Dear family and friends,
It's been a hot one here in North Carolina. Over the weekend it hit
114 degrees! No joke. And that's not even taking the humidity into
consideration. The overall heat index was probably around 120. It was
blistering all week until Sunday. The heavens opened and raindrops the size of
paintballs fell hard for a few hours while we were in church. Actually, during
the last hour, the church lost power for a few minutes and after it came back
on the lights would flicker every once in a while. Mass chaos ensued and
primary children were screaming and running through the halls into doors,
walls, and each other. Our assistant ward mission leader was in the bathroom at
the time and it was pretty funny. Luckily, the temperature dropped from above
110 to the mid 70s during the rainstorm, but it seems that the temperature drop
didn't last very long, seeing as it's really hot right now, less than 24 hours
later. Over the weekend there were also a lot of winds that took out a few
small trees, but nothing too serious here. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that
our air conditioning unit under our house doesn't work when the heat gets much
higher than 100 degrees out... which is exactly when we need it to work. We
called the member who owns the lease and he crawled under the house to try to
figure it out and also noticed that the insulation under the floor was missing.
So that answers the question why we've been sweating during our prayers at
10:30 at night. And all this time we thought we were just praying really
intensely.
No news to report on my back/joints. I still haven't gotten any news
from the doctor as far as what the last blood test showed. Hopefully I'll hear
from him today.
We did a lot of teaching today... since Elder Simmons showed up I
haven't taught so much in my whole mission! It seems like when I was with Elder
Farr we worked hard to find a lot of people to teach, and now with that
preparation taken care of we have been able to teach a lot of people.
We're still finding 2-4 new people on a weekly basis, too, so that's good. But
there's not really a whole lot of new stuff going on with our investigators.
John is doing great. He mentioned in Sunday School class that he
knows the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is God's true church and
that the Book of Mormon has helped him through his conversion. He proudly
announced in priesthood meeting opening exercises that he is going to get
baptized on the 21st and that he's living the Word of Wisdom. It's been amazing
to see how all of his questions are being answered by the Spirit through us. In
our last lesson with him, at least three times we directed him to some
scriptures and with each one he had a "Eureka" moment in answer to
some questions he's had for a long time. It was so great getting to watch his
face as the Book of Mormon answered the years-old questions that have been pent
up inside his mind.
Things with Robin are still going good. She is getting interviewed
for baptism by our new mission president on Thursday.
Speaking of him, we had the opportunity of meeting President and
Sister Bernhisel the day after they arrived at our zone leader council meeting.
They are great. You can tell they don't have a few years of experience under
their belts quite yet, but it's very apparent that the Lord is with them. He
seems pretty determined to help me recover medically because he is a doctor by
profession; although, he is an OB-GYN (not too sure he'll be able to help me
out that much, then).
So... yeah. That's pretty much the big news. I'm trying to think...
oh yeah! We had this referral from a Filipino member. Her friend invited us to
a dinner. When we showed up we realized we were the only people who weren't
either Filipino or related to one. It was pretty fun. They taught us a few
Tagalog words and were impressed with my pronunciation (it uses the same kind
of vowel sounds as Korean, it seems like, so I learned them from Dad). Haha...
So "como sta bo" means "Hello, how are you?" and
"Salamat bo" means "thank you"! One of our members who
served in the Phillippines has been teaching his son (who can't even speak
English) yet a few words in Tagalog, so I also picked up "mata"
("eye"). I forgot how to say "nose" and "mouth"
already.
Well, I love you all and hope to hear from you soon!
With love,
Elder Schank
