Week 25: Brevard, NC

May 22, 2023

Really good P-day. Our district was busy playing tennis, golf, and softball in Hendersonville, so Elder Tubbs and I did our own thing. We went to this crazy lookout spot overlooking Pisgah Forest and chilled there for a bit. Pretty relaxed P-day that came and went. 

May 23, 2023

I had this super genius idea to go to Brevard College and talk to some homies to set up a basketball group chat, but we pulled up to the college today and the place was a ghost town. Apparently they're on summer break :( !! It was a fairly normal day of finding and cranking it out on the streets. A couple spots we thought would be golden ended up stankin'. It's a success no matter what even if we can only give a few Books of Mormon to these southerners. They might never pick it up, but someday, someone smart will pick it up, like their grandkids, and receive exaltation. Sometimes it's not about the dumpster itself but what you throw into it to feed the rats. JK, they're not dumpsters, I love them all. 

May 24, 2023

We had Zone Conference in Arden today, which went supa well. They taught a lot of good wisdom. Elder Barrow made some good comments. They always cook these amazing lunches for Zone Conference, thank you so much ZC lunch ladies! On the way home we stopped in Mills River to talk to my boy Adam. We told him he needs to actually put in some effort and read the Book of Mormon on his own and I think we scared him off. At night we filled out the baptismal forms with Alyssa, Leland, and Roy, which was fun. We are getting closer to the BAPTISM!

May 25, 2023

I'll call this 'Inspiration Day' because it was straight inspired. First off we felt like we should go visit the Westlund's right off the bat. We had a great lil visit with them and shared some scriptures and stories that really helped them. Their son Daniel is going through some absolutely nuts physical trials, so we were able to hopefully comfort them a bit. 

After that we had the most inspired Taco Bell visit. We pulled up and this guy from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, was there, who is a member. Bro's name is Billy Hatcher and is a textbook Louisiana stereotype. If you've seen the firefly from Princess and the Frog, that's my man Billy. He just moved here a while back and wants to start coming to church but he didn't know where it is and doesn't have a ride. Funniest guy, though. After the Deluxe Cravings Box and Baja Blast was done wacking up our stomachs, we went to Rosman / Lake Toxaway. I don't know if I wrote this yet, but Lake Toxaway is where a bunch of crazy celebs and filthy rich people live. Rumors tell that the singer for ACDC has a big mansion in Lake Toxaway. 

Then we visited a less active member who breeds Shih Tzus and she just had like six baby ones, and they were just sleeping on their backs. That's about it, talked to a bunch of people, figured out more baptism stuff, nothing too crazy. 

May 26, 2023

Elder Greenhalgh and I hit an exchange here in Brevard and it went really well. He's usually in the Micronesian branch and they do zero knocking, so you already know that's what we did. We had a super long conversation with a few different people, so it was a pretty easy day. One of them was this homie David Branch. He's this old Harley-Davidson Trump guy that we talked to for a solid minute. He told us he's met with Jehovah Witnesses for a while and even went to church a few times, but he didn't agree with some of their doctrine. Really nice people though... Bro WHAT!!! No one says they like Jehovah's Witnesses. If this boy likes them, he'll get baptized in 15 seconds. 

We had a fun time with Alyssa and her boys and taught them the rest of the principles and then played some football. After that we had a call with Carlos :( . Bro said some out of pocket stuff. We read a chapter from the Book of Mormon with him but at the end he started asking some bad kind of anti-temple-related questions, and we were like yo hold up. Honestly not even a surprise though because he's been making some serious drama recently. He's been making accusations against past missionaries and making these off-the-wall comments that completely drives out the Spirit. Elder Greenhalgh and I had a good talk and we dropped the boy off. 

May 27, 2023

Honestly looking back on it I don't remember much about today. We went to the White Squirrel Festival in Brevard for a while and walked around. Nothing like a massive festival to make you feel out of place, everyone and their dog and their white squirrels were staring us down. We were like, Ay it will be good for publicity, and it was, but nah that wasn't fun. There was a couple homies dressed up in these wack squirrel costumes, which was hype, but after that it was mid. 

Then we cleaned out the baptismal font because it hasn't been used in a year and a half. There were a few bugs and the water was yellow for a sec, but it was chill. Other than that we did a few more hours of finding and then picked up dinner from Sister Harris. I got to see my guy WINSTON again!

May 28, 2023

We had the baptism today, which went almost flawlessly. Elder Karren baptized Alyssa and Leland, and then Brother Jones baptized Roy. We delegated almost the entirety of the program to the branch, which was great! They haven't had a baptism in a year and a half, so they didn't mess around. Sister Booth did the talk on the Holy Ghost and used this little Lego presentation with the Godhead as minifigs, which was so sick. After the baptism they had some super good food. There was probably around 40 or so people at the baptism, which is CRAZY for the Brevard Branch. That's the highlight of the day, everything else was boring.