Week 15: Lebanon, TN

March 13, 2023

Brother Davenport being the absolute dawg that he is, had us over in the morning to play ping pong in his garage. It was actually way fun, but some people like Elder Hillstead and Brother Davenport are actually good at ping pong, so R.I.P. That was sick, and then later we went and bowled for an hour. It was way fun being able to do some real stuff outside of chilling at the church for three hours. We also had dinner with the Davenports tonight, which was great. 

March 14, 2023

We had good ol' district council today and after we went to give a blessing to this lady the Hermana's are teaching. It's always such a cool opportunity being able to give a blessing to someone who is struggling. After that we had a lesson with the Lynch's and put Aryn on date for baptism on April 1st. We talked to them about temples and showed them a video about the Rome Italy temple. We told Aryn we know she's ready to be baptized and that we've seen how much progress she's made, and she said we could set it for a goal. We've still got a lot to teach but we know she's ready for baptism. 

March 15, 2023

Today we had a ton of lessons that went really well. First off Rose, the sweet old lady who is like my Tennessee grandma. She loves us and is so happy when we come over. We had a small lesson with Ashley, and gave a Book of Mormon to Rona, who was an online referral and is struggling a lot with finding a job. Later we talked to Melissa and told her our purpose as missionaries, pretty much that we want her to read the Book of Mormon and to get baptized and that went well. 

At night we had a super long lesson with our guy Abdel and his wife Lynn. It went wayyyy too long and we covered way too much stuff, but it's because they are both insanely smart. It doesn't matter though, we need to teach simpler and shorter. 

March 16, 2023

Our day was pretty slow today. We hit a bunch of contacts and pretty much no one answered or anything. But that's how it be sometimes. Our dinner was clear out in the faraway lands of our area so we went out there and tried to visit a bunch of inactive members. One thing about Tennessee is that all of the roads are sketchy and narrow. It's literally like riding a rollercoaster up and down the hills, and the road is like barely two lanes. We had dinner with the Judd's and they had a bunch of cats that just shed hair on every square foot of us, so my allergies went wild. It was a good dinner though, we had tacos. 

March 17, 2023

We helped another family move out today. The morning started with a fat rain storm and was still raining all throughout the move, but they only had the truck for one day. The ramp leading onto the moving truck was super steep and wet so I slipped like four times trying to carry huge boxes. My red Vans don't have the best traction so I literally almost died a couple of times. About an hour into the move we realized how much stuff was there so we called in some reinforcements, the Spanish elders. They clutched up so hard for us. They are in a trio so it went from three people to six, and only took us three hours instead of six. 

We had a couple of lessons and then later we had some beef and cabbage Irish stuff at our member meal. After that we had a game night at our church where we played a bunch of board games and stuff. We had like five of our friends tell us they were coming and then none of them showed up, but this inactive family, the Foster's, came! It was so much fun and it was wild seeing all the different board games everyone had. 

March 18, 2023

Today was pretty crazy. In the morning we played some ball and we had about 12 people there, which is probably a record. At around 1:00 we went to Don Fox Park to see if we could find anyone to talk to. There wasn't a ton of people there and no one really wanted to talk to us. We were going to just leave but we decided to take a lap around the park. It's a pretty big park so we kept going until we decided to cut through the grass and go to the car, but we decided to keep walking for a little ways where this family was walking up. We talked to them for a second but they weren't interested, so we were like alright let's walk back to the car. So we cut through the grass and as we were walking we saw this group off in the distance and one of them on the ground, so we knew something was up. We ran up and as we did, we saw this lady shaking on the ground and the kids yelling that it was their mom and she was having a seizure. They were all in shock and she was tangled up on the park bench with her face in the ground. Elder Putt grabbed her and pulled her out so she was safe on the grass and flipped her to make sure she was breathing, and she was. In a couple of minutes a lady ran over who said she was a nurse, which was super clutch because if we weren't there, she wouldn't have noticed something was wrong and been able to run over. We yelled for one of her kids (who were all teenagers) to call for an ambulance, so in a bit one pulled up and they took care of her. It was a miracle that we were there because it honestly kind of saved her life being able to flip her on her side and make sure she was breathing. So when we thought we wasted our time going to the park, we were wrong, and we were led by the Spirit to be able to help that lady. 

After that we found this way sick bro named Jose who wants to be a famous musician, but we gave him a Book of Mormon and talked for a good minute. It was a perfect example of using the Book of Mormon and experiences to fit a specific person's needs. 

We had Transfer Calls tonight and me and Elder Putt are staying, but Elder Brown, Beckstead, Hillstead, and Sister Reyes are leaving. :(  So after transfers I'll be the longest one here, which kind of sucks. 

March 19, 2023

We had a siiiiiiiiiiiick day at church today. Super spiritual and super cool. After that we went out with Parker to do some missionary work and teach some lessons, but literally everything fell through, so he got some good experience. We had lunch with the Salazar's, which is always cool, especially because Joseph Salazar showed us his Koi pond with turtles in it. I didn't know they had turtles in Tennessee but now I'm hyped to see one. 

Did a bunch of other stuff, important missionary work stuff, pretty sick, and a great Sabbath Day.