September 28, 2015
Hey Family and Friends!!
My companion Elder Dickerson and I went grocery shopping at a store called Aldie’s. It has the same type of food that other grocery stores carry but they are off brands and they cost less. I am super happy about that. I love saving money!
On Tuesday, we had Zone Conference in Kinston. All the missionaries in the Kinston East, Kinston West, and Goldsboro areas met together, which is about 70 missionaries. Elder Dickerson conducted the first half of the meeting and I conducted the second half. I was pretty nervous, but it turned out well. For the first part of the conference, a guy from the mission department talked about new devices that he will install into our cars. These devices beep when we go over the speed limit, accelerate too fast or slam on the brakes to hard. It also keeps track of whether we pass our area boundaries and whether we are driving at odd times during the day. The device sends all this information to President Baker. Some information gets sent to President Baker right away, like a speeding violation, if you are driving 10 miles over the speed limit or an rpm violation. I'm just glad I'm not driving right now. The device has beeped at Elder Dickerson constantly this past week.
We have had some really good lessons with Hispanic families this week. We were able to bring Spanish members with us to those lessons, which we were really happy about.
It rained most of this past week. We did a lot of knocking on doors in the rain and as a result we got soaked. While tracting in the evening, I saw a man on his porch. I began to talk to him in Spanish because he looked Hispanic, but it ends up that he is from Iran.
While we were tracting in a trailer park, we saw an older guy walking back to his home after getting his mail, so we stopped to talk to him. It turns out that he is really into family history. He told us about some of his ancestors. We asked if we could share a message with him and he brought us to his trailer. His trailer was the most disgusting place that I have ever seen. He told us he had only 6 cats but I counted over 16. There was trash and food all over the place, and the walls were covered with cockroaches.
However, this guy was super prepared. We were taught him about Priesthood authority, and he talked about how he completely agreed with that. He talked about how other church ecclesiastical leaders call themselves prophets, but he said that it is a calling from God and not from man. He mentioned how he could relate to Joseph Smith because he has researched many religions looking for the truth and hasn't been able to find it. We also talked about how Christ came to the Americas. He interrupted us and told us how he believed that was true because there are many Indian legends concerning that. He talked about the "other sheep" that Jesus mentions in John and how those other sheep probably were the people here in America. Then he quoted the scripture at the end of John about how all the writings about Jesus Christ couldn't be contained in one book. So he believed in the Book of Mormon before he even knew what the Book of Mormon was! Sadly, we had to pass him off to the English elders because he doesn’t speak Spanish.
Larry came to church this week but ended up showing up late and missing sacrament meeting because he had slept in. This means that we are going to have to move his baptismal date another week since he has to go to church two more times before he can be baptized. He is doing really well in other respects, though. He attended the baptism of 8-year-old twins in our ward and he seemed to really enjoy the meeting. He has cut down enormously on his smoking. He is only smoking 3 or 4 cigarettes a day, which is a huge improvement.
Something happened last night that was pretty funny. Another missionary companionship that live in our apartment complex knocked on our door at 10:28 p.m. because they got locked out of their apartment. They went outside to look at the blood moon and shut the door, which locked them out. We tried to help them break into their apartment. We finally found a window that was unlocked and were able to get them in.
I hope everyone has a great week!!
Love, Elder Cannon
All of the Spanish speaking missionaries at Zone Conference
New device that was installed in our car
October 5, 2015
Hola Family and Friends,
This past week Elder Dickerson and I have been very
busy. The hurricane Joaquin has been forecasted all week to hit our mission
area directly by Sunday morning. President Baker had plans to evacuate lots of
missionaries to safer areas. Our area
here in Greenville was one of those locations picked to house lots of
missionaries if the hurricane continued in its course. Greenville was pounded
rained with rain every single day this week here.
As a result, flooding was expected to be pretty
high all over the mission. Elder Dickerson and I drove to Wal-Mart on Friday
night and bought some extra water and food in case we would have to be stuck in
our apartment for a few days. When we arrived at Wal-Mart, it was pretty crazy
to see that almost all of the bread, milk, and water were gone, as lots of
people had been stocking up. Then we got a text from President Baker late Friday
night that the hurricane was heading back out to sea. We were lucky, but we still have had lots of
rain and some flooding. Now we have a ton of food and bottled water in our
apartment but hey- I'm not complaining.
On Tuesday, we had to drive up to Portsmouth,
Virginia for the Mission Leadership Conference on Wednesday. We got there early
since there were a few things I had to check up on with my old doctor's office
in Norfolk so we went on exchanges with the Assistants to the President the
rest of the day. On Wednesday, we attended our meeting and it went really well!
During both our driving trips up to Norfolk, Virginia and then back down to Greenville,
North Carolina it was dumping rain on us the entire time because of the
hurricane.
On Thursday, we had our normal weekly planning and
then we also had to plan for the Zone meeting for Friday. The Zone meeting went
really well and we had lots of participation.
We had exchanges with some of the Elders in
Kinston. Two of them came to Greenville to teach with me and Elder Dickerson
went down to Kinston to join two Elders there. I had to teach the lessons by
myself and then translate for the other Elders because neither spoke Spanish. I tried to include them in the lessons the
best I could so I had to translate what they were saying in English to Spanish.
It was pretty crazy but it was a lot of fun.
The General Conference sessions on both Saturday
and Sunday were great! We watched the first session in the Anderson's house, a
family in our ward. The Andersons have two of their three sons on missions
right now. They are finishing up their
missions and coming home on Wednesday. We watched the other sessions at the
church. Larry came to afternoon and Priesthood session on Saturday and the Sunday
morning session and that was really cool! After the Sunday morning session we
were invited with Larry to go to the Smith's home where we ate lunch/dinner and
then had a really good lesson! Larry is still working to stop smoking but he
has been cutting back a lot. We reset a baptismal date with him for the 31st of
October.
I am so thankful that we have living apostles and
prophets who guide this church. I'm thankful for the counsel they gave us and I
know it is from God. I love my Savior Jesus Christ. I know He lives and I know
that the atonement works. I love my family and I know that we can be together
forever if we keep our covenants. I love this gospel and my mission, and I love
all of you.
Elder Cannon
Elder Berry and I on the morning he was transferred
Elder Berry and I with the Anderson kids from our ward
