August 1, 2016

Howdy y'all! This last week has been very exciting as this is my first full week in the field. I actually have two mission daddies (trainers) and they are named Elder Willie and Elder Sherlock, who happened to have a car with a lot of miles when I got here. Elder Sherlock comes from Oklahoma and has been out for Sixteen months thus far. Elder Willie grew up on a ranch in Wyoming and has been out for nine months. Anyhow, my first area is in Gaffney, South Carolina. In proper Southern, it in the upstate. In the upstate, people have really thick drawls that I am actually starting to understand now, and the other day, I actually caught myself slipping into one myself. I haven't quite got the ma'ams and the sirs down yet, but yall is staring to become habitual. People here are really nice and will let you eat the table cloth should you want to. There are fried chicken places everywhere, and they are all way better than anything out West. I actually had mashed potatoes with sausage gravy the other day at Bojangles the other day, and it was delicious. Bojangles, by the way, is to KFC as In-n-Out is to McDonalds, for those of you who don't know what it is. Something else worthy of note is that I am apparently in the best possible area for the summer months. Reason being, it isn't very humid relatively speaking and it hasn't gotten over 95 degrees here. I have actually gotten used to the humidity and now, it actually feels pretty normal now. Granted, I do spend the majority of my time indoors. That is not to say air conditioned indoors, because the AC systems here are run 24/7 and break pretty regularly. There other really eye opening thing for me here are the ghettos. We have been in some sketchy parts of Gaffney to try and contact members, and it has really surprised me some the places that people will live here, especially given that a lot of those houses will have really nice cars out front. Prosilyting there has paid off, though. We met a family there on Saturday who committed to baptism on the first lesson. Later that day, we met a sister name Misty. She had actually prayed the day before that God would reveal himself to her, and the next day we showed up at her door looking for her sister originally. She is very accepting of what we have taught, and seemed really happy in church yesterday. In our district, there is only one other companionship of sisters, who serve in Blacksburg. There are a bunch of other weird things that people do here that I think is worth mentioning. For example, most of the cars at the end of a demolition derby would still be considered roadworthy here. My companion was telling me that he once saw a car that looked like it had been cut clean in half, and the two halves were being held together with bungee cords and duct tape. In terms of the work in general, it is definately being hastened here. I love yall as always! Until next week!