Murder Beach

Hola y'all!

Today's been fun! A member took us to this place called the Brookgreen Gardens and it was SWEET. Sweeter than sweet tea with extra sugar in a Shirley Temple movie. There's all these cool plants and flowers and trees but there's also like super old statues. It's really cool and they have kind of a zoo and right now there's this event going on where they have all these huge Lego sculptures of animals. It was awesome! I'll try to send some pictures of me and Elder Staker, and the S. Myrtle Beach elders. I don't know how many I can send in one email.

The rest of the week was good too! I'm getting used to biking, which we do every other day, but we're smart and we always make appointments and we bring a member with us. Lessons with members present are the 🔑 to success anyway, but it helps being air conditioned as we travel too.

Elder Staker said it best this week, Myrtle Beach is just like Sodom and Gomorrah! There is for real very sketchy things going on out here. To my knowledge there are at least 4 crackhouses in our area. There's this highway we bike down sometimes (actually every time) and I guess there was a murder there a couple weeks ago! But don't worry mom, we're always protected by the Lord, and if I do get knifed going down 707, I bet I'll go straight to the Celestial Kingdom.

I guess the last 5 or 6 elders that served here were here at least 9+ months, Elder Staker is on his way towards that milestone as well. Which means I may be here until Christmas! How fun! So we'll see what happens but this curse on Surfside beach seems to be very real and it's not the kind of thing you can cast out like a Poltergeist or the Gremlins

Ok we'll have fun this week yall and have fun oh shoot I just said that twice

❤️👔🍓


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
     

From Ghetto to Palmetto

Surf's up y'all!

Hahahahaha I've been transferred to the most bodacious Surfside Beach, which is really just the south-er part of Myrtle Beach. What is Myrtle Beach like? Well, imagine Las Vegas, on the beach, and barely in South Carolina. There's this street called Ocean Boulevard and it's basically The Strip. Except instead of casinos there's seafood restaurants and a huge gift shop called the Gay Dolphin which I think is like the biggest in North America.

My new companion is Elder Staker and he's a cool guy. He looks like Ralph Macchio from Karate Kid (or so a member tells me). I don't think he's nearly as well trained though.

We're in a car share which means we have a Chevy Cruze Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday. The other days we're on bikes and the people here are so friendly! When cars drive by us, they honk real loud. There's also this secret sign language symbol I've found that people in Myrtle Beach only use when they're driving by missionaries. I feel like we're in a secret club together! I found an emoji that looks like it 🖕🖕🖕 People are gr8.

I moved from one end of the state to the other, basically as far as I could have gone across the mission. Apart from the Myrtle beach elders and sisters, we are the farthest missionaries from the mission office/home. President can't touch us out here!

There's a lot of rich people and there's a lot of regular people and there's a bunch of fancy expensive restaurants and there's regular sketchy restaurants. There's a wax museum with King Kong on it!

I forgot a lot of what else I was going to email because it's late and I'm sleepy so see ya

❤️👔🍓

 

Cransfers

Hola y'all!

What a week! I can't remember what happened but I know it was good. We had interviews with President T on Friday and I must have said something wrong because I found out this morning I'm getting transferred. haha jk but really pres why?

Yeah so next week I will be somewhere else in this sweet sweet mission! my guess is charleston on bike in the dead of summer because trials never stop. but next week I will let yall know for shore 🌊🌊

We got this new investigator who is so cool! He was a Bible referral but apparently he meant to order a Book of Mormon. that's never happened, usually we're begging bible referrals to open their minds to the idea that the Bible has been chopped up and possibly mistranslated but that's like telling someone you don't like the confederate flag. they will close the door/threaten you

But his name is Ethan and he is no doubt being prepared to meet with missionaries at this point in time. He recently quit smoking, drinking (alcohol and soda), he's cleaned up his foul language, he's getting his tattoos removed, he's asking us how to fast properly, like dang he's more prepared for baptism than I was. I would say I'm excited to help him in his conversion but I will probably never see him again now, so hopefully Elder Robison gets his act together and baptizes that dude. He's soooo ready he doesn't even know it. Well actually we told him so I guess now he knows it

BUT I don't really know what else to say this week! What does the future hold???????? we will see. It's refreshing not having to make a grocery list this week but I guess I'll just have to do it wednesday in my new area instead. I hope my msf survives

ok yall I don't have much more time so I will just say find someone to serve this week, whether it's your friend or your enemy or your mother I don't really care

Hopefully there will be some pictures attached to this email, maybe one that we took of the ol district yesterday back when we thought just el. Creamer was getting transferred.  ok peace

❤👔🍓
 

No contact sports, just Bible bashing

Hola y'all!

This week was loaded with exchanges. We had one with the Zone Leaders on Tuesday, which meant I was captain of the Jetta for the day. Speaking of which, that thing is a chick magnet. Literally, we have to clean bird poop off of it nearly every day 

I almost hit a deer that day so it's just an all-around great car if you like nature. We've hit I think 2 or 3 snakes with it while driving in the country. We've started calling the car Mama Nature, turn on the engine and it gathers animals just like Snow White

We've been going on exchanges with the bike elders like twice a week because elder Creamer is such an asset with his Spanish. We've actually given a couple of our near-er Spanish investigators to them so we don't have to exchange so often and disrupt their work. I might have to re-install Duolingo and crack open one of our thousands of unused Libros de Mormon and pull my weight around here. We have tons of active Spanish speakers in the ward too. The Spanish sunday school class is one of the biggest, by a lot. I guess there used to be a Spanish branch, and it was dissolved into our ward. So now we have more Spanish speaking members and less actives and investigators than the Spanish elders in Greenville do.

Where do all these people come from? We have a bunch of ward missionaries and almost all of them are Spanish speaking, which is probably the most needed trait for missionary work in this area. I think we have 7 ward missionaries (including our Ward Mission Leader and our Assistant Ward Mission leader) who speak spanish.

Speaking of callings in our ward, we got a new bishopric! As I said in an email like 2 months ago, our dear sweet bishop is moving away for work so we've been floundering for some time waiting for the big change. When we came into the church building yesterday morning and were greeted by the entire Stake presidency, we knew what was about to go down. No surprise, Brother Jones the first counselor was called as bishop, and Brother Walkenhorst was promoted from second counselor to first, and then Brother Wakefield my favorite member got called as the second counselor! Heck yeah. He had to shave his sweet handlebar mustache which was pretty disappointing but the church is probably still true. We're excited to see how we can help this new bishopric the best. Not much has changed but it's pretty different at the same time.

Oh deer () we did a lot of service this week. We helped I think 3 different families either move out of their house, move them into their new house, or move all their stuff into storage. And we did more too! Service is fun sometimes which is why we do so much. Or that's why I do so much. You have to make it fun but sometimes it's already fun, like picking up sticks on the ground in the middle of the forest on a member's great and spacious property 

Did yall see the new children's Bible videos????? If not either go on lds.org or download them on Gospel Library, they are well worth your time. They don't just meet missionaries' low standard for entertainment, they are legitimately awesome. The blonde kid with the big glasses and the missing front tooth is my absolute favorite and if you watch the videos he's in like all of them and he will steal your heart

Transfers are coming up and I've never felt so vulnerable! I've got another week and a half guaranteed here in S-ville, then who knows, I could train, go Zone Leader, go AP, really anything is possible, we've got interviews this week so I will do my best to convince Pres to promote me. I guess when I email next week I will know. I just hope I don't go to a bike area. Oh great, God heard me write that, now who knows what will happen. Me and my mouth

Well everyone I'm pretty sure that's all I have to say right now, I'm going to attach a picture of my favorite graffiti ever, we drive by it in our area all the time. Sometimes a truck will park in front of it and sell Confederate flags. I might buy one someday, they are pretty rare after all. Also haha I took a picture of the lady that lives in the apartment across from us who has a hanging basket but nothing to hang it on so she just put it on a table hahahahahaha

Challenge this week is write down a miracle you see every single day for a week and then try and complain about your life. You won't be able to do it guaranteed