Hey,
Lexington is great! It’s
fantastic to be out of the claustrophobia of the city and back into a rural
town. I feel really comfortable here.
Elder Vawdrey is a really hard worker, great teacher, and wants to do
the best he can in everything. The first
week has been good. It was really hectic with transfers but things went
pretty smooth. I had some kind of stomach flu last Wednesday, I kept
throwing up whenever I tried to eat anything, but it was only a 24hr thing and didn’t
affect the work.
Our area is huge. We cover
tons of the surrounding area and small towns. It takes roughly 1 hr. 15
min. to drive from the top of our area to the bottom. We cover it mostly by car, that’s how it is
with the majority of this mission; almost every companionship has a car so it
makes bearing the weather manageable.
To answer your questions:
Did
you get everything sorted out before leaving? Yes, I was able to say
good bye to all the people I had grown close with and get pictures with them
and everything got packed, even though we had a late night trying to get it all
done.
Plans
to get the stationary bike to you? It’s actually pretty
small when I take everything off of it. I put all the components into the
big suitcase and then was able to carry the frame with me all the way to Lexington
without much hassle.
How’s
the laundry situation-enjoyable? Heck yes! There was an
elder here some time ago that would receive $20 weekly from his grandparents so
he saved up his money and purchased a washer and dryer for the apartment.
No more wasting tons of money at Laundromats.
Tell
me how the mail gets to you now that you're away from the mission home-will
there be a delay? Mail arrives at the mission home and then gets forwarded
to Lexington, so there'll be a couple day delay for that. Anything that can’t
be forwarded gets picked up and brought back by the zone leaders whenever they
make trips to Omaha.
How
much money do you need for a coat? I already bought a winter
coat from Mr. Mac before I left remember. I got a hoody from Wal-Mart
this last week for when we're in non-pros and I can supplement with all the
extra stuff I've got.
Have
you been able to get outside and run? Twice so far for 20 minutes
each. Saturday we did some service for an elderly man in the ward
clearing the fence line on his ranch with chainsaws and we were left really
sore from that so today we didn’t go for too long and Saturday we didn’t get
out because we figured it would be a hard day. We're going to slowly work up
the time we're able to do and I hope that we can do a full hour daily by the
end of the transfer.
How
big is the Latino community? Pretty big. The main
source of jobs here is at the Tyson meat factory (which we're going to have a
tour of today :D) and most of the workers are either Latino or African. There
are a large number of refugees from Somalia here but we can’t teach them.
They're all Muslim, so for their safety and ours we can only leave them with
some material (we also can’t shake the women’s hands, it’s a big no no for
them). We do have some people that we work with from Liberia and they're
awesome. We have to pay really close attention to understand what they're
saying with their thick accent.
Are
you working in a ward or a branch? The ward is pretty
strong, there are about 70 people at church weekly, the majority of which are Caucasian.
There are tons of less actives and part member families to work with so we're
trying to narrow our focus with them. I'm able to be myself here because I
can speak in English so I’ve already gained some of their friendships.
We're planning on serving the members like crazy so they love us and then the
work can really take off. The local
leaders are really strong and devoted to the gospel.
We have an awesome investigator,
V. He was in jail for six years and was taught by senior
missionaries. He had some jail mates that got out and were baptized and
he saw the change that took place for the them so he wanted the same. He’s
read the Book of Mormon twice, all the standard works, and the work and the
glory series. He knows everything and sounds like a member when we talk
with him and his girlfriend during lessons. The only thing is that he’s
on a 5 year parole and needs special permission to be baptized. He’s
going to have an interview with our mission president who will then write the General
Authorities with his opinion. V also needs to write a letter to the
prophet and 12 apostles and they'll read that, pray, and give him a yes or no
for baptism. If it’s a no he needs to wait till he's off parole to receive
the ordinance.
We had a ward party this Saturday
where I got to meet a lot of the members. Before we went over we stopped
at the neighbor’s house to get some pictures with their zebras. The woman
was incredibly nice and loved telling us about her animals and life.
They've raised exotic animals for years and once had tame bobcats, coons, fox,
and camels. Now they only have two zebras so we got to go up and pet
them. She was more than willing to have us back some other time to talk
or help with animals, which we're excited to do.
The mission got 3 new Spanish
elders this last transfer and again I got to take one out. Elder Terris
took one and I took mine to go contact some potentials. The kid’s Spanish
was the best I've ever heard from a non-native greenie here in the
mission. None of the potentials were home so we went to do some street
contacting instead. In the last bit of time that we had, I had some fun
with him. I texted the Spanish North elders and had Elder Alvizo (born Mexico,
raised Texas, from Missouri, really good really fast Spanish) come walk around in
street clothes. Then I had the greenie go contact him and they started
chatting it up. Elder Alvizo was saying all kinds of ridiculous things
about how he believed Bob Marley was a prophet and he smoked weed. His
companion Elder Rasmussen was circling around in disguise filming parts of the
approach. It was hysterical! The new elder handled it really well
and was actually able to do a pretty smooth contact for all the nonsense.
After a couple minutes we told him what was going on and we all had a good
laugh.
That’s it for this week.
Love you all,
E' Harker
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