Elder Mitchell's Mission to Tennessee: Week One in Clarksville

His companions love to take pictures of him sleeping, which I guess he does a lot!

Hola!

Week one in Clarksville. It's been pretty great. The first thing to know about Clarksville is that it's a military town. There's a military base called Fort Campbell that's not too far from Clarksville, so there's a lot of military people here. It's a large city, but the Spanish are kind of few and far between here. Actually, we're the only Spanish missionaries in the whole zone, soooo...yeah. Fortunately, we only cover Clarksville, but that's still a giant area. So, we actually use the bus quite a bit to save miles on our car. There's no Spanish branch or anything here. There used to be a branch, but they didn't have enough priesthood, so they dissolved it. After that a bunch of people went less active, so we really want to focus on the less actives this transfer. Also, most of the time we just end up finding referrals for the English missionaries. We find a lot of English potentials. I think this week we referred seven or eight people to the English missionaries. It's also kind of weird because all of our dinners are with English members.

So, on Tuesday, I left Smyrna, and we headed to transfer meeting in Brentwood. Since they changed the format of transfers, it was pretty much drive up, find your new comp, grab your stuff and go. We had a member that drove us from transfer meeting, so that was nice. My new companion is Elder W. He's pretty cool, a little goofy, but he's working hard. We're getting along pretty well so far, so that's good. He is from muy muy muy southern Colorado, and he enjoys playing piano, guitar, and long walks on the beach (I don't know). He's been here in Clarksville for just one transfer, but thankfully he knows his way around fairly well.

This week we did a lot of contacting, since Elder W still doesn't know many people in the area book. This week we tried to meet with G. Her son has lots of health problems, so it's hard for her to meet with us, but she's genuinely interested in learning more! I also met M this week, who I can only describe as a Hispanic-looking Rocky Balboa, which was ironic, because he was watching Rocky 3 when we stopped by (not that I was watching or anything). Also, we met F this week. He had a ton of questions, but said he wanted to hear more of what we had to say. He was pretty much asking awesome questions like, "Who is Joseph Smith? Didn't we need the authority of God? What is our purpose here on earth?" It was pretty cool.

On Sunday, we had a Stake Conference that was a broadcast from Salt Lake. We had the chance to hear from L. Whitney Clayton of the presidency of the 70, Linda S. Reeves of the Relief Society, Ronald A. Rasband, and Robert D. Hales. Elder Clayton talked about 100% discipleship, which I really liked. I also really liked Elder Rasband's talk on the temple. It was a cool conference and a great chance to hear from servants of the Lord.

Highlight of the week was finding J. It was actually kind of a miracle. So, on Wednesday afternoon, we were out doing some tracting, and we weren't having too much luck with that. There was this house where nobody was home and so we just left a pass-along card in the door, not really thinking anything about it. But, later that night, we got a call from this random number, and it was the guy whose house we'd left the card in! (How many times do pass-along cards actually work?!). His name was J, and he told us about how his life has been rough recently and how just that morning he had decided that he was giving up on Jesus and stuff. So, when he called us, he was like, "Guys, I need a message about Jesus, like, right now." So we booked it to his house, and had kind of a crazy lesson with him. He had a ton of questions, and we did the best we could to answer them. He feels like God isn't really there, because his problems haven't been getting any better, but we just testified like crazy that God loved him and that He is ready to help His children as they turn to him. It was super cool because he kind of took it as a sign from God that we'd left the card in his door. I'm a little sad we have to hand this guy off to the English missionaries, because this guy seems so ready to change his life, and I can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for him!

Ok, so my ponderizing scripture this week is Philippians 4:8-9 which says, "Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things. Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you." I just think it's interesting because we always say in the thirteenth article of faith that we believe in following the admonition of Paul, and this is the actual admonition. So, I just thought it was cool. Sorry, that's all I got on this one. Anyways, hope y'all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Mitchell