HELLO everyone!
Wow! What a week it has been. I can't believe it's Monday again! Whew! Alright, so here's what's going down....
My new companion is Elder Zachary Benson from Las Vegas, Nevada. He's the oldest of 3 and he turns 20 on February 25. Hopefully we're going to have a baptism that day; chances of that are actually pretty good! He went to Eastern Utah University (or something like that) for a year and then Utah Valley University for a semester and is hoping to join the BYU or U of U baseball team when he gets back. We get along really well and we've already got comments from investigators about how unified we are in a teaching setting.
Our new area is the Fayetteville 1-B area of the Fayetteville district in the Fayetteville zone. And, actually, the city of Fayetteville is not in our proselyting area. We live in Spring Lake and cover that whole city, as well as Fort Bragg, a military base. It's pretty intense. There are huge jets that fly all around, we can hear bugle calls every day, and everywhere we go, including church, there are soldiers everywhere. In fact, I think it's safe to say that at least 80% of the people in our area work or did work in Fort Bragg at some point as a part of the army. By the time I'm out of here, I should be pretty good at all of the army acronyms... but right now, I can't understand most of what the military people say to each other.
Our ward is the bomb.com. They have really taken care of us. We finally got (almost) everything we need (it took a while for us to get the second bed so I slept on the floor for the first couple nights) and the apartment is actually starting to look pretty home-y. The biggest bummer is that the post office had to change the locks for our mailbox when we got our mail key and the lock-changing guy only does his thing on Thursdays... and before transfers they mission office holds all the mail so that it doesn't get sent to the wrong area... so, in other words, we're in the middle of a 2-week mail fast. Needless to say, we're pretty pumped for Thursday. :) We are two of four missionaries serving in our ward (they actually serve in Fayetteville). The ward mission program is working great and the end goal is to split the ward... which is exactly why they called in another set of missionaries. So hopefully Elder Benson and I will be instrumental in the creation of the Spring Lake ward! Cool beans!
I love being a trainer. It's the best ever. I get to go through the 12-week infield training program again (round 3) and it's going to be weird for me when I don't get that third hour of study every morning... almost halfway through my mission. Can you believe it's been that long? My mission is already more than a quarter of the way over! :( Time is flying.
We have a brand-spankin'-new white 2012 Chevy Malibu that we get to use. Gotta love that new-car smell. Mmmmm. We had it for about, oh, I dunno, 4 hours before our ward mission leader's son backed into it and put a big dent in the fender while we were in his house for ward missionary coordination meeting. *Sigh* It's going in tomorrow to get fixed up.
We already have several investigators, 5 of which we hope to get baptized next month. They are so prepared it's amazing. A lot of recent converts in the ward (big tough army guys) are just as great. On Saturday we decided to go tracting, and it was Elder Benson's first time ever. The second person we talked to said he had met Mormons before and I asked him what he thought about our religion. His response was, "Just a bunch of crazies." I was pretty surprised at that and I asked him why that was, but he didn't really give a definite answer. He didn't accept our invitation to accept the missionary lessons, but he did take a card with our number on it "just to make us feel better". In other words, he wasn't very nice. And that shook Elder Benson up quite a bit. But, we went across the street to try "one more house" and the man behind the door was Louis, a security guard in Fort Bragg who readily invited us in. He said over and over, throughout the lesson, how happy he was that we were there, and he cried when he told us that we had answered a lot of questions he had for a long time. He accepted the Book of Mormon and we are following-up with him tomorrow and what he thinks. After the lesson, we felt pretty great. But Elder Benson was still a little shaken up about the guy who called us "crazies". Pretty understandable. To try to help him out a little bit, I showed him something I had learned from the scriptures: Satan knows when good things are about to happen and he does what he can to prevent us from receiving or taking part in the good things just over the hill. You can see this happen throughout the scriptures, with Adam & Eve, Abraham, Moses, Nephi, Alma, Amulek, Paul, Jesus Christ, etc., etc., etc. When we realize what he's trying to pull off, it's easier to thwart his plans and we understand that the best is yet to come. We can adopt the attitude, "Come what may, and love it."
I wish I had more time to write about our recent adventures, but I might have to save it for later.
Nothing to report on my back or knees.
I hope you are all doing well and I love you very much! Please keep in contact! I can't wait to read your letters (after Thursday)!!! :)
With love,
Elder Schank
