Thursday, July 13, 2017

Letter from Colin:
By no means was I complaining last week in my letter, I really do love where I am serving, however to further illustrated the point I will tell you about where we spent the fourth of July. We were invited by the Elders Quorum President to come to his house for dinner and fireworks, we realized it was a nice place to be when we passed by the private golf course and yacht club.... His house is actually fairly old it was built before WWII but he has completely renovated it, inside he has a room for dancing (he used to dance for MTV back in the day) and you pass into his kitchen through an entrance way that is held up by two unbelievably beautiful 900 year old intricately hand carved pillars that where taken from the ruins of a Buddhist temple in the Himalayas. Then in his huge kitchen he has a big 6 burner stove and griddle that was made for a restaurant, a fridge big enough to fit at least 8 people in, and the most beautiful dark green marble counter tops that I've ever seen. Not to mention the fact that his giant back yard opens up onto the yacht club's golf course. After we ate we went down to the yacht club and sat on the fairway of the 18th hole right on the waters edge and watched the yacht club's private firework show. it was all quite amazing the houses in that neighborhood average from 1 million to 3.5 million dollars a piece, and in talking to the sisters who actually cover that area the neighborhood we were in was one of the cheaper neighborhoods in that part of Virginia Beach.
    Anyways back to our area, we had an alright week, we worked really hard but it feels like not much actually happened. We had a appointment fall through with our investigator because he was in the hospital for over dosing on prescription pain medication and had a seizure and almost died, so currently we really aren't teaching any really solid investigators. We are on the-other-hand teaching this incredible less active member who hasn't been to church in more than 25 years,. The Young Single Adult branch sisters found him, he wasn't even on the ward roster. Gordon happens to be from Alberta Canada and is a four time world bull riding champion (that was a while ago but still I mean it's pretty cool) now he can hardly walk because he has bone cancer in his legs and spine. Gordon is one of the most interesting people I have ever met.We taught an amazing lesson on the Plan of Salvation which is the most hopeful and happy thing that I can think of and at the end he told us that he wanted to quit smoking and get his life back on track, and he even asked us to send the missionaries in Texas to his daughter who hasn't spoken to him in 5 years!
  There's a sister in the ward who we are working with to help her get to the temple this year who is so nice, she was going to feed us dinner this week on Thursday, but she was in the hospital because she had a seizure, man it seems like half the people we teach were in the Hospital this week. Since she wasn't up to cooking dinner instead we cooked her and her son dinner, we Cooked up two big racks of St. Louis style BBQ pork spare ribs that were phenomenal, we also made a big plate of fried cornbread and we got a perfectly ripe big watermelon. The food was all so good there was almost zero dinner time conversation because we were all too busy eating. They we so surprised because everyone just assumes that us missionaries can't cook because they're notorious for PB&J's and Mac&Cheese, but Elder Talbot and I cook a lot actually, that's definitely one good thing I learned in North Carolina. All in all 'twas a great Well until next time I hope y'all have a blessed week!

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-Elder White

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