Elder Mitchell's Mission to Tennessee: Sweater Weather

Buenos!

Greetings from Lenoir City! Yup, I'm now in the Loudon Branch, which covers two small cities, Loudon and Lenoir City. We share the area with a pair of sisters, so they cover Loudon, and we cover Lenoir City. The new area is great; it reminds me a lot of my first area in Smyrna. It's a pretty small town, but there's a good number of Hispanics here, so that's good. One of the things I noticed right off the bat is that it's way colder here! Down in Georgia it was still in the 70's and 80's, but I've had to break out the sweaters this week. My new companion is Elder C! He's only been out for a few weeks, but he's ready to work hard! He is 18, right out of high school, and he is from Modesto, CA. He played water polo in high school, and wants to study nursing after the mission.

Well, for my last few days in Dalton, we put in some good work and said good bye to lots of members. On Tuesday night, the T family took us out to dinner, and I tried cow tongue! It was a little squishy, but good. Then, we shipped out Wednesday morning to Lenoir City! These first few days we've just been trying to figure out the area. We don't really have any investigators at this point, so we are basically starting from scratch. So, this week we did a lot of finding, mixed in with trying to meet a lot of Less-actives. One success from this week was our visit with a less-active family, the R family. We got to teach them, as well as Sis. R's boyfriend, R (who isn't a member). Then, they were all able to make it to church the next day! It was great!

My ponderizer this week is Romans 8:16-18 which says, "The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God: And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ; if so be that we suffer with him, that we may be also glorified together. For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us." Sometimes we receive different trials in our lives, new assignments, different challenges. But, we are joint-heirs with Christ if we hold out faithful. If we will endure the hard times, God promises us unimaginable blessings. I hope y'all have a great week!

Love,
Elder Mitchell