August 24, 2015
Dear Family and friends
Another month has gone by! I just hit 13 months yesterday.
Time is just flying by!
For P-day last week, all six elders in Greenville
went to the batting cages at ECU. They had a machine that was throwing an 88
mph fastball. I was able to hit it every so often but I had to time it right
and begin to swing before the ball came out, so it beats me how the pros can
think about whether they want to hit it and swing in time.
We had posole for dinner, the first Hispanic dish
that I have had the chance to eat since I have been here in Greenville. I was
so happy because I love posole, and it was so, so good!!
Our investigator Larry has read all of 1st Nephi in
a couple days even though he has had a really bad migraine. The spirit has been
really strong in our lessons. What has been really cool is there is a less
active member that lives in the same complex that Larry knows. Larry has invited her to join in on our
lessons and she did. Hopefully being there in the lessons for Larry will activate
her.
We are teaching Arnulfo who thinks God has chosen
him and as "proof" of his calling he has all these dreams from God. Just
about everything we talk about reminds him of a dream that he recently had and
then he spends ten minutes telling us about his dream. On Friday we talked
about the Plan of Salvation and how we needed to be baptized and receive the
gift of the Holy Ghost when and he told us that he had already received the Holy
Ghost and then he proceeded to relate one of his dreams to us. He said that was walking down a path and he
heard this horse walking behind him. He looked
around and saw a white horse. He said that the white horse was named Paloma, which
he said was supposed to represent the Holy Ghost. I've met a lot of Hispanics
who have had religiously themed dreams. I'm not sure why is so big in the Hispanic
culture to have dreams, but I guess that is how it is. Well, at least he is
reading the Book of Mormon.
We had exchanges with the Assistants to President
on Friday. They drove down from Virginia.
Elder Ferguson was assigned to work with Elder Berry and me. His
companion, Elder Terril was assigned to work with the Zone Leaders in Wilson,
North Carolina. Elder Ferguson doesn't know any Spanish, so during our lessons
he sat between us and Elder Berry and I
would trade off translating for him while the other talked. He said that was
the first time that he had Spanish elders translate for him; normally he just
doesn't know what is going on. He was pretty happy that we would do that
for him, so that was pretty cool. I
guess we are just used to translating because we do it every Sunday for the Spanish-speaking
members in the ward.
We gave the sister missionaries in our ward nearly
everyone we found last week to teach since most of the people we found/taught
are English speaking.
Sunday we got to go in for sharing time during Primary
to talk with the kids in Junior and Senior Primary about how they can be missionaries.
It was really fun because it brought back a lot of memories of being in Primary
when I was younger.
That evening, we had a special conference for the
entire stake of Kinston. We had to drive about 50 miles south to New Bern,
North Carolina. The topic of the special conference was about how to respect
motherhood and womanhood. I would just like to say how much I appreciate my mom
and how much I love her. She has always been there to watch out for me and help
me with anything that I needed. I hope you realize mom how important you are to
me. I love you mom!
We had a few funny experiences this week. We
were walking outside talking with people at the mall and there was this big
built worker sitting down on some steps and so we went over to talk with him.
He stood up and walked right up to my companion’s face, looked down at his
nametag and said, "Are you a Mormon, Berry?" My companion said yes,
and then he walked up right to my face, looked at my name tag and asked me the
same thing, "Are you a Mormon, Cannon?" I said yes. Elder Berry and I
didn't flinch at all. I thought he was
going to yell at us but then he was said, “Oh that's cool.” Then, he started
talking about how his brother in law's family was Mormon. It goes to show you that can't ever judge
people by the first impression.
We went into the ghetto to find an old investigator. We saw an African American outside the
investigator’s home. We walked over and talked to him and he said we could
teach him. We pulled a restoration pamphlet with a picture of Jesus on it and
asked him who he saw on the front cover.
He paused for a second and said, "What I see is an interpretation,
of a certain group of people, who think they know what Jesus Christ looks like."
He was offended that the picture portrayed Jesus Christ as a white man. He
commented on how if the picture had been a picture of a African American Jesus,
his children would be able to have more confidence in themselves because they
would be looking up to a man of their own race. We had to end the lesson early
because he wouldn't listen to us after that.
I know this church is true, and I am so grateful
for Jesus Christ and for what he did for all of us. I'm also very grateful that
my family will be together forever!!
Hope everyone has a great week
Love,
Elder Cannon
August
31, 2015
Hola everyone!
I hope everything is going well there. It’s going great
here in North Carolina!
On Monday we had another lesson with Ernestina,
Coral and Alex where we taught them about the Book of Mormon. Ernestina is the
grandma, Coral is the mom and Alex is the son. They are our most progressing Spanish
investigators right now.
On Tuesday we had a first lesson with Ana, who is from
Mexico, her sister and their friend Ulysses. It was strange because Ana spoke a
weird dialect. Basically she doesn't
speak English or Spanish so I don't know how she survives here in the United
States. Her sister just translated for her during the lesson. I have met
many people that speak other dialects.
All of them are from Guatemala and they speak a dialect called Q'eachi'.
This was the first time that I've met
someone from Mexico that speaks a dialect instead of Spanish.
On Friday, went on exchanges with Elder Pugsley, one
of our district leaders and his companions. I went down to his area. I'll admit
I was a little nervous since this was the first time where I was the leader in
the exchange. Normally, the district leaders get to go on exchanges with the
elder companionships in their area, but since the area I was a district leader in
had only sister missionaries, I didn't get a chance to do it. But luckily, Elder
Pugsley and I know each other already so things went well.
We taught Arnulfo again. We talked about baptism and confirmation, and
read Acts 8 with him, which talks about the correct way to receive the gift of
the Holy Ghost, which is by the laying on of hands by those who have the
authority from God. He basically told us
that he understood the scripture but since he felt that God called him in his
dream- that didn't apply to him. Elder Berry visited him again with another
missionary while I was in Elder Pugsley's area and Arnulfo continued to insist
that the rules didn’t apply to him so we decided to stop teaching him.
We had a Ward North Carolina BBQ Saturday night. The food was super good! We had a pig pickin'
where they cooked the entire pig on the grill and then you "pick" off
what you want to eat. It’s interesting because the way they BBQ here is vinegar
based, so the meat was coated with apple cider vinegar instead of the normal
tomato based sauce, but it was actually really delicious. It was very
exciting because our investigator named Larry came to the BBQ. He got the chance to meet ward members, and
then he came to church on Sunday and he loved it!
We taught the word of wisdom lesson to Larry during
the week. We thought it might be a
problem since he is addicted to smoking, but he told us, “Yeah I need to stop.”
He committed to live the word of
wisdom!
While we were tracting earlier this week, a Hispanic
lady answered the door and she was a Jehovah’s Witness. We asked her if we
could share a message and she said, “Yes, but let me grab my Bible so that I
can share something too.” Elder Berry and I were thinking that she was planning
to bash with us. Her husband joined us, but in the end we actually were able to
teach the entire Restoration lesson to them!
I'm going to be driving to Virginia tomorrow night
because I have an all day meeting on Wednesday with President Baker and all the
zone leaders.
Love,
Elder Cannon
