Elder Austin Carroll

September 21, 2015

Hi everyone!

So yeah I hear about the BYU game usually from members the next day at church. Even though we don't have internet on our iPad, we can get scores. So before bed on Saturdays you'll hear "College Football Scores" getting yelled at an iPad in our apartment because our Siri doesn't connect very good haha so sadly we woke up to see the score on a text from the bishops son, they take good care of us I talked BYU football for a while last night at the Why I Believe with Elder Herring (AP) who is on scholarship to come play O-Line at the Y when he gets home next summer. So you can imagine how big he is.

Exchanges aren't super common.. Usually about 1 a transfer. And since we are brand new, the district leaders were asked to go on exchange with all the next missionaries. Luckily we hold our Zone/District meetings at our chapel so only like 5-10 minutes!

Wednesday we had an awesome experience. So we had an appointment with a referral that we thought was super solid. We had talked to her on her porch the week before and set up the time to come back. She wasn't home when we stopped by so we were super disappointed. So we had about an hour until we had to be home so we went to go tract for the rest of the night. We prayed before we went tracting and Elder Coombs said "please bless we can find just one person who needs our message" At first I was kinda confused and was just like why didn't he ask for 5,10 tons?! But I've realized it really is just 1 person at a time. So we ended up finding that one person. And in our entire hour we only talked to one person.

So we knock on this door and a lady answers. After we invited her to the Why I Believe and told her who we were she looked at us for a second. Then she told us that she could not believe this was really happening. She said that she was praying 5 min ago to find a new church to join. And I was like what?! This doesn't really happen. Everyone has those mission stories where the person was just praying and then the missionaries show up, but they don't really happen! But sadly like Trevor we haven't heard from her and she didn't show up at church or the Why I Believe. So we will try to contact her this week.

Saturday was probably the other highlight/day to mention. So it was what they call the Day of Service and it is a day the community has a ton of service projects set up that people can come volunteer at. Our Stake decided to serve at a place called Serenity Farms. Since our Zone covers the Stake our whole zone came! The farm is where they grow produce for food banks and other donations. The turn out from the stake was AWESOME!!! It was fun to see all the ward members and all the kids/youth kept telling us how weird it was to see us in jeans. We had to laugh cause to all of us we still just feel like normal teenage kids but to everyone else we are missionaries that I guess they think we probably sleep in our suits haha.

The Stake put all the members and missionaries in those yellow vests you see on TV when missionaries are doing service after a natural disaster. It was a cool way for everyone else there to know who all the people in yellow vests were. So me and some other missionaries were assigned to pick sweet potatoes. So we got pretty muddy and dirty digging around for those. After we got kinda sick of that and there was tons of people picking sweet potatoes so we walked back up to see if we could get assigned a new job. We got up there and Coombs and I were asked to go with a High Councilor from the Stake and try and drop off some of the extra produce harvested that day. We went over to a trailer park with 12 boxes to give away. It was the worst living conditions I have seen so far on my mission. It was really bad... These are the trailer homes, not like RVs. And we have been in some before but these ones were terrible. Really run down and falling a part. The poorest people I have seen so far. And Coombs told me that compared to the city he has seen worse. Even though I'm not in a foreign country I'm starting to see some poverty and really struggling people. We gave out the 12 boxes and every person seemed so thankful.

Then on Sunday was my first Why I Believe. It was amazing! I love being up at the visitors center, being with all the missionaries up by the temple. That is where all my pictures came from this week.

Overall it was a pretty good week.. We are still struggling to find investigators.

This upcoming Saturday is what is called the Transfer Call Out. So that night they will call out and say if you are staying or going. But you don't know where or who with until the actual day of Transfers which will be next Wednesday (Sept 30). So next week I will be able to tell you if I am saying or going. Odds are I will stay. Most people stay with their trainer for the entire training period (2 transfers). But rumor around is Elder Coombs is going to go Zone Leader. Because the next up coming two transfers 4 of the 8 Zone Leaders go home. So that should be interesting, I really hope Coombs and I stay together.

Love you all tons!!

Austin

PS This was the first email from my iPad I finally got on Thursday. So we email from our apartment. Like I said the rules are I can read emails anytime during the week. We can just only respond on P-Days.

Also emailing from the apartment I have all my scriptures and notes here so it is easier to share a spiritual thought. So this transfer our entire mission is reading the gospels. At home I would never think I could read the entire gospels in 6 weeks! But I am on track, so my thought comes from my reading this past week. In John 10:1-18 Jesus give the Parable of the Good Shepard. In verse 4 it says -"for they know his voice" and in verse 27 it says "Christ's sheep follow him". So do we recognize Christ's voice and do we follow him? It sounds a lot easier then it really is, but if we believe in Christ we follow him and we will know his voice.

Found my main man Elder McDonald at the Why I Believe! I get so see

him every week at Zone District Meeting, but it is always fun to see

him