Dear Everyone Motivated Enough to Read This,

Edenton, North Carolina is my new home. I now live two blocks from the water in a 100 year-old, cotton mill worker, one-bedroom, tin roof, 20 feet from the cotton mill where the owners worked, tiny little--house. The bathroom is the newest addition to the house. They got rid of the outhouse in the backyard, which I am very glad for! We don't have a dishwasher, so doing the dishes just became a whole lot more work. I'm feeling like Sister Wilson back in Bothell (That's a good thing: Sister Wilson is the BEST!). 

Currently I'm typing this from the Public Library, which is 30 feet from the Historic Cupola house, which was built in the 18th century. The Cupola House has a funny little tower on top and it's very historic. This town is almost all old retired people. We are the youngest people in our whole neighborhood. One super-great bit of trivia is that one Mr. Teach (Blackbeard) and his ship was based out of this town for some time.

This week after sadly saying good-bye to some of the amazing people I met in the Franklin Ward, I was able to get all my stuff packed and made it all the way to Edenton on the transfer van, and when I got to the house with my new companion, Elder Pendlebury (from Blackfoot Idaho) it was very dirty... and kinda gross, so I spent a long time trying to clean it all this morning. When I got here the teaching pool only consisted of 4 or 5 people that they were teaching, and by the end of the week we have doubled that number--so work here is starting to pick up.

Yesterday we went to teach a referral from a member from the Elizabeth City Ward. When we knocked on the door I noticed a .45 caliber bullet hole in the stormdoor of the apartment, but I guess we were in the Projects, in the town of Hertford, so I should've been too surprised. The lesson went very well despite the fact that everything Elder Pendlebury said was at 85 MPH, but the spirit was most definitely there otherwise I don't think it would be possible for people to actually understand what us missionaries are actually trying to teach. The Spirit is really the teacher, we just bring the doctrine and principles, and testify of it all the best we can, but it's truly the Holy Ghost who is the teacher.

We were biking past a group of town homes on the water--Elder Pendlebury always wants to tract everywhere we go, but I told him, "I guarantee none of these people would be interested." Then the first door we knocked on, the guy answered and said, "Hey Elders, come on in and have a seat!" He wasn't actually that interested, so my statement was still kind of correct, but we taught him anyways since he was wondering about our beliefs on heaven, and he gave us some referrals! It turned out he had met with missionaries back in the day, in Norfolk, and he loves the missionaries a ton, but isn't too interested in joining our church. That's one thing I have noticed here, there are a lot of people who love us and know what we are doing is good and that there must be some truth to it all (which there is, it's all true!), but they don't want to change, because they like where they are and what they're doing.

The last person I taught in Franklin, though, was a great lesson on temples and family history. He had never heard of proxy work for the dead, and was so excited to learn he could have saving ordinances done for his ancestors, he is going to start doing his genealogy already. In the middle of the lesson, while we were testifying of what we were teaching, his 9 year-old son ran into the room in nothing but boxers with his little two year-old brother on his shoulders wearing only pajama pants. He saw us and immediately stopped and turned around and quickly ran back in the other room! Little kids are the funniest! We taught a group of kindergarten-age kids about the Atonement outside this apartment complex just yesterday!

  

Have a blessed week y'all!

--Elder White