Elder White Letter: 5/23/2016, From Edenton, NC

 

This week we taught the most lessons I've ever taught on my mission. We taught 17 total lessons, which compared to the average amount they teach in South America sounds like nothing, but out here that's not all too shabby.

Two of those lessons were in the same house in the same visit. Right before we got to church on Sunday we got a call from a less-active member and he was asking for a blessing. We told him we could come as soon as we could after church. He also lives 26 miles from the building, so it would take us awhile to get there. At church the Council Family from my last area in the Franklin ward were the visiting speakers, so it was nice to see some of the people I know from my last area. Their son who's leaving on his mission next month said something I liked a lot. He said some thing along the lines of this, "With a painting, although the paintbrush is the thing that puts the paint on the canvas, we don't praise the paintbrush, we give the credit to the painter because it's His work we are admiring. I am just a paint brush with agency."

After Sacrament Meeting, church was canceled because the plumbing in the bathrooms had ceased to work, so we drove out to the brother’s house to give him a blessing. Because of a spine disorder, he woke up Sunday morning and was completely immobilized. Due to unbearable pain he was experiencing he couldn't get up. We gave him a blessing and shared a lesson with him, we then went into the living room and taught his wife a lesson and helped her understand many things (she has quite a few plural marriage and "women and the priesthood" questions which for some reason seem to be the hardest questions to answer). When we finished the lesson with her, during the closing prayer, we heard this really loud ruckus coming from her husband's room, and we were worried he had fallen, and when we looked up, there he was walking into the room with the aid of a walker and says to us "Hey, Look, I'm walking!"

This week we went to the world famous Bunn’s Barbecue in Windsor, which is pretty famous. They do Eastern North Carolina BBQ, which means chopped up pork (not pulled) drenched in vinegar-based BBQ sauce with coleslaw on top -- which sounds not good, but when all of that is combined--it's amazing. We ran into a guy there who is actually our neighbor in Edenton. He was born and raised in Windsor and he first went to Bunn’s BBQ in 1941.  For lunch most days I eat a North Carolina BBQ sandwich. We buy the BBQ at the store and make sandwiches out of it all week long.

When we got home one night after teaching a lot of lessons, this car drove down the road and stopped in front of our house and we heard someone yell, "HEY, ELDERS!"  We turned around, and in the passenger seat was, the one less-active member who hasn't been to church in 35 years. No one in town even knows he's a member; he doesn't want anyone to know, so he says he's Catholic. The guy driving talked to us for a few seconds and jokingly told us, pointing at the less-active member, who he doesn't even know is a member of our church, and says, "Hey, you guys really need to start working with this guy--he needs it bad!" He said it sarcastically, but we just told him, "Oh, we know. We are trying our best, but he doesn't want anything to do with it," and they all laughed and drove off to wherever they were headed.

We also had a specialized training on our physical and mental wellness at the Stake Center which is a 2-hour drive from our house. On the way home Elder Pendlebury wasn't feeling good so I drove while he puked up the last two-days-worth of food into a Walmart grocery bag! We were stuck in bumper-to-bumper rush-hour traffic in Chesapeake, Virginia, but at least once we crossed over into North Carolina it was a beautiful drive.

There was so much that happened this week, I wish I could write about it all, but until next time--Have a blessed week, y'all.   

      

-- -Elder White