October 10, 2016 Hurricane Matthew Survivor

Hello Friends and Family, I am still alive. I survived Hurricane Matthew. In Gaffney, we got a whole 3 inches of rain and a little bit of wind. In other words, it wasn't much of a storm. I haven't heard much, but the missionaries down in the lowlands are probably going to be doing a lot of hurricane cleanup. I still don't know if I will be headed down to do anything, though. 

Something else cool that I got to do this week was work in the local soup kitchen. We made a bunch of hot dogs, chili, and macaroni. It ended up being a really good opportunity to meet people as they were coming in. I don't know if any of the pass along cards that we handed out will go anywhere, but I hope it will. 

One of the coolest things that has happened this week is that the efforts that Elder Wille and I have put into looking for people to teach by referrals have paid off. We set a lofty goal of 4 referrals for the week, and we ended up with 6. To put into perspective exactly how awesome that is, 2 referrals for the whole week was a good week. It is amazing to see what prayer will do to help us solve our problems and meet our goals. 

Anyhow, I hope that y'all are doing well. I pray for y'all every day. 

October 3, 2016

Hello Friends and Family. I have been informed that I spend a lot of these emails talking about food, so I'm going to try to do less of that. That should be pretty easy, since this week was pretty eventful. First of all, we had a lesson set to teach a really solid investigator named Candy. We had taught her about the Book of Mormon and how to pray to know if it is true or not, and that first lesson went really well. Anyhow, we called last Thursday to confirm that we were still good for our second lesson with her, and found that she had died a couple days after we had taught her the first lesson. As sad as that is, it is good to know that she is being taught by much greater teachers than I like Brigham Young  and Alma right now. 

This week I also went on a companion exchange with the Zone Leaders in Boiling Springs. I went over there to Boiling Springs and Elder Wille stayed in Gaffney. It is my second exchange so far on my mission, and it was great. I learned a lot about stress management and how to get referrals from everyone, not just investigators and members that I know really well. 

I also really enjoyed watching General Conference this week. For those of you that haven't been on missions before, watching General Conference is like Christmas. It is one of the only days where we don't have to be out proselyting all day. We went to a members house to watch most of it on both days. The members we went to have a tradition of making crepes throughout the conference. Suffice it to say that I really enjoyed eating crepes all day. Don't get me wrong that the only reason I enjoyed conference was because I got to eat. I learned a lot about how to involve members in missionary work, particularly less active members. 

I also realized that I haven't included many pictures, so I took a picture of the district this morning so y'all can see my brother and sisters in arms. See you next week! 

 Sister Graham is in the floral dress. Sister Smith has the dark blue shirt on. Elder Wille has the red tie on. Elder Thomas is the hardest to recognize. He is wearing a green Goodwill tie.