Elder McClure: District Leader, Mover, and Gardener - email received Nov. 19, 2012

Hey, People I Love,
This is Elder McClure speaking. Fun week!  I got another missionary with me (Elder Russell) as well as Elder Downs, which was awkward and bizarre at first, but now is cool. Elder Russell is from California and is a little bit chunky.  He is only with us until he goes home in a couple of weeks.  This situation is known as “killing him off.”  J  We had a good week and tried to get investigators and less actives to church, but no one came.

The week went like this:

Tuesday:  We had to move furniture around our little apartment to make sure we have room for Elder Russell to come and live with us. We had a lesson with Steve Lawhorne and I stumped over my words but we got the lesson on the gospel of Jesus Christ over with him. We found out he is still smoking so we have to get over that with him before baptism and to help get him ready to be baptized. He has a good heart. After this visit, we went to the Footcare Center for the doctor to look at my foot. He jumped into action and took the procedures to remove the ingrown toenail.  He numbed the toe, cut the nail with a pair of clippers, pulled out the cut nail with pliers, and then burned the side of the nail to stop it from growing. And I was propped up and watching it the whole time! It was weird from no pain but I could see the whole thing done. Got the ingrown nail out and bandaged up my foot and set up an appt. for next week. I used Mission Medical – awesome!

We taught a lesson to Chelsea and Melissa Divvers after shopping in a Mennonite grocery store. We brought S. Davis and B. Floyd with us. S. Davis talked really fast and really long till we had to leave. B. Floyd has a strong Texas accent and popped jokes at random times. But the family is golden and they are going to be baptized soon, I can feel it. We got a referral off of mormon.org for a lady named Wendy Liput who is interested in talking with us.

Wednesday:  We did service in a former investigator’s yard.  Her name is Hazel Wright and she has a history of having the other missionaries do it. She will not convert but her son is an active Mormon and is actually an RM. We taught a woman named Wendy about our church service and how things are done and we invited her and she really wanted to come. We taught Isbell Lovett about prayer and asked her to pray to know if she was ready to be baptized. Then we went to a surprise party that Bro. Tickal (one of the members) was throwing for his wife. There was a lot of soda and ice cream and cake. I was super funny by taking the streamers and ribbon dancing with the other kids and they started having ribbon wars or chasing me for them. Super comical.

Thursday:  Nothing much happened except another service help out with Hazel Wright and her plants. She was overjoyed when I told her my mother taught me how to be a gardener. She gave us money for lunch. We also helped move a couch from one member’s house to another and then throwing away a sofa bed.  It was hard getting it down from the apartment hallway, but we got it done. Then we picked up Elder Russell.

Friday:  We went to Walmart and shopped for Elder Russell to get some stuff he needed. We got a bunch of random music from a Goodwill; one CD was Prince of Egypt. We also helped with the Bishop’s Storehouse which was really big that day from all the Thanksgiving stuff going on.

 
The rest of the week was pretty much a dud from lessons cancelling, but I got a cool wristband from Jeffrey Cosgrove about an organization called One with You. People in this organization preach Christ to communist nations and often get beaten for doing so.

Have a good week my people, and know I am fine. I love you all!

Elder McClure