I grew up on the screet

Hola y'all!

I say hola because we just got back from eating lunch at a little tienda by our apartment. One of the bike elders was ET'd to Greenville because of companionship issues or something. So the elder who switched with him actually speaks Spanish. His name is Elder Creamer. So it's Elder Browne and now Elder Creamer and then me and Elder Robison in our district, plus the 3 sisters. Elder Creamer can speak Spanish because his mom is from Spain, although he's from Arizona. He's a blessing, because all the Spanish speakers in our ward have a missionary to talk to again. They freaked out when they first heard this white kid from Arizona speaking fluent español. So we put him right to work and had him help us order at this tienda that has a little restaurant inside. It was delicious. Real authentic Mexican food from South Carolina, just like you always h ar about!

But it's not all gooses and gravy (that's an actual saying I made up right here in SC). Missionary life takes a while to get used to. I'm still not used to being called Elder. "Nice to meet you, Elder Berry", "I like your tie today, Elder Berry", "I don't think that's how you cut a pineapple, Elder Berry". It can be very confusing. South Carolina is awesome, sometimes I forget I'm in another state, we have a Taco Bell here and everything. Although South Carolina is pretty different from Utah in some ways. The only mountain you're going to find here is Mountain Dew. Slang in SC involves replacing the t in 'tr' sounds with a c so it sounds like 'cr'. Scrength instead of strength. Scrawberry instead of  strawberry. People know when they're doing it, but they don't know how to stop. The scruggle is real.

It's really cold here in Simpsonville. Today we have a high of like 29 degrees I think and it's been raining off and on all day. People told me SC was going to be hot and humid all the time but the humidity is like really low so people legit lied to me.  Here's some things that happened this week: me and Elder Robison did some service for a guy named Brother Cook who has a rabbit farm. He has hundreds of rabbits and we had to clean up their piles of rabbit manure and roll it down this hill. It took like 4 hours because everybody poops and there are like 100 cages. At the end of the day
Brother Cook rewarded us by giving us a rabbit! Vacuum sealed in plastic. With its fur removed and its feet and head cut off. It turns out that Brother Cooks rabbit farm doesn't raise rabbits for pets or for rabbit shows, he raises them for meat! He has his own processing area and everything, he showed us the drain he uses for the blood, how fun! Fun fact: there used to be a law that you had to leave the feet on rabbit meat because without them, it's impossible to tell the difference between cat meat and rabbit meat. Our little guy is chilling in our freezer between the key lime pie and the frozen pizzas, and he's probably never coming out.

We spent a lot of our week meeting with less actives and members. We met a woman who hasn't been to church in about 8 months because she got a chemical burn on her head that made all her hair fall out 😕🙁☹️ She's been wearing a hood every day for months and doesn't leave the house. It's growing back though! 😀😊😬  The lesson I learned this week is just because someone's less active doesn't mean they don't have a testimony or don't want to come to church. Every single person has a different reason for why they aren't fully active. Some people straight up (scraight up) can't afford to pay for the gas to drive the 60 miles round trip to church every Sunday. Other people haven't been back in 50 years and use the argument "the Book of Mormon has been edited 3 times" for why the bible is the only true book of scripture (how many times has the bible been edited since Jesus died?) Also supposedly according to that guy Joseph Smith told an Indian that reading the Book of Mormon would turn him white. I kind of hope that's true.

We met with this guy in our ward who is apparently like a really famous painter. His name is Michael del Priore and he's legit, you can look him up! He's painted portraits for people in congress and the White House and stuff. His house is awesome, it's like 100% antiques. Not like grody antiques but like nice stuff from all around the world. He's cool.

I can't remember what else happened this week so it must not have been that memorable. Sorry for the long email and sorry for not having any pictures, the only pictures on my camera are like 3 pictures from the MTC. I haven't had time or opportunity to take any pictures, I don't
even know what I would take pictures of. Feel free to forward this
email to anyone you want.

Love Elder Berry