I had a fun week which starts and
continues with service, as usual.
On Monday our big service project
happened. The food pantry we often help
at is called FACES (I don’t know what that stands for). There are ramps to help handicapped people
get in the front doors from the parking lot.
The ramps and one nearby part of the parking lot are super messed up and
so it makes it hard for old or handicapped people to get into the food pantry. Our service project was to help them by
demolishing the old ramps and the one small area of the parking lot so new
concrete can be poured for better ramps.
Our team (E. Chappell, E. Martineau, me, B. Manry, and the Ludgate
father and son) started by tearing up the parking lot area, which was really
easy since it was so damaged and had been laid badly in the first place. The
ramps were concrete so we banged on them with sledgehammers and then used a jackhammer
to get them destroyed. It took a lot of
work to get this done, but we finally got all the concrete up and heaved it
into a pile. After our work, Sister
Chappell fed us delicious food.
The next day we had some set
appointments with people like Rashad and Shirley, but not until the
afternoon. In the morning, we helped E.
Chappell dig out the places for the new ramps so they would fill up better with
cement. We also cleaned up around that
area. When we were done, we left to get
dressed to keep our appointments and what do you know, they fall through. So - we changed again and went to help Elder
Chappell pour the cement and smooth it out which was fun. (Lucky me, I was wearing my p-day velcro
pants). We didn't get too messy. After the concrete was finished, we walked the
streets of downtown Farmville and handed out some pass along cards. It was fun.
Then we got fed by these less active members, the Davis couple. It was a pretty
awkward meal, but we did get to hear a lot about the family vacation they were
on last week. After we left the Davis house, we got ahold of Henry again and
had a lesson.
On Wednesday we had zone conference
and we showed up a little late, but the Farmville branch missionaries are
always fashionably late. The whole meeting was a lot of leadership training
shoved into a time period of 9am to 4pm.
We speedily went over stuff we had already heard before. We role played after each topic and sometimes
I would remain silent so Elder Martineau would talk more. One of the funny role
plays was E. Fish committing an investigator to come to Christ by having him
get out of the chair and walk over to the picture of Christ. After the meeting
it took us a while to get home so we went to the youth activity to make a small
catapult which got diverted by my showing them how to juggle and also keeping a
broom balanced on the tip of my finger.
On Thursday we basically got fed by
members and caught up with Rashad to answer more of his questions. We also had
some fun volunteering at the Faces Pantry where we sorted the food. This lady named "Brenda" (don’t know
her real name) was playing the funny antagonizing game about our church. She kept saying funny stuff to me (Brad) and
Elder Martineau (Bob) playing the game, “What is your mental condition?” It was
weird.
On Friday we finally got our blitz
for our area which was sweet. We got food from Cook Out and we all rode in the
transfer van together to drop the Elders off at their spots. We placed them in
random areas. I stayed with Elder Hitesman
and Nelson to go to this one area which was out there. We met some nice people
and a couple of Jews as well. They are more prominent out here. It’s quite fun
and we enjoy talking with some people. Now we have a bigger handful of people
to go see in our area. Afterward, we got to eat at our branch president's house
(Pres.Yankey). We ate pizza and they showed this video of "What does the
fox say?" Interesting.
The great thing about Saturday was
the baptism of the Ludgate couple (B. Ludgate's parents. It was a cool
experience and it was very warm and awesome to see families coming closer under
the gospel. Plus our mission president and his wife came and sat behind us so
during the beginning, I look back and there is our mission president. Fun stuff!
I also found out that another baptism was happening that day: Tyesha in Lawrenceville whom I had taught a
long time ago. Her son Raquan baptized
her – he had gotten baptized only 2 months earlier. That was sweet, too. We
also were able to teach Henry by reading with him the Book of Mormon and geting
him to come to church.
On Sunday we went to church fasting
and hungry. Henry came and some other people for the sisters to teach.
Testimonies were long and one member got up talking about being converted then
went totally off subject recounting stories of his childhood. Gospel Principles
was really funny because Willie Lee kept sounding his opinion. For example, how
we are like the JWs and describing what televisions were like in his day and
how old they were, etc. The topic was on
missionary work. Everyone was trying to keep a straight face, even the teacher,
Eddy Hurt. Funny stuff. The Chappells did a missionary moment afterwards in the
3rd hour. For the rest of the day we ate at the Chappell’s and looked at old
pictures of them. We made a map which took some doing and was a time consuming
effort but it got done.
Elder McClure
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