DAY 321: OCTOBER 17

Well, this week was pretty good, we had transfers, and I got a new missionary to train! His name is Elder Sorensen, from Cash Valley, Utah. We have been doing pretty well. Its really made me have to think hard about what to do and who to visit, because Elder Terry had been here a long time, so I didnt have to really be in charge of much, but now its all up to me. Elder Sorensen is the driver, due to my exemplary driving record before the mission, so I've been directing him everywhere to go. We've found some cool new investigators already, but unfortunately didnt have anybody at church.

So this morning we went to a place called the "Rural Life Museum" its like an old plantation that has alot of the stuff restored. Thinking of my mother, I attached some pictures of some of the old furniture. :) Also some pictures of other random things around there. They had an indoor part with a bunch of old horse buggies, an old pump organ that you could actually play, and some other old time relic stuff. There were a bunch of old cabins from different plantations around the state that they had brought in, it was pretty much all outdoors, where you'd walk around to all these different spots, they had a thing where they boiled the sugar cane to make molasses, a sugar cane press, and other tools they used to harvest and produce sugar. It was really interesting, we went with the senior couple that serves in our branch, the Powells, who are wonderful people, and a bunch of other missionaries, pictured here with some scarecrows, trying to blend in. My companion, Elder Sorensen, is on the far right. Overall a cool experience. We went and got some fried chicken afterwards. Another P-day adventure we went on that I dont think I shared was that we went mountain biking! There was this cool place that has some trails, which I was very impressed with, and we had a ton of fun. I sure miss riding some good old singletrack. Theres a shot of me and Elder Terry, and Elder Robbins who came with us. Also an action shot of me on my bike.

We have found a couple new people like I said, but really just dont have much of a teaching pool. There are just alot more spanish people in Metarie. Its been tough, but, with faith its all possible. While knocking doors, we met this white guy who said after reading this book his perpective of God totally changed. Basically he decided that God didnt have a body, or even a humanly form, but that he IS the entire universe. So there is a higher power, he likes the idea of God, but has a little bit different ideas. Yesterday in church I was supposed to give a talk on the atonement, but we ran out of time, so the branch president said hed have me speak on the 30th. I'll have plenty of time to make my talk nice and well written. I actually wrote part of it in a chaism just for fun, maybe I'll throw in a few more. I think I mentioned before about sometimes we can get ourselves confused studying deep doctrine, but when we look at it, the only doctrine that matters is the atonement. Becuase without that, we couldnt do anything else.

 

Funny drunk guy story: We talked to a couple of guys outside their apartment and he kept asking me if I spoke spanish, and I would answer yes, then he would try to talk to me in english and say "I need twenty dollars. You have twenty dollars?" I told him no. He asked me two or three more times, then I finally just said, "You know what, I need twenty dollars!" he said ok, and proceeded to hand me his entire wallet. I thought about just grabbing it and walking away, but figured that might be a bad idea. So, thats about it for the week, hope everyone else is doing great, and hope China treats you well!

 

Love,

Elder Cardon