Week 54: Rockwood, TN

December 11, 2023

So to start off the morning, Elder Ortiz made an absolute abomination of a cake. He bought a bunch of massive cook books from UGO for like 3 for $10 and he bought 6. Before we went up to Farragut, we went over to the Willard's and crafted some pens with him. He has a big workshop for making pens in his basement so he let us build one which was way sweet. Up in Farragut we just played some games with all the missionaries there. It was Elder Bradshaw's birthday, so Elder Ortiz and I bought him this Roblox nerf gun, pretty cool. On the way back we made a bunch of calls and hit up The Preserve to do some finding and other stuff. That about finished it off.

December 12, 2023

We did weekly planning and then went and had a good lesson with Autumn and Michelle with Sister Heinecke. We felt like we should teach the Restoration again since it would be very beneficial for them. Visuals helped them a lot, so we watched the old trusty 'Ask of God' First Vision video. It definitely helped them comprehend it a little bit better.

Later we had a great lesson with Brian and reevaluated his baptism. He has some health issues, but if everything goes good with his doctor's appointment on Friday he should be fine to get baptized in December. Did some other things and then had a dinner with the Behlings. The other time we had dinner with them, it was a straight monkey house in there. Finished off the night teaching a lesson with Harry to our friend Titus. He's such a cool homie and we were able to help him understand the Restoration and Book of Mormon better. 

December 13, 2023

We had a bunch of meetings in the morning, TKMtc, District Council, and then ZLC. DC went really well, Elder Boothe trained on the daily schedule and then we had another discussion/training thing by Elder Bluemel about how to best use the BoM to help our friends. Good meeting, great council. 

On the way back to our lands we had a lesson with the homie Chris. So this guy was a referral and lives in an RV and the lesson was pretty ROUGH. He is from Chicago and lives in this boonie RV. He honestly wasn't super interested in learning about the gospel, just wanted to start contention. So we both got nice headaches in a ZERO ventilation smoky RV. To finish off the night we had the Ward Christmas party, which was way fun. Autumn and Michelle made it there. Autumn decided she wanted to sing a song in front of everyone in the ward, so bishop let her :-| . Great day all around.

December 14, 2023

Susie had a Christmas tree for us so we swooped that up and brought it on home. Today kinda stank. We went down to Spring City with Harry and every single plan fell through. We met this cool guy James but that's about it. 

December 15, 2023  

We went and helped out at Feeding Roane with my g Harry, and Josh was there too. They had me say the prayer again... Second week in a row praying for like 80 homeless people, pretty sweet. This time I got demoted from the black tank cart all the way down to the double decker mini cart which was kind of tough. I would've even taken the pale Dollar General cart or the normal Dollar General cart but I got stuck with the worst one. That thing can barely hold two boxes. After the homeless people ran out we went to Flea World. Bootman's Guitar Corner was open so we went and jammed out with him for a while. In the evening we had great lessons with Autumn and Michelle, Doris and Roxanne, and then had game night with Harry. We got SMOKED in Monopoly, Harry got Boardwalk and Park Place off the bank. Busy day though. 

December 16, 2023

So the ZLs had some last minute stuff they had to do for their training in Zone conference so we offered to take Elder Boothe off their hands so he could come work with us, and he accepted. Harry drove us up to Loudon and we had lunch at El Senor with the squad. On the way back we met up with Rose at the park finally! We've been trying to meet with her for a couple months now and it finally happened. She's from Pennsylvania and has five young kids. She's already a member and was baptized as a convert not too long ago in Pennsylvania. Anyways we talked with her for a while and played with her boys at the park. It was great to finally meet her and hopefully they'll be able to start coming to church. We hit a bunch of unsuccessful contacts for a couple hours and then had dinner with the Hayes'. We helped her set up her Christmas tree and ate pizza. We eventually wrapped up the night after some more finding and stuff and then dropped off Elder Boothe. I got the Kerwin Frost Box from McDonalds and got Brrrrick. 

December 17, 2023

Great day at church! Autumn came and Brian came too! Brian loved it and said he loved singing and learning from the testimonies of the members. Brian has been the biggest blessing to us and the ward. Nothing too crazy happened for the rest of the day, just a Sunday grind.