Week 22: Brevard, NC

May 1, 2023

We had one last ping pong tourney at Brother Davenports. I got absolutely trashed on but Elder Hubbard only lost to Davenport by one point. Crazy stuff. Also, there is probably something in the rules about this, but we shot his bow for a good 20 minutes. For the rest of the day we had to squad up at the church and play some Rainbow 6. 

Later I just remembered we went and helped build a house. This member in the 1st Ward is building this ABSOLUTELY MASSIVE house all by themselves. We helped them lift some fat floor trusses for an hour. The house they are building is about 10,000 square feet, it's ridiculous. After that, Brother Beaty from the 1st Ward took us and Elder Hubbard/Cox to this pizza buffet, which was so sick. 

May 2, 2023

We went and said bye to a bunch of different people today. The Lynch's, the Carling's, Danny, the Dickerson's, and the district. I'm going to miss all of them, I love them so much. Also we slept over at the 1st Elders apartment. 

May 3, 2023

A mother ton of driving today. We drove up to Farragut. Then my new companion, Elder Tubbs, and I drove to Brevard. It was a super beautiful drive through the mountains. I also didn't see most of it because I was slumped, but pretty much there's a bunch of green trees and mountains. Brevard is a super cool town. It feels like driving up the canyon somewhere and then dropping in a whole city with all of the trees and everything still there. One of the most important thing about Brevard is their white squirrels. The people here go absolutely crazy about white squirrels. They have a white squirrel festival coming up soon and you literally go to jail or something if you kill one. I saw one on the road as we were driving around and it was pretty hype, not gonna lie. 

We visited a couple people and had a chill day. Brevard is a branch and all the members are super old, so that's interesting. Elder Tubbs is from Malad, Idaho, and lived on a cattle ranch with about 200 cattle, and he's super cool.  

May 4, 2023

Today was a pretty sick day. We had district council and we met up in Mills River, which is about 30 minutes north. Our district includes the Hendersonville elders, the Arden elders, and Asheville sisters. Our district is supa heat and district council was good too. 

Brevard is one of the #1 most struggling areas in the mission literally just based off of how many old people there are, and also the new people being taught is low. So my and Elder Tubbs' biggest focus is finding, which is what we did all day, but no luck. We haven't had one baptism in Brevard in about a year, but we're gonna flip this joint. There is one major progressing friend Alyssa and her sons, Leland and Roy, who are 8 and 11. We visited them tonight, Elder Tubbs taught Leland how to rope and I talked to Roy about WWII for 30 minutes because that's what he's into. 

Oh yea, I saw another white squirrel baby!

May 5, 2023

Cinco de Mayo, let's goooooo! I love Cinco de Mayo even though I have no clue what it is. Today we went and helped at this soup kitchen type deal called Bread of Life. Apparently the missionaries have been going there every week for a while to do some service. Pretty much they just hand out a bunch of free food and supplies to homeless people and those in need. They let me work the window, which was sick. It was like working at a fast food place, but I was giving out eggs and milk and a bunch of random stuff to homeless people. 

After that we did finding all day. We were knocking on doors and walking around for probably 5-6 hours today with no success. Then at night we got a call back from a referral, who was so great. He literally told us he'd met with missionaries before, believes the Book of Mormon is the word of God, believes in the Plan of Salvation and all that. He hadn't gotten baptized because of some family stuff that came up, but now he's in our area and wants to get baptized. Pretty dope, his name is Carlos. 

Also a super nice member, Sister Harris, made us chicken pot pies for dinner. She also has a little dog with troll teeth named Winston. 

We also met this cool dude named John, who was a Navy Seal for 14+ years. He wasn't really interested in the gospel, but we talked for a while about the military and how he got so flippin' jakked. Such a dope guy and he was only in his 50's, which is RARE around here. 

May 6, 2023

We had another wild day of finding. We met this guy named Chad who was working on his old cars when we walked by. But he pretty much told us how much he hated Baptists and religion because of hypocrisy and change. We told him the focus of our church being Christ and how we wanted him to come to church. He told us how much he defends and respects us because no other churches are doing it, and the Baptists sure aint. Cool guy but super stern, so we'll see if he comes. 

We pulled up on the homeboy Roger, who kinda looks like a super old gnome, sick dude though. Later at night we had dinner with Alyssa, Leland & Roy. It was some yum burgers, and afterwards, we read Mosiah 18. They are so sick and follow along really well. Eleven year old Roy was like, "Wait, why did Helam and Alma get baptized together?" And we were like "Bro, how did you even catch that?" But it went super well and they want to come to church tomorrow. After dinner, we went and did some more roping with them, and had a good time. BIG day of unsuccessful finding, but another beautiful day in Brevard. 

May 7, 2023

We had sacrament with our branch today and there was probably about 30 people there. The Miller's came, which is sooo sick. They love coming to church and are already good friends with a lot of the members. After sacrament, Elder Tubbs and I got to teach Primary. They didn't have a pianist, so I had to go in and clutch up a bit and play the piano. 

After church, we had lunch with the Miller's and then we went and gave the sacrament to this lady in our branch. We did a bunch of finding in the outerlands because the center of Brevard is straight trippin. We've come to realize that trailers are the way to go, because less rich, old people live in them.