November 16, 2015
Dear Family and Friends,
It's starting to cool down here
in Greenville! We are starting to wake up with the temperature in the low 40s.
It's actually been a super warm fall so that means its probably going to be a
freezing winter and we might get some snow here in February again.
We have been really busy this week. We had
exchanges with the Assistants to the President on Tuesday. Elder
Brown came down here with us. Elder Brown is one of the English missionaries
that came into the field with me, he was my zone leader earlier this year and
we were companions for a few days when Elder Bradshaw finished his mission while
I was waiting for transfer day to get a new companion. We were able to teach lessons
to two of our investigators that have a lot of potential but we hadn’t had much
success in making appointments with in the past.
We taught Jorge the plan of salvation and you
could tell that the felt the spirit. However, Jorge couldn't wrap his mind
around what the atonement was when we were trying to explain it to him. I have
found it interesting on my mission to try to explain what the atonement is as
most of the time people in general just don't understand it. They know He died
on the cross and was resurrected but that is basically it. I'm so thankful that
the atonement is so much more than that. Jesus Christ literally felt every
single pain, illness, affliction, temptation and everything we would ever feel
or go through, and because of that he is able to succor us and help us to
overcome all that we struggle with. Jesus’ sacrifice will allow us to stand
before God at the judgment bar and be clean, if we do our best to follow the
gospel of Jesus Christ.
We were able to teach
Alicia again. She is doing well; she just has been super busy with work. She
got a job in Goldsboro which requires her to wake up at 4:00 in the morning
every day and then she doesn't get home until late at night. It's actually
pretty frustrating because that is how it is with almost all the people we
teach. The Hispanics are worked to death here and literally have almost no time
at all to meet with us. Elder Dickerson served the first part of his mission in
Ecuador and he said, that people were always outside and got home from work
around 4 p.m., so it was easy to teach their investigators every day. We get
lucky if we can teach them more than once a week, and a lot of times we aren't
able to see them for a couple weeks.
We also had exchanges with
the Kinston Elders and Woodington Elders. Elder Dickerson went to Kinston, and I
went down South to Woodington. Woodington is in the middle of nowhere. I
wouldn't call any of their area a city. It is just farmland and forest with an
occasional house. However, apparently the Woodington ward is like one of the
strongest wards in our stake and they have 250 active members. We went
"tracting" down there, which really isn't tracting since you get in
the car to drive to the next house to knock on the door. We met
a Hispanic woman, as we were tracting. Since the Woodington Elders don't speak Spanish,
I talked with her and started a lesson. I got through the first point of the Restoration
and then I stopped and told the woman that the other Elders were going to teach
her too and I would translate. So the Woodington Elders and I taught her and I
just translated for them whenever she talked and translated for her when they
talked. It is too bad that the closest Spanish missionaries are in Kinston,
which is 30 miles away. I’m not sure
exactly how she is going to get taught, and if she gets taught it won't be very
often.
This next week we will be
busy since we have Elder Arnold of the Seventy coming. We have a mission
conference with all the missionaries in North Carolina tomorrow morning
in Goldsboro, and right after the conference ends at 3 p.m. we get to drive
almost 4 hours North to Portsmouth, Virginia for a conference with all the Zone
leaders and Sister training leaders and Elder Arnold the following day.
I hope everyone has a great
week!
Love,
Elder Cannon
