Hey guys!
What a swell week!
Russellville has been treating me very well. The area is filled with tons of lovely people, both in the ward and outside of the ward. We have a solid pool of investigators and almost all are progressing very well. A few have baptism dates too so we're really hoping and praying that everything will work out for them and that their testimonies will continue to grow.
I was able to go on a couple exchanges this week with some elders in our zone. The first was with the Red Bay Elders and you won't guess who I was with.... Elder Prestwich! When we both left Bessemer he came to Red Bay and I went to Clanton then up to Russellville and we're back around each other again! We're actually serving in the same ward as well. It's been pretty fun being around my son again:)
Our exchange was great! We really pushed ourselves and got to the point where we were contacting groups and crowds of people. We also had some great lessons and really felt the spirit. It was a ton of fun!
I also went on an exchange with one of our District Leaders in the zone named Elder Estrada. He's been on his mission for a good minute now and is an excellent Elder. We spent a good portion of the day trying to find this less active but we were basically just tracting in this trailer park but that's okay! We had some really great lessons and talked to some very interesting people:) We then spent a while with a part member family and they ended up feeding us steak so I can't complain at all with that! We then called it a night and exchanged back the next morning.
We then had a pretty interesting experience that afternoon that coincides with the title of this email.
So Elder Diede and I had contacted this man a week or so ago and he gave us his address and said he'd love to have us. So we went searching for his home and eventually found it. We knocked on his door, waited, then knocked again ("once for our salvation, twice for theirs"). And after waiting for a while the door eventually started to slowly open. The man opened the door and stood in the doorway. We were so thrown off guard. He had hospital bands on his arms and had a bunch of bandages around his arms and legs as well. His head was COVERED in fresh blood and one of his eyes was looking north and the other south... and all he said was "now's not really a good time..". I mean, no joke... if anyone had a reason to reschedule and turn us away it was this guy! He went on to tell us that he had just gotten in a car accident a few hours ago... I honestly have no clue why he wasn't still in the hospital. But we asked him if there was anything we could help him with or do for him and he said to just pray for him so we did! Right there on his porch in the rain. So yeah, that was our interesting experience from the week! haha
We then had a great sabbath day and ran into a few more "interesting" people... apparently we keep running into these people because we're so close to Mississippi haha!
But Elder Diede and I made pizza! From scratch too! Honestly, it was mostly Elder Diede but I helped:) I include some pictures at the end.
This is going to be a great week though! We have Zone Conference so we're all really excited about that because it's President Sainsbury's first. He's been doing really well so I'm sure it will be amazing. Hopefully it'll include something about ipad's as well;) buuuut probably not. We also have some exchanges planned also so we're looking forward to those too.
Oh yeah, my year mark was a while back and I forgot to talk about it in my weekly. I just wanted to give a big thank you to everyone for all the support and love I've been shown this past year. It means the world to me. It has been an absolutely amazing year and I am SO excited for this next year and all the things that the Lord will be teaching me.
Hopefully this email was a bit better than the last few! I hope all of you have a great week. I'll talk to y'all next Monday!
