Monday 19 January 2015

The One with Googly Eyes and Hitchhikers

Hey y'all (I don't even say y'all so why is it my intro?)

So this was another pretty great week in the NCCM full of some wild experiences both hilarious and spiritual, and often both. So I'll pick up where I left off last week. P day was extremely uneventful. Cleaning and grocery shopping. Nothing fancy. That night we were supposed to meet with Aaron but he had to cancel on us so we were going to try and meet with Cody. He is a recent convert who got baptized at the same time as his friend Tyler. They were both introduced to the gospel by a returned missionary named Peter who is the most solid guy and has the most fantastic family ever. We were going to drop by his house which is like a two minute walk from our house but we noticed he wasn't home so we texted him and asked where
he was and it turns out he was with Tyler at #1 Fugi  (the delicious Japanese place) so we drove there and taught them. 'Twas grand.  We just taught about agency and how we all make choices that either bring us closer to, or further away, from God.

So Tuesday was zone meeting which was a hoot and a half. We thought we got there an hour early and were surprised by how many people were there. It turns out that we ended up getting there just in time so at least we didn't miss anything. The assistants were there. Lenoirganton also coordinated colors so we all wore something blue. I got to meet some fun people and we took some gems of pictures. There were two
trainings. One by our sister training leaders (the ones from our district) and the other by the others set in the zone. Our STLs are pretty chill and taught nicely.

After zone meeting Elder Bishop and Elder Dortch did a hostage exchange and I ended up going back to Morganton with Elder Bishop. Man was that a fun twenty-four hours. Oh my gosh the first thing we did was go to chik-fil-a which may just be the most delicious thing ever. Period.  We were starving after zone meeting which ran from like 10-1. We had a dinner appointment that night where we taught an investigator at a members home. It's actually one of the Morganton sister’s investigators but she was there so we taught her anyway. The family was such a riot and the one daughter gave me the biggest compliment I have receive on my missionary so far. It was, "when I first saw you I thought you were going to be really stuck up, but you weren’t". That touched my heart. After that we went to see another investigator who has such potential. He has a wife and kids so they could all share the gospel together
which would be wonderful.

So Wednesday morning for workout we went to the church gym to meet with the Morganton sisters. They strangest thing is their gym is carpeted. It's not hard wood but carpet. Freaked me right out. We played some half hearted basketball and hacky sack. That was a lot of fun. We made some phone calls then drove back to Lenoir.

After we reunited after the exchange we went out to Burger King. That's when I learned of the the horrible exchange in Lenoir. All five teaching visits we had lined up for them either cancelled or didn't show up. I don't know why this is such a problem for people. On the bright side Elder Dortch got to take Elder March tracting for the first time.

I also had my first near death experience this week. We were over at the home of Sister Hagen, a less active member who I love to death, doing some service. So picture this. Elder Galvin, standing on the top of a tall ladder, on extremely uneven ground, in full proselyting outfit, pouring a thirty pound rusty can of kerosene into a tank. We then went inside and taught a wonderful lesson. Thankfully kerosene washes out.

I also got Elder Dortch to do a regrettable thing. So we were at Warlords because Elder Dortch wanted some more magic cards. While we were there one of the guys who works there offered this huge box of cards for only $50. When I say huge I mean there is eight to ten thousand cards in this box. He hummed over it for a while because he went in planning to purchase about $10 worth of cards. The guy said he'd throw them in for free if he bought the box. Being the awful person I am, as soon as Elder Dortch was about to say “no" I told him that I'd give him $20 towards it. Long story short we now have a box full of 10000 Magic cards in our apartment. We have been spending the evenings sorting through them all which is so much fun because I absolutely love to sort things. That alone was worth the $20.

So I've had this feeling that we need to do a member missionary work Fireside for about a week now and I finally vocalized it. Elder Dortch and the sisters agreed so we went out to lunch one day to talk about it. We went to this place called Fatz cafe which is so delicious. We almost converted the waitress.  She did seem genuinely interested and has had fairly decent contact with the church before and has even
attended sacrament meeting in the past. We're going to have the Sisters add her on Facebook and see what happens. Since one of our big focuses is on finding right now, we had the Sisters teach us how to more effectively fake shop, so we went to Walmart and boy do I have some
stories.

Fake shopping story. So Sister Leishman approaches an older man in one of those electric scooter shopping carts and asks him about the oats he is buying. Long story short, the Sisters end up talking to him, I teach a lesson to his helper, we place a Book of Mormon, and the man sings to us. Yes, he literally sang two verses of a hymn with Sister Leishman helping with the chorus in the middle of Walmart. He also told us about how he served in the war and how he went fishing with a cannibal in New Guinea. Fun fact. Apparently black people and white people both taste the same. Racism is stupid. Mike drop.

We had Maximina for dinner again that night so we got to talk with Aaron and teach him. He's progressing spiritually though not technically because of his failed stop smoking lesson. Oh well we'll get it one day.
We did go fake fake shopping one day because we needed a few things and while we were there I bought “Avengers" notebooks for all of Lenoir district. But while we were talking to a lady in the craft isle something caught my eye. A 94 cent package of Googly eyes. I knew I was receiving some inspiration because I quickly bought them. When we got home that night I glued the Googly eyes to the avengers faces in the notebooks. It's quite hilarious. One of better moments if I'm being honest.

The rest of the week was pretty much a lot of the same stuff with no crazy stories so I'll skip to yesterday and it's miracle.

So while one of our less active members William was driving to church he felt prompted to pull over and talk to this guy walking down the side of the road. This mans name is Henry. So Henry tells William that his truck is in the shop so he can't go to church like he wanted to, so he was just walking to the store. Williams tells him that he's going to church and offers to take him there and he does. Long story short Henry loved church, actively participated in class, and wants to meet with us.

Another crazy thing happened tonight. So Elder Dortch and I are just eating some food at the apartment when all of the sudden the phone rings with a different ring tone then I'm used to. I think nothing of it but Elder Dortch just freaks out. It turns out that it was President Craven’s ring tone. So he asks us what we're doing that night and we told him not much because our appointment cancelled. He then tells us he'll be at the church in an hour and wants to meet with us. So we hang up and just sit there in shock for a moment. We then proceed to rapidly clean up everything, shine our shoes and shave our necks so we look as good as we can. We had interviews at the church and they went so well. He is such a great man.

Love ya,
Elder Galvin


My District at Zone Conference

Elder Bishop and I

Notebook with the Googly Eyes (Sorry its the wrong way but you get the idea)How Awesome does this look??

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