Monday, August 31, 2009

Monday Madness

Griffin is awesome! We had a super good week last week even with transfers, which usually slows us down. But Ya Elder Meacham is a really good missionary, he's a really hard worker and likes to get stuff done. He's only been out a transfer longer than I so we're both still pretty young but it will be good because we aren't under the all searching eye of some older missionary and we don't have to babysit any greenies so we just get to go to work.

They have a super good teaching pool going right now and we were able to have two people commit to baptism my second day here, not too bad! The ward is really good as well, they seem a lot more missionary minded than the others so we should be able to see a lot of success this transfer.

Well I'll bet your wondering why I'm emailing you on Monday, and no its not because we've gone apostate and decided to have an extra p-day, but I forgot to tell y'all that President Satterfield has now moved p-days to Mondays and done some other changes to our weekly schedule, so this is really weird for me today because I just got used to living p-day to p-day and now the schedule has changed. I really liked having p-day on Wednesday because it was a good break in the middle of the week, so I dunno about this Monday stuff. I think President's idea was that it would give us a good full week to work but it is going to be a long week. It did seem kind of like a rock in the river to have it on Wednesday's but I think that it will be good for the hard working missionaries and give them more to work with but the lazy ones will just get lazier because they dont have p-day to keep them going. But, President is just testing the waters and exercising authority and he's open to whatever, so we'll just have to see how it goes in the next month or so. But ya that's about all of the big news for now, well I'll talk to y'all in a week!

Love,
Elder Edwards

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Transferred!- Hello Griffin(dor)!

(Part 1)
Well Monday we got the call from the APes, not the monkeys but the assistants to the president, and I am leaving Sharpsburg! So I have my bags all packed and ready to go so I'll probably email after transfers to tell you where I'm at, Elder Adams wanted to come before so I figured I'd write you now and save some time later this afternoon. But I am definitely gonna miss Sharpsburg, this ward has been super good to us.

To answer your question we do go to PEC every week and just give a report of our work for the week. Sharpsburg has a really good Ward mission Leader that always looks for ways to help. He definitely helps us get our meal calendar filled up which is definitely a blessing. This Sunday, even though I wont be attending the Sharpsburg ward, is a fifth Sunday as you know and he and the missionaries are teaching the third hour and giving kind of a training on member missionary work which should help the ward a lot and hopefully get everyone excited about missionary work. We had one of our investigators come to sacrament for a little while which I think is going to help spark some missionary work as the members see us bringing people to church and gain their trust in us. But ya I will defnitely email later and tell you the news of where I am!

(Part 2)
So we just got back from transfer meeting and I am now serving in Griffin Georgia with Elder Meacham. It should be a super good transfer. I just dropped my stuff off at our apartment and I have my own bathroom, and there's a bowflex there, so we're gonna get into spartan shape, and Elder Meacham is a super cool hard working companion from what I've heard. He came out only a transfer before I did, but I think we are going to have a lot of fun together. He's a cross country runner, just one of those skinny guys, so I'm gonna work him lifting weights and he's gonna run me skinny, or at least that's the plan. Well there's not too much other news right now, but I will talk to y'all soon!

-Elder Edwards

Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Pine Wood Disaster

This week has been really good. We got to teach several appointments this week and feel good about the investigators we have right now. I hope I make it past transfers next week to be able to stay here because we could definitely have a baptism or two come up in a few weeks out of the people we are teaching now.

Saturday our ward had a pine wood derby, and Elder Adams and I got to participate in it. We were supposed to have an investigator there, but he wasn't able to make it for whatever reason, but it was a lot of fun. They had two categories - the regulation division and a pretty much anything goes category. We made a car like the day before at a recent converts house, and finished painting like a couple hours before the race, and let me just say, it was a major failure. We made it to the bottom of the slope and not much further, couldn't even pass the finish line :( but we had a lot of fun making it.


None of our investigators came to church on Sunday which was kind of a big let down for us, but we will continue to work with them this week and I'll be sure to update y'all next week after transfers!

Until then have a great week!
-Elder Edwards

Thursday, August 13, 2009

A- Town

Well, it has been a pretty super week for us! Sunday as always was really good, its hard to do much other than go to meetings and then church, which starts at 2, and then we generally have dinner appointments which take up the majority of the night, but this Sunday we got enough time to go contact a few people, and it was the first time we had a perfect night, where we were able to see everyone we had planned for.

Then Monday we had exchanges and the district leader came here and we had a good time. And then Tuesday we had a super lesson where we taught our investigator about the plan of salvation and he seemed to really like it. He asked us about three times what his next step was, and we have pretty hesitant to hit him with a baptismal commitment, but that third time it finally got to us to commit him already, and though we don't have an official date, he said he would like to be baptized and we are going back to teach him on Friday, and he said he might be able to come to the ward pine wood derby on Saturday with his son ( its really not a boyscout pine wood derby its more like a dad pinewood derby and they have two classes, a free for all and then scout rules, but anyways. . .) And he also should be coming to church on Sunday which will be Huge!

And then, we got talking to sports afterward and he played baseball at Auburn for a couple of years, which was pretty sweet, and then he also has a bunch of hook ups and said he can get tickets to pretty much any sporting event in Georgia and invited us to a baseball game on Saturday, which is out of the mission and I don't think we can get permission from president to go to it even though he said our mission president could come as well. But ya, we are super excited for that.

And today was probably one of the best p-days ever. Let me explain. . . Elder Sessions, who is our district leader, is going home in two weeks, and he had never been to Atlanta so he had permission from President Satterfield to go as long as a member drove them, and they weren't able to get a member from their ward but we had a member from our ward who is just awesome and he was able to take us and by grace we got permission from president as well, so we spent the day in Atlanta and got to go to The World of Coca Cola, Cyclorama (a civil war exhibit/museum type thing) and then we walked through Centennial Park and did a little tour of the CNN Center, and it was just Awesome! We got some sweet pictures which I will most definitely have to send y'all. But ya that is this weeks news, so have a great day!

-Elder Edwards

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Teaching Pool Getting Bigger

I got the package yesterday, thank you guys so much for sending it! I found someone in the Relief Society to hem my pants as well.

Well, I wrote y'all leters and sent them today, so this one will be pretty short, but we had a super day yesterday.

First we had our weekly meeting with Brother Morris, which is always awesome! He is a recent convert and is about 82 years old. He lives by himself and loves all the missionaries, but especially the sister missionaries, because they are the ones that were able to convince him to join the church. Every Tuesday morning we go over and share a scripture message with him and then he feeds us lunch. We were super lucky yesterday and after lunch he showed us his bees as well. He has about 6 or 7 bee hives on his property that he keeps and gets honey from. We were pretty excited to go see them, and we took some pictures that I'll send home soon. But, it wasn't all that great of a day to go see them, because they seemed kinda aggravated by Brother Morris and stung him a couple of times as he was going through the hive. It was still a pretty neat experience. This year his bees haven't been doing so well, so he hasn't produced a lot of honey off them, but last year was really good and he would give honey to the missionaries, so I was kinda bummed that we missed out.

Then we had a super good lesson with Brother Apostolo who came on a team up with us. We were supposed to visit Craig, who is one of our investigators which would have been super good, but he was stuck at work, but we were definitely blessed because we were able to contact a former investigator and teach him, and he seemed to be interested in the gospel a little bit. Last time the missionaries taught him he had a baptismal date and everything, I think he even had his interview, but for whatever reason wasn't able to go through with it and the missionaries stopped teaching him, so maybe he will be ready this time around! Well we are doing really good, our teaching pool is steadily growing which is really good for us.

Alright well thanks again for the package and I'll hear from y'all soon!

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

Waitin' and Hopin' and Prayin'

Well It has been a pretty interesting week for us. We had a lot of super good plans but they fell through. We have one super solid investigator that we haven't taught since I've been here but the Elders before were teaching. She's been on vacation for a couple weeks, but we finally met her on Sunday. She's dating one of the sons of a less active family in our ward, but he is in California because he is in the military, but Lauren (the investigator) wants him to baptize her, he just needs to get leave to come home, and we just have a little more to teach her. Lauren has apparently been going to the singles ward by herself for the past couple of weeks which is why we haven't met her, but Sister Sones (the less active mom) brought her to church on Sunday and we would have taught her that night but Sister Sones wasn't feeling good so left with Lauren after sacrament meeting, and then to add to that we won't be able to teach her until after August 15 because both of them are going on different vacations in the next week or so, which will only give us a couple of weeks left in the transfer to work with. But, it is all on the Lord's time and she seems really solid so its just a matter of time.

But ya that's about all of the news lately. Today was zone p-day so we all got together and played different games. I pretty much just played basketball all afternoon with half of the other Elders in our zone, which was a lot of fun. But ya, thanks again for sending that package and I hope y'all have a good week!

-elder edwards