Colin's letter.  Monday Sept. 26

When you go anywhere here in Albertson the smell oscillates between several smells. It can either:

1. smell like a chicken house.

2. smell like a turkey house.

3. smell like a hog house.

4. smell like diesel trucks and cow manure.

5. actually smell like nice fresh air!

You generally get each of the smells individually with nice fresh air (or comparatively fresh) interspersed between the first smell and the next one that wafts your way.

 

This week I missed great Uncle Bart when we got slowed down by a traffic jam..... a traffic jam two-miles-long of vintage tractors driving down the road in a parade of some kind. From Albertson to Mount Olive, just about every kind of tractor you could think of was being driven by people anywhere from the age of 9 to 90. That's not even an exaggeration. We saw 8 or 9 year-old kids driving these huge tractors all by themselves and we also saw old farmers who bought the tractor they were driving brand new after they got home from World War II.  You know you are in the country when the only traffic is caused by farm tractors--and the biggest back ups are because you’re stuck behind a combine harvester that is wider than the whole road. Driving in Seattle will be a serious shock to my system a year or so from now.

 

Yesterday we were the Sharing Time in Primary at church. We were talking to all the little primary kids about being missionaries, and everything was going great until I asked them how they could be missionaries themselves. The first response I got was from little 7 year-old Baiden, who told us all about a dream he had in which he was sharing the Gospel with Megatron! (a Transformer robot) and then some other kid said, "I'm surprised he ain't tried to kill you!" and then we lost everyone... ! It took us the rest of the time to get everyone back on the same page. Anyone who does not believe in miracles has obviously not worked in Primary at church. The fact that the Primary program works and runs so well is amazing to me.

The most exciting thing that happened this week was we got a referral from a bishop in Virginia for this guy in our area whose brother (who passed away last week) was a member of the church. When we went to go teach him in his little car shop in Buelaville we asked him about his experience with the church. He told us he had been to church with his brother and sister in-law a few times and that they gave him a book. We asked him if it was The Book of Mormon. He said, “Yes,”  and pulled it out of his bag. We asked him if he had a chance to read any of it. He said he had read it twice and was on the third time through!! Not only that, but he had made his own tabs for it and had it all marked up with his favorite scriptures too! We explained to him what it means if the  Book of Mormon is true, and we asked him if he believed it was true. He told us, yes he did believe it's true and is the word of God! We invited him to be baptized and he agreed to be baptized on October 29th! And he came to church yesterday too, even though he had to work from 6pm Saturday night to 6am Sunday morning--he still came! So as a missionary, that's just about as good as it gets! Well after a month of being here I am starting to find my way around. Until next week I hope y'all have a blessed day!

 

--Elder White