S1:E4: Trunk or Treat, Gators, Hurricane part2?

 (Elder Cummings)

大家好！

We started teaching 4 new people this week! The Work doesn't stop that's for sure. They're all so awesome and exciting to talk to. With the change to no more tracting, most if not all of the people we come in contact to WANT to be contacted because they've referred themselves. This makes lessons more engaging and reflective on their part because even if they aren't looking to be baptized but just are looking into the Church, they have questions.

Yes, we're getting evacuated for Hurricane Zeta coming right into New Orleans in a few days. Not a bad one, but you gotta use an "abundance of caution". Just pray that it doesn't get any stronger!

This week we had the branch Trunk-or-Treat! Elder Christensen and I carved some pumpkins and threw all our ties in our trunk. I'd say it was a success... It was fun seeing a bunch of people outside of sacrament meeting though, we were able to chat and get to know many of them. So many people just gave us candy and cupcakes. SO much! We gave it all away to the kids, the parents probably didn't appreciate that🤣

For P-day we went to a National Reserve down in the Bayous. When I learned I was coming to Louisiana I thought the swamp is what I'd be living in, especially when I learned I was going to the West Bank. But thankfully we don't have to live like Shrek. But we saw a gator! That was awesome!

My spiritual thought is not my own, but the thought of an 18 year old we're talking with. He's had a terribly hard life, and without sharing too much he described his life as "hitting the bottom of the barrel, and then scraping through the bottom with your bare hands just to get even deeper. And then before you know it you can't even see where you started from". Despite this, he testified that everything happens for a reason. He knows that every single trial he has had is for a reason. He knows that he doesn't know the reason, but he knows that God knows the reason. I hope that we can all look at our trials and afflictions with that perspective. Understand that you might never know the reason God has allowed your trials to happen, but trust that He knows the reason and knows it's for your benefit. I testify that is true and do so in the name of Jesus Christ, amen.

Photos!

 

1.Our trunk, pretty good I know

2. Us at the Bayous

3. Gator

4. Me and Gator(it crawled a way a little bit but its still there)

Season 1 Episode 3: Zone Conference & Catan

 (Elder Cummings)

Hey y'all!!

This week was probably my first "normal" week. We have the car back, there's no impending hurricane, our dryers almost working again, etc. It's been good. Some days we're stacked with appts and busy the entire day, and some days we gotta fight to be productive and spend time. Missionaries no longer go tracting(knocking door to door). And thats not a Covid thing, we just don't do that anymore so now when we have open time we gotta find other efficient and effective ways to reach out to people and contact.

We played Settlers of Catan this morning and I finally won, just had to say that.

We had zone conference this weekend! About 30ish missionaries in the New Orleans area got together and listened to messages from the mission president and others. We talked a lot about the importance of members in missionary work and it was awesome. In the end, the missionaries are only as effective as the members in their unit. We will only be around for a couple months and then we are transferred, but members stay there and can be real friends and provide lasting support and love far longer than we can. On top of this, too often people we find to teach see us as preachers not teachers, and salesman not ministers. Members are immediately another "normal" person those we teach can talk to and connect to. If any of you are wondering how you can best help the missionaries...join them in lessons, trust them with your friends who you know need the gospel, do what you can to help them teach...and then feed them🤣. The food y'all cook us only brings so much happiness, even if its the vegetarian curry that I had last week(actually so good). But the happiness the gospel of Jesus Christ brings into our lives is greater than anything else.

We went to New Orleans today and walked around, entered a Cathedral there, which was super pretty. What was awesome is we passed this massage place and their ads were in Chinese and I was like "oh cool". As we walked by the two guys were speaking Mandarin to each other but I didn't much of it until my companion was like "is that Chinese?" And then told me I had to go talk to them. Not having spoken Mandarin in about 3 weeks besides to myself I was super nervous but I asked if they spoke Mandarin and told them that I was a missionary and I was learning Chinese. We talked for a bit and then a young girl came out, probably one of the guy's daughters and said she could teach me Chinese! Whats even better is that she said she was a Christian and asked for the address for our church! We gave it to her and gave her our number and then made sure we were friends on Facebook. (Almost all in Chinese! I could NOT have done that without God's help) It was so awesome. God puts people in your path but of you don't open your mouth you're not gonna meet them. I'm grateful for my companion that told me to go back

Brother Palmquist shared something awesome during church this week. He shared that no matter what kind of God we believe in, what characteristics we believe He has, or what His doctrine is, when we pray we are all praying to the same God. We all understand Him differently but that does not change the need we have for Him, the trust we have in Him, and the love we have for Him. Nor does it change the love He has for us. God's love is real. It is real.

Elder Cummings

Fotos:

1. On the way to an English class for some Spanish speakers we met...yes...I know I dont speak a lick of Spanish but thats what makes it fun.

2. Louisiana sunsets, picture doesn't do it justice, it was literally a rainbow sunset. I don't even know how that works

3. Standing by some sign, don't know what the 300 means though

4. The Catholic Cathedral we went into. It had some super cool ceiling murals that I would've taken a picture of but I wasn't supposed to

Donkey Kong's birthday!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for,

Not much happened this week. Elder Snow left us :( and now it's just Elder Nabrotzky and I. We are getting along great though. Elder Nabrotzky's incredibly talented at singing, and basically everything else. We did recorded a video with another Sister singing Be Still My Soul (me playing the piano) that was posted on our facebook page.

We didn't get in any more flour fights, but when we were walking one day, we found a bottle of lemon pepper that I started throwing at Elder Nabrotzky. It was really windy though, so I got Lemon Pepper in my eyes as I chased him with it. It's also starting to get colder here. We have had to wear sweaters basically every day this week. Looking forward to Winter, where I will be walking in several feet of snow. It's been predicted that this winter will be one of the worst in several years. Yay.

In my studies I recently studied the effect of discouragement in our lives. Discouragement weakens our faith and lowers our expectations. If we lower our expectations our effectiveness will decrease and our desire will weaken. I've applied this specifically to my missionary work (where there can sometimes be many things to be discouraged about) but it can be applied to anything in life. This week, I'm going to ask you, try not to be discouraged! If there's something you're striving for, go for it!

I love you all! Fun fact, one of my fellow missionaries in our apartment, Elder Huang, has a Donkey Kong plushie that he's had for 9 years today! He loves Donkey Kong. So it's his birthday! Elder Huang's super excited! We are celebrating hard core today.

Pictures

1. Elder Huang with Donkey Kong!

2. I bet Elder Nabrotzky that he wouldn't put a golf ball I found on the floor, in his mouth for 5 minutes. He did, and I lost 3 bucks because of it. Worth it though.

3. I bet 5 bucks Elder Nabrotzky he couldn't eat the entire pie. He tried, but failed. He got pretty sick because it actually.

4. Beautiful Sunset in Idaho

5-7. Saying goodbye to Elder Snow.

Flour Fight!

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could hope for,

A quick rundown of the highlights:

We had a 5 pound bag of flour that we've been pulling pranks with. One evening we started playing hot potato with the bag of flour. A few tosses later, the bag broke and flour got everywhere. Then we started throwing handfuls of it at each other. A week later we are still finding flour in places we did not expect. We also found a huge crawl space, with a lot of spiders under our apartment. So naturally we went underneath it and explored it. It was fun!

We had a family we were teaching, names being Chava, Gordo, and Angel, move which we are really sad about. We will hopefully be able to do a pass off lesson with the new Elders that cover that area, but we are sad to see them go. We also learned last night about Transfers. Elder Snow will be leaving us! Another thing to be sad about. But, "all things have been done in the wisdom of him who knoweth all things." I know that good things will come and we will see miracles.

This week we also did a service for 4 hours at Albertsons standing outside collecting food for a food drive. In honor of Halloween, one of us hid in the barrel, covered in bags if cereal. Then when ever someone came to put food in, we kicked the barrel and a hand came out and grabbed the food. We scared some people pretty good. It was fun!

Interesting fact, the sweet potato belongs in the same family as morning glories while the white potato belongs to the same group as tomatoes, tobacco, chile pepper, eggplant and the petunia. Love you all!

Pictures:

1. A picture of us today returning the shopping cart we "borrowed" for groceries

2-3. The service

4-5. We did some impromptu service for someone, and raked their yard. Then we jumped in it!

6-7. The flour fight

Season 1 Episode 2: The Hurrication

 (Elder Cummings)

Hey y'all!

This week has been kind of crazy! Thanks to Hurricane Delta slamming right through Louisiana the whole mission got evacuated on Thursday to Gulfport, Mississippi! All 120 Elders stayed 3 nights at the Gulfport stake center (a church building) hence the title name: Hurrication (hurricane vacation). In all seriousness, it wasn't much of a vacation because it wasn't meant to be. Since a lot of missionary work nowadays is done online, we kept having some lessons over zoom and Facebook. Technology is such a blessing! Me and a guy from South Africa started having a really good conversation on Facebook Messenger and has agreed to meet with us and talk more about Jesus and God's plan for us! That would never have been available to missionaries just 10 years ago.

Anyway, while staying overnight with a bunch guys, our mission president had some mandatory recreation so we all didn't go crazy. So I played a lot of ball and spikeball, so much fun. It was awesome to meet all these experienced missionaries who love and know the gospel. So many of them are an example to me.

So for 3 nights, I slept in a room with 20 other stinky young men(they made showers for us in the parking lot with 2x4's, tarps, pvc pipes and a hose but obviously not ideal), all on air mattresses and pads, and it was still a spiritually uplifting experience. If that isn't a testament of the truthfulness of the gospel I don't know what is. We're all so different but we all have the same purpose. We all try to see each other as children of a Heavenly Father. That is why I believe we were so united and had such a great time. It doesn't matter what our race, ethnicity, nationality, gender, political affiliation, social class, family situation, interests, dislikes, opinions, experience, knowledge....the list goes on and on. Literally ANYTHING that makes us different goes in that list. We are Children of God. Children of a Loving Heavenly Father that wants what is best for us, wants us to have joy. When we know that we know each other.

This week was awesome as you can tell but the highlight was last night when we called a couple we're teaching named Reginald and Gwen. We use to call each other every night and share a scripture with them but recently they haven't been answering our calls, so we gave them space and stopped calling them for a couple days. On Saturday Gwen called and was like "boys, why haven't yall been calling us? Reggie wants to talk to you guys!" After that they committed to call with us at 8 every night. Anyway, we called them yesterday night and Reginald started talking about the last scripture we invited them to study about a week and a half ago. They used to not be very good on their commitments but Reginald goes off just talking about the scripture about baptism and the disciples and how we really do need to be baptized. Me and Elder Christensen were just overjoyed. That’s just a glimpse believe of what God feels when we obey His commandments. He gives commandments because He knows that through obedience we can have joy beyond anything else. He wants what is best for us, I believe it.

Elder Cummings

Some pics:

1. Went to Whataburger in Gulfport, feels just like home

2. Played some Frisbee on the beach with the boys, ft Elder Christensen

The Instagram Challenge

 (Elder Slade)

To the best friends and family a person could ask for,

Let me tell you. This week we did not eat the healthiest. So many members gave us junk food and deserts. We got two members who gave us cinnamon rolls, one member gave us a box of Krispy Kreme (that was my favorite) and a ton of cookies! One of the days my companions ate so much, I was worried they would go into a sugar come. I'll tell you though, they crashed hard.

This week our mission started an Instagram page, called findingfaithinchrist. They havent given us Instagram yet, but they started a completion to see who could get the most followers for the page. I think we are in the lead with over 200 followers. Elder Snow and Elder Nabrotzky are so motivated to win it. I have never seen anyone else more competitive. They are devoting so much time to this. The winning companionship gets dinner at the mission home, and the winning zone gets a pizza party. The completion ends tonight at 6. I'll let you know next week if we won.

I loved General Conference this weekend! It was great to hear from our leaders. I loves what the prophet said about Letting God Prevail in our lives. It implies a humble submissiveness and a trust in God. I want that for my life, and in the lives of those I teach, because that's when they will be the happiest they can be.

I love you all! Thanks for all of you who wishes me happy birthday! I had a great birthday! Went to mod pizza, someone made me a cake, and some kid gave me 2 bucks! Also Potato harvest has been happening the past week or so, and I'm actually pretty sad I'm not in the country to help. I think it would be pretty fun! Perhaps next year!

1. A district picture because Elder Brooke left for England

2. Me opening up my presents. Confetti got everywhere!

The Season Premiere (the Grind actually just started)

 (Elder Cummings)

Hello everyone!!

I landed in Baton Rouge on Tuesday last week and it feels like forever ago. The first night was all us greeny missionaries staying the night at the mission presidents home. The next day we all met our trainer companions!

My companion's Elder Christensen, he's pretty dang cool. Hes about 5 foot 4, served in Chile until Coronavirus hit and was reassigned here. He's making it a lot of fun and already making me a better missionary. We live with two other elders, Elder Aldala and Elder Roodbol. They're all soooo funny and get the job done.

Because of coronavirus we do what my mission president refers to as "hybrid missionary work". Basically we do a good bit in person and a good bit through Facebook to find people and have discussions about Christ. Then we call all of our referrals and things like that.

My area is super cool. We're in the West Bank, south of New Orleans. Yeah I know there's not a lot south of New Orleans. My area is actually pretty big but only a small portion is covered by living area because most of the land is bayou and swampy or its not actually land but lakes and rivers and stuff. It can get sketchy the northern part of our area that includes downtown New Orleans but I've never felt unsafe and where our apartment is is a nice area.

This week a lot of lessons fell through but as missionaries thats expected, especially because many appts are with people we haven't actually met yet. But we're in the Bible Belt baby, the people LOVE Jesus and its amazing. Its so fun to talk to people who already have a deep faith and devotion to God and Christ, it provides a lot of connection and respect.

I'll tell you more about my friends and those we're teaching next week once I've met most of them, but they're all awesome I can assure you that.

My spiritual thought comes from two things: at the mission home the first night all the new missionaries were asked to share their testimony as pure as simple as possible and that made me think about what to say. Second, because this is the Bible Belt, sometimes people can be pretty contentious and seek to bible bash. What you have to do is close your book and bear testimony, bringing up scriptures to throw dirt on each other will never do anything but make everyone angry that they're dirty.

Anyway, I know Christ is my Savior and I know His Atonement works. I know His Atonement works because I've used it. It's as simple as that. Nothing is as personal and universal as the Saviors Atonement. I KNOW it works because I have USED it and no power on earth can convince me otherwise. I say that in His name, Jesus Christ, Amen.