Colin S. White Letter from Edenton, NC—July 25, 2016

 

This week was hot. People keep calling it the “heat dome,” but I honestly have no idea what that's supposed to mean--we don't watch the news, so we don't get the full stories on things that are happening.

 

Earlier this week we were in Elizabeth City for some meetings and we stopped by the Walmart there during our lunch hour to get some things we needed. By the way, it's the closest Walmart to us and it's 28 miles away. We don't even have a Walmart out here where we live. Even Ephraim, Utah has a Walmart and they only have one stoplight in town!  Either way, we were there and Elder Pitts wanted a pair of chums for his sunglasses (those things that are the strap thingies you attach to your sunglasses so the don't fall off). The rack that had chums happened to be between two racks of women's swimsuits, and of course we didn't even think about how that might look . . . so we were there looking through the rack looking for chums for his sunglasses, and this little old lady walked up told us to, "Make sure y'all pick yourselves out a pretty pair for the beach!" We laughed and talked to her for a second or two. It wasn't until she walked away that we realized she thought we, two Mormon missionaries, in white shirts and ties, were looking through the racks of women's swimsuits! She was making fun of us! So much for "avoiding all appearance of evil." 

 

We went and visited a less-active part-member family. The husband (not a member of the church) wasn't allowed to tell me exactly what he does for work, which I thought was strange, but it turns out he's a secret agent for the CIA, so that explained a lot. In Hertford there's the Harvey Point Base where the CIA and other government/military groups do special training and testing. We know people that live over there and they say everyday you can hear them blowing up tons of stuff on the base. The other less-active part-member family we went and visited no one had ever seen or heard about because their name showed up on our roster a day ago. It turns out they live next door to another inactive member of the church and a few houses from John and Kay Cavinee, who aren't members of the church, but feed us dinner on Sunday nights. When we knocked on the door this lady opened the door, looked surprised, and walked back inside yelling,  "BOBBY!! THE DOOR!" and we couldn't help but think,"Oh no, this guy is going to come out and yell at us and tell us to never come back," but quite the opposite happened. He came to the door, smiled and invited us in. We sat down and talked to him and his wife for an hour! When we sat down, there were stacks of hunting and fishing magazines on the coffee table, and those two topics just happen to be Elder Pitts' specialties, so we talked to him about those things and the mountains, and all about who they are and where they're from. After talking we found out that he has been living in that house for 2 years and when he left Greenville (mumble it like "gureenvole"), people told him there was no ward or branch in Edenton--and he lives only 1 mile from the building! He never drives past it, except for a week ago, he saw it for the first time. After all that, they asked us to stay for lunch, told us we could come by anytime they were home, and even agreed that it'd be okay if we brought members with us. So all-in-all we had a great Sabbath day yesterday. 

 

One thing I really learned this week, through teaching a retired clergyman of another faith, is that because of the Book of Mormon, the Doctrine and Covenants and the writings and revelations from modern prophets--the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints knows more than any other group or organization about Christ's role, purpose, life, and His comprehensible importance in Heavenly Father’s plan for us. That is a bold claim, but it is true. People say it's impossible to know or have answers about the Atonement, but like Jacob says in the Book of Mormon,

"And now, beloved, marvel not that I tell you these things; for why not speak of the atonement of Christ, and attain to a perfect knowledge of him, as to attain to the knowledge of a resurrection and the world to come?" ‘

          Jacob 4:12

 As always, I hope y'all have a blessed day until next time! 
--Elder White