August 17, 2015- New Investigators

August 17, 2015- New Investigators

Dear Family and Friends,

This week has been a pretty crazy week deep in the boonies of North Carolina! We have been super busy!  

There aren't many solid investigators here in Greenville so we dropped some of them and decided to go tracting and find some new people to teach. Elder Berry and I saw a lot of miracles this week as we taught 17 lessons and found 13 new investigators!

We met this man named Larry. He understands everything that we have taught him. During the first lesson we were able to set him with a baptismal date.  During the second lesson, when we asked him how long it would take to read the Book of Mormon he said it would take a week, and he was dead serious.  Sadly, he has been really sick the past few days so he had to cancel our Saturday appointment.  He also wasn't able to make it out to church, so hopefully he gets feeling better soon. 

While we were knocking on doors late on Thursday night, a guy named Chris opened the door. We told him who we were and he told us he wasn't interested because he was content in his church and he was already saved. Well, we were able to get him to talk to us for a little longer by just asking him questions. He asked us what the difference were between the LDS church and other religions. (Elder Berry later told me that when he asked that question I had the biggest grin on my face.) I told him that was exactly what we wanted to teach him about. We said a prayer and then taught what was probably one of the most powerful restoration lessons I've ever taught on my mission. The spirit was super strong and you could tell Chris could feel it too. I think Chris was surprised that he had felt the spirit and he was a little shy about admitting the interest he had.  We set up another appointment with him.  When we met with him again he asked us a bunch of questions after the lesson. 

Sometimes, people are too nervous to tell us that they aren't interested in speaking with us so they tend to hide or run from us. On Saturday we went to visit an investigator. We knocked on his door and we talked to his brother, but he said that he wasn't there. We went back to our car to figure out where we were going to go next. Then, we saw a car turn onto the street behind us, slow down and then stop.  We recognized that the car belonged to the man that we had just tried to visit, so Elder Berry and I just sat in our car and waited to see what he would do next. After a minute, the car began to drive again, drove right by us and then turned the corner onto another street. The car then exited the trailer park. We noticed that the car was parked with its lights off at the entrance of the trailer park and was waiting for us to leave. So we left and did some more contacting in the same trailer park on a different street.  A few minutes later we saw the same car drive down the street really quick and park in front of his trailer and then rush into his home. I feel like it would just be so much easier if people were just straight up with us and told us that they weren't interested in talking to us. 

I have been really tired this week. I've never been so tired in my life. I'm super tired in the mornings and at night however I've been blessed to not be tired during the day. Missionary work is hard work, but I know that I'm here doing God's work. I know that God loves all of us and that he speaks through a prophet today, President Thomas S. Monson. I know this is the true church, and that conversion comes by the spirit.

Love y’all,

Elder Cannon

August 10, 2015- A New Area

August 10, 2015

Hey Family and Friends!!!!

This past week has been really crazy!

I had to say goodbye to everyone in Norfolk. It was really, really sad because I've been in Norfolk for so long and I feel like I’m leaving many friends. It was especially hard to say goodbye to Martin and Lani and their family. I've grown really close to each of them. Martin had to go inside when we were leaving because he was starting to tear up a bit. 

Packing up everything was a little rough because I've had everything out of my suitcases for over 7 months so putting it all back in wasn't fun. Elder Garcia and I bought some of those compressible bags that you hook it to a vacuum that sucks all the air out to compress everything down into a smaller space. Even with that, it was still a struggle to stuff all my things in my suitcases.

On Thursday, we left Norfolk for the last time and headed down to Suffolk for a mission wide conference.  There were 180 missionaries in attendance. It was really cool to have everyone there in one place and it was a super powerful meeting. After the conference everyone met their new companions. My new companion is Elder Berry. He’s a great guy! He has been on his mission for 6 weeks less than me but he's 23 years old, which means I still haven't had a companion that is younger than me. 

Later that day, we drove down to Greenville, North Carolina, which was about a 3-hour drive. It is actually pretty nice to be able to go to Greenville and it isn't a culture shock because I've been in fairly large cities for my entire mission. Greenville is still a decent size with about 80,000 people but there is also a lot of open country and farms. There are a lot of Hispanics living near here in trailer parks that are located in the middle of nowhere.

Friday morning Elder Berry and I went over what we were going to do in zone meeting, practiced a few things and then I had to go in and wing it during the zone meeting. It went really well but we talked for 30 minutes longer than we should have because Elder Berry and I didn't know what time we were supposed to end. Elder Berry has only been a zone leader for 6 weeks so we both are pretty new at this stuff.

Our ward here in Greenville is English speaking so this past Sunday was the first Sunday that I have heard talks in English for over a year!!! The ward is great here and all but I definitely miss the Spanish. The bishop here asked me to bear my testimony in front of the congregation. There are only 6 active Spanish members here in the English ward, so we had to translate for them for Sacrament meeting. Elder Berry and I switched off translating during Sacrament and then I sat next to one member during Priesthood and translated for him. Translating isn't that easy since you need to be talking as fast as the speaker person is talking. Since it was only my first time translating I'm sure I'll get better as time goes on. Since we don't really have many Hispanic families in our ward, that means we aren't eating rice, beans, sopas, papusas, posole etc. every night for dinner like we were in Norfolk. So far the members have feeding us pizza and noodles. I miss the Hispanic food a lot but I guess that is how it goes. 

One thing that comes with being a zone leader is that P-days end at 4 p.m. instead of at 6 p.m. since we have to do some paperwork and number checking so we'll see how that goes today.

I want everyone to know that we are in Christ's church. And I know that we have a loving Heavenly Father who is watching out for us. Sometimes we don't see His hand in our lives but he is always there. I'm grateful that families can be together forever!

I hope everyone has a great week!

Love,

Elder Cannon

Saying Goodbye to Martin and Lani

All of the Spanish speaking Elders in my mission

August 3, 2015- A Transfer

August 3, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

Everything is going great here in Norfolk!

We've been trying to encourage Estela, one of our investigators from the Dominican Republic, to pray for many weeks, and we finally we able to get her to pray yesterday!

We had the chance to talk to Martin but it ended up not turning out too well. We ate dinner with just him because his wife Lani wasn't there.  We asked him if we could share a message and he said that we could. We talked to him about the Book of Mormon. Lani showed up part way through the lesson and joined in. During the lesson, Lani called Martin out for not reading the Book of Mormon, which led to a fight between them. So- I just told Martin that we weren't there to convince him that the Book of Mormon was true, nor were we there to force him to read it.  I told him that I know that God loves us and answers our prayers. If Martin really wanted to know about the truthfulness of our message, it wouldn't come from You Tube, it would come from God. I told him that all he has to do is read and ask God and God will answer him. After I said that, we left. We saw Martin yesterday and he's still not that interested, although I know he is or he wouldn't invite us to come over anymore.  He and Lani worked things out.

I had a pretty big shock this past week. We received transfer calls on Saturday. Elder Garcia, Elder Thompson and I are getting split up, so this is my second son that I'm not going to be able to finish training. Elder Garcia turned into a zebra which means he's going to do Spanish work in his new area but he's going to have an English companion so they will do both English and Spanish work. President Baker is transferring me to Greenville, North Carolina as a zone leader! I'm still pretty shocked and a little nervous. My new zone has about 30 people in it, so its pretty big. It will be nice because I won't have to prepare for district meeting every week. We have zone meeting this Friday, and I'm going to have to wing it.  Normally the zone leaders meet with President Baker the week before zone meeting to go over the material, but since I wasn't called as zone leader then, I'm just going to have to go with the flow of whatever is going on in zone meeting. Greenville is one of the bigger cities in the part of North Carolina that is located in our mission. There is a population of 80,000 people so I'm not going to be assigned in the boonies quite yet. I've heard that I might be doing a little bit of English work as well because we cover two English-speaking wards.  One of those English wards has a group of Spanish speakers, so we will be translating the Sunday meetings for them.  It's going to be sad to have to leave everybody here that I've grown so close to in the past 8 months but I'm also excited for the new adventures in Greenville! 

Hope everyone has a good week!!

Love,

Elder Cannon

On the beach at sunrise

July 27, 2015- New Member Progress

July 27, 2015

Dear Family and friends!

I don't have a lot of time to write this week, but we continue to be really busy!

The highlight of the week was when Lani gave a talk in Sacrament meeting!! She talked about prayer and shared a super strong testimony at the end. The spirit was there and made a bunch of the members cry. It is amazing to see her progress in the gospel.

I know the gospel is true! I hope everyone has a great week!!

Elder Cannon

3 Posts in One- July 6th, 13th and 20th

3 Posts in One

July 6, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

We've been really busy this past week. We taught 17 lessons and had 115 I/OS’s, the number of gospel discussions that we have with someone outside of a lesson where we invite them to do something, such as talking to people on the street and then giving them a card, or talking to people at their door as we are tracting.

For the fourth of July, we spent time with Hermana Sabillon, Lani's Mom, and then we taught Fausto, a family friend. Later in the day we met up with Martin and Lani in Virginia Beach and ate dinner with them. Afterwards, we watched the fireworks. President Baker extended our bed time for that night until 11 p.m. which is good because since there was so many people there, there was a ton of traffic so we didn't get home until just before 11 p.m. 

Hermano Mendo joined us for a lesson with an investigator. When we showed up to the investigator's home for the appointment, he was not there. We called up a few other investigators to see if we could come by and they were all busy. We decided we'd knock on one other door in the trailer park and then if we didn't get invited in for a lesson, the member would just drive back home. When we knocked on the door, Mauro, another one of or investigators, answered and let us in.  It ends up that Mauro and Hermano Mendo know each other and are actually good friends.  We were able to teach a really good lesson about the Book of Mormon.

On the 23^rd of this month, I'm going to hit the year mark of my mission. It is crazy just how fast time goes by out here.

I sure love everybody back home. I want everyone to know that I know that this church is Christ's church. I know that the Book of Mormon is the word of God, and that all you need to do is read it and sincerely ask God if it is true, like it says in Moroni 10:3-5, and you will receive an answer from God. And I know we have a living prophet and apostles today. I encourage everyone to go back and read all the conference address from last conference, becausue their words will guide us in the world we are living in.

I hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Cannon

July 13, 2015

Dear Family and Friends,

We have continued to be very busy here, teaching 16 lessons this week. We are trying really hard to help get our investigators to church.

Right now we are working with Lani to help her get to the temple to do baptisms for the dead. We are going to help her with her family history so that she can do work in the temple for her own family.

We got rained out on Saturday. We drove into a really big townhouse complex when it was only lightly sprinkling rain, so I parked the car far away on the opposite side so that we could talk to people along the way. After we had been walking for a few minutes, it just started pouring, and even though we had our rain jackets on, we were soaking wet by the time we got to our appointment. We dried off during the lesson just in time for us to go back out in the rain and walk all the way back. It was a bad call on my part to park so far away, but we did end up talking to a few people in the rain.

I had a funny experience this week. We were walking through a trailer park, and there was this couple that was up ahead sitting on their porch. When they saw us they were said, "Oh no, here come the Jehovah Witnesses," and then they started to bad mouth the Jehovah Witnesses. When I got closer the man told me to go away and that he didn't want to talk to us. I told him that we weren't Jehovah Witnesses and that we just wanted to give him a card about Jesus Christ. He said, "Oh y’all are Christians." He and his wife looked really relieved and actually pretty happy as the man took the card and said he'd check out the website that was on the back.

Well, I want everyone to know that I know that the church is true and obedience to God's commandments brings blessings and happiness!

Love,

Elder Cannon

July 20, 2015

Hola Family and Friends!!

I can't believe I'm hitting my year mark this week! It is crazy just how fast time goes by!

The weather has been super bipolar this past week. A few days ago it got up to 100 degrees with 90% humidity.  As a result,

when we were tracting and talking to people we were sweating like crazy. The next day it poured and then all the streets here got flooded and we got all wet. It was really crazy because when we were driving our car in the rain, we turned onto a street and before we knew it, we had water all the way up to the doors of our car! There wasn't anything I could do but to keep driving quickly get out of there because stopping would have made the car stall.

This week we had interviews with President Baker. We only get 15 minutes to talk with him, but we had a really good talk. He told me I needed to talk to the branch mission leader because the sisters feel like they have been getting too much food and that they are struggling to say no to members when the members keep offering more food. However President Baker took care of the problem himself when he showed up to church on Sunday. He gave a talk in sacrament about how the purpose is not for the members to feed us but for us to spiritually feed the members. He asked the Stake President to translate for him. He came into the Gospel Principles class, where Elder Garcia and I were teaching the class. It was a little nerve racking having President Baker sitting right in front of us and listening to us teach. He doesn't speak Spanish, so I guess it wasn't that big of a deal.

We also had our car taken to the shop on Wednesday and we were told we would have to bike for a week or two until the car got fixed. I was actually looking forward to it, to be able to get some exercise instead of being in the car all day, but at the last second President Baker gave us another car to use while our other car is in the shop.

I have some crazy stories to share from this past week.

We were walking in the ghetto around 8 p.m. when we saw a couple of black guys sitting on their porch. I walked up right to them and I started talking to them. After a minute, Elder Garcia and Elder Thompson finally came over to join me. I guess that they hesitated to talk to them because they were a little scared. When they finally began to walk over, one of the black guys told me to, "Tell my friends to not be scared around here because Jesus is protecting us."

I talked to another guy the other day, who grew up in Harlem. It was pretty cool to see the respect he had for us and we had a really good talk with him, too.

An Elder in Newport News told me that a few weeks ago, in an area that I tracted a lot in when I was there, someone opened fire in the apartment complex with an AKA 47 and killed a few people. I guess I've been in some scary places and have talked to some seemingly scary people.

Hope everyone has a great week!

Elder Cannon