September
7, 2015
Hi Family and Friends!!!
This past week was a pretty interesting week!
On Tuesday, we had a bunch of leadership meetings over
the phone. Afterwards, we deep cleaned
our apartment and completed our normal studies.
By the time we left our apartment around 4:30 p.m. to drive to
Portsmouth, Virginia, we hadn't done any missionary work, which really stunk. When
we arrived at the Assistant to the President's apartments in Portsmouth, Virginia
it was 8:30 p.m. Since it is a long four-hour drive to Virginia, we had to
leave the night before so that we could be ready for the conference the next
morning. There were eleven Elders that stayed overnight in the AP’s apartment on Tuesday
night. The apartment is actually pretty big, since four elders live there normally.
We each slept on our own air mattresses on the floor, so it was pretty
crowded. We attended the Mission Leadership
Conference the next morning. It was a
really good meeting. I enjoyed being there with the entire mission leadership
and President Baker. I just learn so much from President Baker whenever I'm
around him. The meeting lasted from 10 a.m. until 3:30 p.m. When the meeting
was done, we drove right back to North Carolina. Along the way, we stopped at a city called
Bethel to do some missionary work. We ended up teaching a Restoration lesson to
a woman who is a Jehovah’s Witness.
On Thursday, we went on exchanges with our
assistant ward mission leader. He told us
that both of the missionary sisters in our ward have been transferred out of the
ward. That was news for Elder Berry and
me since we had not been notified of the change before it happened. This means that Elder Berry and I will be
doing English and Spanish work in our ward boundaries until sometime next week
when we have transfers so we are going to be really busy teaching lessons.
We held a Zone meeting on Friday, and it went
really well. It was a lot easier leading a Zone meeting after having attended
the Mission Leadership Conference and after listening to President Baker explain
what we would be doing. The first time I
had to lead a conference, I had no prior training, so I basically had to wing
it.
On Friday, we were trying to contact an
investigator. When we got out of the
car, there a drunken man standing in his doorway. He said, “Hey, Mormon missionaries! We walked
over to him and he told us that he was an Elder too, and then he started
crying. He said that he really wanted us to come in and he said he'd turn off his
loud music. My companion tried to convince Carl to pour his beer into the sink,
but he wouldn't do it. In between his crying fits he told us that he was a
member from another city in North Carolina.
We gave him the address to the ward building so that he could attend,
but I doubt he will remember talking to us. As we were giving him the address,
his roommate came in. Carl's roommate, Steven, was pretty rude to us. All of a
sudden, Carl started talking about Joseph Smith and the gold plates. This perked Steven's interest and he started
asking us questions. After we answered
some of his questions, he asked if he could have a Book of Mormon. We ended up teaching a lesson to him about
the Book of Mormon. Although Carl was totally out of it, he seemed to break out
of it every so often to be able to say something that actually helped as we
taught the lesson. At the end of the lesson, Steven invited us to come to his
work anytime to come visit him. As we
left, Steven was sitting on his porch and he was reading the Book of Mormon. It
was really cool to see Steven’s attitude change as we were teaching him.
We've been continuing to teach Larry. He is trying to stop smoking. It was too bad
that he wasn't able to come to church on Sunday because he had a really bad
migraine.
I want everyone to know that I know this church is
true and I know that we have a living prophet today. And even though a mission
can be hard sometimes, I am so grateful for the chance to be a missionary. I am loving it out here in North Carolina!
I hope that everyone has a great week!
Love,
Elder Cannon
There are quite a few tobacco plantations here in North Carolina. Here I am standing next to a tobacco field while holding a Word of Wisdom lesson pamphlet.
