January 17, 2017

It's been a crazy and busy week so I don't have much to say spiritually-speaking. But I can say this, the second coming is pretty soon. Probably not this year or the next ten years (I don't know, maybe with Trump in office it might), it'll get really rough here shortly before and there's going to be a major separation of the wheat and tares. It's prophesied that it'll even begin within the church and some of the strongest won't even make it. So stand on your own two feet and prepare yourselves. We gotta build the foundation on the rock. Not the sand. And make sure it's pure granite cuz it's not a normal storm this time, it's a hurricane. Tuesday: I said bye to a couple people tonight, the hardest was Lisette. It brought me back to sad times of leaving for the first time. But I'm fine now. But looking back and seeing what I've done, how little it may have been, makes me feel like an actual missionary now. I always see bye bye pictures with missionaries at member's houses and on their phones, and now the next couple generations will see my bye bye pictures on the member's phones and such. Just so weird. Wednesday: Woooow this place is different than anywhere I've ever been. It's semi-sticks here, very Southern, but not tooo many rednecks. It's also really really run down. I get along pretty well with my new companion, we don't have much in common but thats totally fine with me. This area is even slower than Roswell. It's about how bad it was a few weeks ago when nothing was happening. We have 1 investigator and his parents won't let him come to church even though he's 19. There hasn't been a baptism here in a long long time and is known to be a slow place, so I guess it's time for that to change, though it will be hard considering most people have lived here their whole lives and know about us and have been attending "their church" forever, guess it's time for new strategies and lots of finding. The ward from what I hear would be a branch if wards could be demoted to branches. So this is definitely new. But I also heard here's generally nicer people here, I was told there might be some gun lovers and other crazy Southern people. My companion sad that he's only ever met two people not Christian. In Roswell I met probably around 100 not Christian, we had lots of Muslims and Jews there amongst other diversities, but nope, this is a churchy church town. There's two roads here that have a sign saying "prayer mile" and a mile later a sign saying "amen." Haha what the heck. Also, we had the biggest apartment in the mission, but now I'm in the biggest place in general. Let's just say the downstairs is as big as my whole first apartment. It's 3 bed 2 1/2 bath. The reason it's so big is because there are no apartments around here, lole. So we got a nice town home. Thursday: So I learned two more things today. One of which is that apparently everyone here smokes, that'll be fun. Also, to all those on missions and/or about to be serving missions, there's supposedly big changes coming to missions worldwide, only a select few here know about it, I'm not one of them, but it'll be announced on the 25th. There's rumors it has to do with schedules and p days. Friday: So I guess I don't have a car 3 days out of the week. We share the car, there's lots of hills and country here, so I get to keep my thunder thighs and still be able to visit the outskirts of the ward 4/7 days. Best of both worlds. But get this, we got a new investigator! Sweet!  Saturday: So imagine this. You're biking for several hours in the night. There are literally absolutely no street lights for miles at a time and it's so dark to the point where your light barely cuts it. As you bike on the road with lots of turns and twists you're cautious while cars occasionally come speeding around and may not see you, and no, there's absolutely no bike lanes anywhere, so yes you're in the street. It's cloudy and there's not a star in the sky, making it truly truly pitch dark. The roads you're biking on runs through forests with tall dark trees, to top it off, you hear large animals running through the forest along side you, but you can't see them. When you get out of the forest from time to time there's patches of heavy fog to ride through where you can see it if the corner of your eye a silhouette of a large moving animal, but it's just cattle. Ya. That's what it's like biking here. SKETCHY. To top it off, all the crazy people are out who like yelling as they drive by, it's scarier when you're already scared. Sunday: So this is how small our "ward" is. At the highest point there was only 1/3 of the pews filled. There was one young man to do sacrament, so we of course helped. There wasn't any black people (that'll be fun bringing black investigators). And after the meeting people were saying that was largest attendance they'd had in a long long time. I also found out bad news...the storms apparently always just miss this town by about 30 minutes. And I'm going to be here for tornado season. That's my luck, my second thought when I opened the call was "I get to be in big ol' storms and see tornadoes!" Sike. New Address 1481 Box Circle, Winder, GA 30680