his little cousin runs out. He asks us what we are doing and who we are. He then runs back in and came out with some nerf guns. He gave all of us some and we set off for our hunting trip. We were stalking some pray and the buck stuck it's head up. It was a 20 point buck (that would be a 10 point in Utah) it flicked it's ears back a forth and my heart starts racing. The little boy took the shot and the buck stiffen up then slowly fell. Right as we were going over to look at the kill, a bigger buck stood up and started running. Elder Benich threw off the safety and stuck the guy! It was a 30 point and man was it a beaut! We keep going around and we found a rabbit, black bear, grizzly bear, ducks, turkeys, and squirrels. We even came across a woolly mammoth and that guy was hoot to get down. The tusks where as big as three of me standing on top of each other. We threw them all in our side by sides and drove off for home. As we were getting home we came across an alien and his dog. We ran over the dog and the little man struck down the alien and shot him point blank. We got home and let the little man handle the skinning. This all happened in about a 15 minute period. It was a pretty good trip of you ask me.

Have a blessed week!

Love, Elder Q

 

 

The Field is White Already to Harvest

Crazy things happened this last week! We now have 5 baptismal dates! 3 of them made it to church yesterday. We extended 3 this last week and every time they commit to a date we get to call the Mission President. By the third time I felt like we were almost cheating or something because it seemed so unreal. I am just so happy the Lord has blessed us with this opportunity. Now we just have to get them all to church.

Elder Benich and I get along pretty well! He has really helped me realize how chilled out I have become. Maybe it is because I can actually rely on him to do missionary work and teach. His abilities allow me to not have to worry about so much about stuff and open me up to just do. He actually told me that I never get anxious and I was like, "what!?"  I am usually a very anxious person.  So I guess the mission really is changing me and helping me become someone better.

Update on the district, Elder K had to go home. He had passed out one night and then stayed in he hospital for a couple nights. They found a bulge in his heart and he needed to go home so he can get healthy. Moment of silence for Elder K.... We got an ET (emergency transfer),
and it is Elder Story! My mission brother! He was trained first by Elder Ihler so he is my older brother. I have heard he is pretty chill... we shall see!

Story for the week...I have never been so afraid on my mission as I was Tuesday while tracting. We split up Parsons into 4 quadrants and tract one of the quandrants everyday. We were up in the north west quadrant and had inspiration to knock the doors on Florida St. We knocked on one of the houses and a woman opened the door and gave us the usual response, "I am good, I already go to church." We start pushing her just a little bit and eventually she said, "You should knock all those trailers. They have a drug problem and they need God in their lives." We are like, sweet! Non member referral! So.... we went to knocking on doors in the drug problem area. We came up to a door that was blocked off and they slammed the door on us, before we could even knock! The slam startled us some but said, "We fear no man" and walked around to the back porch. We got up to the back door and we heard all this running around going on inside. We knocked and heard a faint giggle and then more running and slamming! Someone ran into the door from the inside. Weird. At this point we could tell it was a little girl doing all of this because of the sound of her giggle. She started banging on the door from the inside and then started doing Morse code with the light. Creepy.  I turn to Benich and said, "Ok. We should go!" He wasn't going to leave until we knocked a second time. I said to him, " Have you ever seen any horror movie? We all know that creepy little girls are something you don't mess with." He decided to still knocked again and it just set off another little creepy person running and giggling and smashing. I figured we should just leave before she opened the door and gouges our eyes out! As we started walking away a car pulled up. Inside the car was an older woman and a child. We wait for her to get out and start talking. We could just smell the drugs coming from her and I just felt so bad for the children. I so desperately wanted her to listen to our message because we knew it would really help. Unfortunately, we couldn't do much talking because we were trying to just breath some clean oxygen. We had smoke stacks being blown in our faces. We gave her a pamphlet and headed on our way. Maybe one day something awesome will happen there.  That concludes my horror story of the week.

Here is my Valentine scripture, John 3:16-17:

16 - For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.
17 -  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.


Thank y'all for the prayers! I want to give a Happy Birthday shout out to Malori and Grandpa Dean!  You two are just amazing! We will see
y'all next time on Pday. Have a blessed week and Happy Valentine's!

Love, Elder Q

As if it had been a whisper

My mom will go bananas when she hears this .... Guess what!? I met David Archuleta! Here is the whole story ....

Ledbetter and I were at transfers at about 9:00 am last Tuesday (we were a little early). I was getting super excited about the new black Toyota Tacoma with only 2000 miles that I almost missed out on the big event. I saw this little dude walking over to a new Elder that his ward was receiving (David is a ward mission leader). I took a double take and thought, "No. Could it be? Wait. Maybe. I know Archuleta comes to these things sometimes, but it can't be him, or can it?" He was wearing a hoodie, hat and sunglasses. I think he was trying to cover up who he was so people wouldn't flock to him. I start getting nervous and rushed to grab my iPad, you know, just in case a photo opportunity arose. See... I actually happen to have a connection to David Archuleta.  His step-brother works with my mom who also went on a mission to Tennessee several years ago.  Before I left on my mission, I went up to my mom's work and met Scott, David's bro.  My mom prepped me that if I ever ran into David in this big ol' country music state that I must stop him and introduce myself.  As I was walking over to him I was trying to remember Scott's name, I admit, I was starstruck.  No one prepares you for these moments. I said, "are you David?" ....Or something like that. I was freaking out so much inside I thought my hands were going to shake off. The crazy thing was he sounded very shy! I tried to tell him I knew his brother, Scott, but I could barely remember what I was saying.  He helped me out by finishing Scott's last name, which is really hard by the way .... Bartholomew (long and hard, right?)  I finally got to the point where I asked for a picture and he said YES! What most surprised me was that he was short and very shy, but nice.  Well there you go mom. I got you the picture and I met the dude!  Pretty awesome!! 😋

The rest of the week was a pretty normal week of finding constantly, teaching repentance and baptizing converts. My new companion, Elder Benich, is a chill dude. Our mom's are in cahoots and I am pretty sure they prayed for this. I am really glad to have a companion who still has greenie fire! He has only served in cities, so this county space is new to him. Apparently he says that I have a little bit of the country drawl so that made my entire week .... ha! We are still getting used to each other but I would say he is most like my brother Gman. I have gotten a lot of Stockton companions so this will be my first Garrett. I think we will do well together! He is good and not afraid to knock on doors, that is always a plus.

Being a district leader is actually pretty fun. I have loved doing a little but more than just the regular missionary work. I get to know how other missionaries are doing and how I can help them do missionary work. Our district is doing awesome! We are on track to have 5 baptisms!! We have 3 dates and more to come. It has also been really good doing a training every week because I learn so much more. The Linden district will blow the socks off of the mission! 😁

Other than that everything has been pretty normal. I have really enjoyed the new schedule, even though I do pretty much the same thing as before but I like the morning planning instead of the evening. My spiritual thought this week is Helaman 5:30, He won't yell at you through a microphone to tell you how to live your life. You have to open your hearts and hear the whispers of the spirit to know what to do.

I love y'all and hope y'all have a blessed week!

Love, Elder Q