Hello family!
Things this last week went pretty well. We were on exchanges for most of the week, from Tuesday to Friday. I stayed in Clarksville and Elder Furrows went up to Hartford, KT. It's about a 2 hour drive up to Hartford, and we went there on Tuesday morning to drop Elder Furrows off and pick up Elder Wurston to bring him back with me. We got up there around noon and we had a 2:30 appointment with Vanessa and Maurice, a couple that we're working with in Clarksville. Anyways Elder Wurston and I got on our way and we realized that Elder Furrows sill had our phone. So neither of us had a phone, and no matter where we are we're supposed to have our phones with us so President can get hold of us at anytime. We had a grand adventure trying to get the phone back without having any way to contact the other Elders. They immediately left Hartford to drive to Liechfield, about another 30 minutes away from Hartford out in the middle of nowhere. So we drove to Liechfield and went to a gas station and asked if we could use their phone. Elder Wurston is being trained right now he has only been out about 2 weeks, and he didn't know where any members lived, nor did he remember his phone number. So now we needed to find someone who would let us call a Tennessee number. We had 2 gas stations tell us that it was a long distance number, but then the manager at the 2nd gas station said that it actually wasn't and let us use their phone. We got hold of Elder Furrows just as they were getting ready to ride their bikes to the post office to express overnight mail the phone to us in Clarksville. We met up with them and got the phone back, we ended up driving around 270 miles that day and getting back to Clarksville around 5:00. A grand adventure.
Vanessa and Maurice are a great couple who are going through some hard times. A few years back they really hit rock bottom and were homeless. Now they've worked their way back up a bit and are living in a duplex. They have word of wisdom problems but they both have been taught the first 2 lessons and agreed to be baptized. I'm a little worried about them because they were really excited to go to church on Sunday and the promised me twice that nothing would keep them from coming. On Sunday they didn't make it, the ride we had arranged for them said that they werent home, and when we went by later their car was still gone. Now I'm up in Hopkinsville for another exchange. This time I'm staying up here, so I won't know anything about what's going on with them until Wednesday. Hopefully they're alright.
Cody is doing well. He came to a "Songs of the Savior" last night and really enjoyed it. He wants to be baptized for a remission of his sins and really likes the church, he just doesn't agree that Joseph Smith is a prophet or that we have prophets today. His date is for this weekend, so hopefully Elder Furrows will be able to help him understand before this weekend. Gordan's date dropped due to word of wisdom problems. He's been having trouble with work. He works at Burger King and isn't getting enough hours to support his family (don't know how he planned on supporting a family with Burger King in the first place) so he's been really stressed about that. However his wife called us and told us (his wife is Crystal who just recently got baptized) that all he does is sit at home and play computer games until he crashes, then he sleeps for a day and then stays up for 3 playing more computer games. So he's not even looking for a job. So we're still working with him on a few things.
Those are our big top investigators right now. Then just helping the zone out. The Hopkinsville Elders are having trouble with their ward leadership. The leadership thinks that they are lazy and thereby don't support them. They think that the sole purpose of ward leadership is to support them in everything that they do. So we've had a bit of a conflict. It's hard for a lot of missionaries because they don't really understand that a bishop has 5 and a half million things to do, and he's super busy taking care of active members, and less active members that he can't always provide a lot of time to work with non-members. They also have trouble remembering that since their not full-time missionaries they have other responsibilities like a family to care for and a job to maintain, and other church callings. It's important for every member to do everything they can to share the gospel, but it's important for missionaries to realize that they aren't the top priority in everything. It'll be a fun exchange figuring out the missionaries side of things. Anyways I love you all! Have a great week, I know I will.
Love Elder Carpenter
Sunday, October 18, 2009
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Catching Up
Apologies from the dad who is not keeping this blog up very effectively. Here's a long post with comments from some recent e-mails to catch up where Bryan is and how he is doing on his mission.
Aug. 10, 2009: I got a call last Monday from the assistants and we've had a third companion all week. His name is Elder Jacobson, he's from Washington and he worked as a king crab fisher in Alaska, you've heard of the show "The Deadliest Catch" thats what he did! Anyways his comp went home a week early to send his brother off to the MTC so he's been in Murf-town for a week.
Then just the normal missionary stuff, no dates set, but still a really good week. We taught Joe and Jessica about the law of chastity in great detail and they agreed that something needed to be done whither that is marriage or moving they committed to do something about it. We're going back over tonight to find the results. We also had an 'invite a friend to church day' which was pretty awesome. We fasted and prayed as a stake last Sunday and had a really big build up to have everyone at least invite someone to church. A lot of people didn't and some people did and their friends just didn't show up, but we had 8 non-members there! Then all the talks were geared towards missionary work, the first was on the apostasy and restoration, the second was on the Book of Mormon and the Bible (Bro. Westmoreland gave that talk, he's a big time lawyer so it was pretty entertaining, sorta like law and order), then the third talk was on the Living Christ and it was given by Bro. Miller who was going to be a baptist preacher until he started going to the seminary and discovered how far they had strayed from biblical Christianity. So that was pretty darn sweet.
Then on Saturday we sorta got transfer calls. I say sorta because I got the call for my district and found out that Elder Hansen is going to be coming into Stones River replacing me (not my trainer Hanson but with an en) he's the one that replaced me in Hendersonville. We also found out the sisters area is going to be whitewashed with Elders. Then they said that President Hutchings was going to call me to tell me where I was going. No call came Saturday night. Sunday came no call. Sunday night we did a "Songs of the Savior" in Goodletsville and President came to that one and informed me that I will be whitewashing Hopkinsville as a zone leader. So tomorrow morning I'm off to Kentucky. So I'll be leaving Murfressboro tomorrow and headed up to Kentucky to Hopkinsville, and I haven't the slightest clue where that is. But it will be an adventure for sure.
Aug. 17, 2009: I'm actually in Clarksville now, just south of the Kentucky border. Its a military town we have Fort Cambell here and its pretty fun. Its strange because we have very few Southernisms here because everyone is a transplant and most people are very young. I love it here already. In the week we've been here we've set 5 baptismal dates and they're all progressing very very nicely. It doest seem that there's as much stuff to repair here as Murfreesboro but there's still a lot of work to do. We're almost always on the phone with someone, either the district leaders or the assistants or our investigators or the ward. Always on the phone usually until 10:30. Our zone area is the Clarksville wards (there's 3 in the city, thats huge for Tennessee) the Hopkinsville ward, the Hartford area that has 4 branches and 2 missionaries. That's pretty much it. I love it here!
Aug. 24, 2009: Anyways its been an adventurous week thus far. We were supposed to have 2 baptisms yesterday in the Elkton ward. Elkton is in Kentucky about 45 min from Clarksville. I guess mission policy is that whenever an area gets shut down the zone leaders cover that area. So we now cover 6 counties in Kentucky as well as part of Clarksville. Anyways so in order to get the Wigles family baptized we needed to drive up to Elkton with one of our district leaders so we could interview them and then have them baptized after the block. However Elkton ward and Clarksville ward meet at the same time, 9-12. So we had it all worked out that I would leave right after PEC around 7:50 and go with Elder Killpack (he's our district leader, he was in the MTC with me) to drive to Elkton so we'd get there around 8:30-8:40.
However right as PEC is ending a random guy in jeans and a t-shirt walks in and says "Hey I was wondering if I could talk to someone about your church?" Naturally Elder Furrows and I jump on that. So we taught him a first lesson and he goes on to tell us that he's had a drinking problem before and because of that his wife has kicked him out of the house and wants to divorce him, and that it was her recommendation to go to this church and check it out. Anyway after about a 30 min lesson we're getting ready to go and he tells us his wifes name, and its one of our other investigators who wants to be baptized. The only problem is that she's living with another man!! We had no clue that she was married to someone else and living with her boyfriend. So we've been trying to get them married and now we're teaching her and her boyfriend and her husband!! That one's going to be an interesting one to figure out.
So back to the Wigles, its now 8:30 and Elder Killpack and I are leaving to Elkton. Luckily it was mostly country roads that have no posted speed limit, so we get there about 9:05. Elkton does their meeting block backwards they start with priesthood and relief society first and end with sacrament. So we get there have elders quorum and then the bishop asks if he can meet with us and the father of the family. He explains that before the block started he asked the family to wait to week to be baptized and they all agreed that that would be the best thing. So we stayed for church in Elkton and then went home, it was a little frustrating but it'll end up alright. So we now have 4 baptisms planned for next Sunday.
We do also have people from all over here, but they're all really nice. Another cool story is on the 19th of September a family moves in from Germany, they were taught by missionaries out there and had a baptismal date and everything, they called us to ask if they could have us over for dinner as soon as they got moved into their house so we could set up a time for them to be baptized!! So lots of good things are happening here and I love the area. We work really hard, and it pays off, we set 3 baptismal dates this week and had over 35 lessons. Its a hard ward to work with becuase people are always in and out and even though its a pretty large ward by Tennessee standards hardly anyone has a calling because the leadership doesn't want to call anyone and have them be deployed. So we dont have an elders quorem president or a relief society president but they're working on it.
Aug. 31, 2009: Hey, so everyone did get baptized!! Yay!!! It was a pretty crazy process though. They were supposed to meet us at 11:30 Saturday morning for the interviews. Only two of them showed up out of the 4. They said that Chris was no where to be found and Samantha was at her grandpa's house and his truck had broken down so they coulnt get to the church, and Elder Furrows or myself needed to be in Hopkinsville in an hour to interview some people for baptism up there. We ended up having exchanges and canceling most of our plans for the day driving around and getting everyone interviewed in the zone we had 7 baptisms this last weekend. It was fantastic. We've also been working with a young lady named Kylee Turbish, she is set to be baptized on the 12th of September I believe and she's really excited about it, we've got I think 5 dates going into September and more to come. So things here are going really really well. Then with the weird love triangle situation thats gone quite well too. Crystal and her husband have decided to try and make things work out so he's moved back in with her and she wants to be baptized in a week or two. He also showed some interest in learning more, we'll see how things go with that, we're both very hopeful and very excited about it, and Chris the guy Crystal was living with has moved up to Ohio I think, we're going to try and get his address so we can send missionaries to him up there.
I was on exchanges at the beginning of this week up in Hopkinsville and we came back on Wednesday morning had district meeting here in Clarksville, then we had interviews from the President, and then we drove back up to Hopkinsville for Stake Correlation meeting and then we came home. That was about it.
Sept. 21, 2009: Things here are doing fantastically. The mission is struggling as a whole but the Clarksville district is doing amazing right now. We had 2 baptisms on Saturday and 2 last weekend and then the Fort Cambell branch had a baptism on Saturday as well. Then we have I think 7 more baptismal dates set fot the next three weeks or so. Transfer information came in and Elder Furrows and I are staying together, this is his last transfer before he goes home. Then we have 2 missionaries who are going to be trained here this next transfer, and other then that things are staying the same in our zone. There are some struggles up in Hopkinsville, but things are starting to pick up there, and Hartford is a tough area as well. Its a really old country region where most people who are born there never leave. The good part of that is they have some really valliant members there and everyone knows who they are so they're giving the church a really good image there.
We also did an interesting zone conference two fridays ago, they wanted us to spend a few hours doing an activity to build zone unity. They left it up to the zone leaders to choose what kind of activity we do. We have an interesting combanation of missionaries here and due to some health issues we couldnt do a lot of physical activity, anyways a long story short we ended up doing a missionary version of Whose line is it anyways. It worked out really really well, I have some videos of it, but it seemed whenever I was video taping nothing too interesting happened. It was fun though.
Oct. 2, 2009 (not on p-day because the library where they send e-mail was closed for re-carpeting): Yesterday we set 2 baptismal dates and we set another one earlier this week with Gordan Avery, Cody Lahaie, and Vanessa Gibson. They're all prepairing to be baptized on the 17th of this month so we're very excited for them and we've got another 2 or three on deck to be baptized as well.
Oct. 5, 2009: Things here are going really well. We got to watch conference at the mission home because we had our ZLC over conference weekend. That was an interesting experience, but really good. I loved Elder Holland's talk. I never thought about the Book of Mormon being a rock of offense or a stone of stumbling but those words really stuck out to me and for people who desire to mingle scripture with their own philosophies the Book of Mormon and a modern prophet with priesthood authority would be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
The down side of being in Brentwood all weekend was that we haven't had as much time to work with our investigators this weekend, so as of right now I don't know how a lot of them are doing. We have appointments tonight with some key people. Cody watched conference at our ward mission leaders house so we're really excited to see how he enjoyed that. Then with Gordan its just a matter of getting him to quit smoking and really want to be baptized. I really love this area and this ward, so its good to know that because Elder Furrows is goig home in November that I'll probably still be here for at least one more transfer.
Aug. 10, 2009: I got a call last Monday from the assistants and we've had a third companion all week. His name is Elder Jacobson, he's from Washington and he worked as a king crab fisher in Alaska, you've heard of the show "The Deadliest Catch" thats what he did! Anyways his comp went home a week early to send his brother off to the MTC so he's been in Murf-town for a week.
Then just the normal missionary stuff, no dates set, but still a really good week. We taught Joe and Jessica about the law of chastity in great detail and they agreed that something needed to be done whither that is marriage or moving they committed to do something about it. We're going back over tonight to find the results. We also had an 'invite a friend to church day' which was pretty awesome. We fasted and prayed as a stake last Sunday and had a really big build up to have everyone at least invite someone to church. A lot of people didn't and some people did and their friends just didn't show up, but we had 8 non-members there! Then all the talks were geared towards missionary work, the first was on the apostasy and restoration, the second was on the Book of Mormon and the Bible (Bro. Westmoreland gave that talk, he's a big time lawyer so it was pretty entertaining, sorta like law and order), then the third talk was on the Living Christ and it was given by Bro. Miller who was going to be a baptist preacher until he started going to the seminary and discovered how far they had strayed from biblical Christianity. So that was pretty darn sweet.
Then on Saturday we sorta got transfer calls. I say sorta because I got the call for my district and found out that Elder Hansen is going to be coming into Stones River replacing me (not my trainer Hanson but with an en) he's the one that replaced me in Hendersonville. We also found out the sisters area is going to be whitewashed with Elders. Then they said that President Hutchings was going to call me to tell me where I was going. No call came Saturday night. Sunday came no call. Sunday night we did a "Songs of the Savior" in Goodletsville and President came to that one and informed me that I will be whitewashing Hopkinsville as a zone leader. So tomorrow morning I'm off to Kentucky. So I'll be leaving Murfressboro tomorrow and headed up to Kentucky to Hopkinsville, and I haven't the slightest clue where that is. But it will be an adventure for sure.
Aug. 17, 2009: I'm actually in Clarksville now, just south of the Kentucky border. Its a military town we have Fort Cambell here and its pretty fun. Its strange because we have very few Southernisms here because everyone is a transplant and most people are very young. I love it here already. In the week we've been here we've set 5 baptismal dates and they're all progressing very very nicely. It doest seem that there's as much stuff to repair here as Murfreesboro but there's still a lot of work to do. We're almost always on the phone with someone, either the district leaders or the assistants or our investigators or the ward. Always on the phone usually until 10:30. Our zone area is the Clarksville wards (there's 3 in the city, thats huge for Tennessee) the Hopkinsville ward, the Hartford area that has 4 branches and 2 missionaries. That's pretty much it. I love it here!
Aug. 24, 2009: Anyways its been an adventurous week thus far. We were supposed to have 2 baptisms yesterday in the Elkton ward. Elkton is in Kentucky about 45 min from Clarksville. I guess mission policy is that whenever an area gets shut down the zone leaders cover that area. So we now cover 6 counties in Kentucky as well as part of Clarksville. Anyways so in order to get the Wigles family baptized we needed to drive up to Elkton with one of our district leaders so we could interview them and then have them baptized after the block. However Elkton ward and Clarksville ward meet at the same time, 9-12. So we had it all worked out that I would leave right after PEC around 7:50 and go with Elder Killpack (he's our district leader, he was in the MTC with me) to drive to Elkton so we'd get there around 8:30-8:40.
However right as PEC is ending a random guy in jeans and a t-shirt walks in and says "Hey I was wondering if I could talk to someone about your church?" Naturally Elder Furrows and I jump on that. So we taught him a first lesson and he goes on to tell us that he's had a drinking problem before and because of that his wife has kicked him out of the house and wants to divorce him, and that it was her recommendation to go to this church and check it out. Anyway after about a 30 min lesson we're getting ready to go and he tells us his wifes name, and its one of our other investigators who wants to be baptized. The only problem is that she's living with another man!! We had no clue that she was married to someone else and living with her boyfriend. So we've been trying to get them married and now we're teaching her and her boyfriend and her husband!! That one's going to be an interesting one to figure out.
So back to the Wigles, its now 8:30 and Elder Killpack and I are leaving to Elkton. Luckily it was mostly country roads that have no posted speed limit, so we get there about 9:05. Elkton does their meeting block backwards they start with priesthood and relief society first and end with sacrament. So we get there have elders quorum and then the bishop asks if he can meet with us and the father of the family. He explains that before the block started he asked the family to wait to week to be baptized and they all agreed that that would be the best thing. So we stayed for church in Elkton and then went home, it was a little frustrating but it'll end up alright. So we now have 4 baptisms planned for next Sunday.
We do also have people from all over here, but they're all really nice. Another cool story is on the 19th of September a family moves in from Germany, they were taught by missionaries out there and had a baptismal date and everything, they called us to ask if they could have us over for dinner as soon as they got moved into their house so we could set up a time for them to be baptized!! So lots of good things are happening here and I love the area. We work really hard, and it pays off, we set 3 baptismal dates this week and had over 35 lessons. Its a hard ward to work with becuase people are always in and out and even though its a pretty large ward by Tennessee standards hardly anyone has a calling because the leadership doesn't want to call anyone and have them be deployed. So we dont have an elders quorem president or a relief society president but they're working on it.
Aug. 31, 2009: Hey, so everyone did get baptized!! Yay!!! It was a pretty crazy process though. They were supposed to meet us at 11:30 Saturday morning for the interviews. Only two of them showed up out of the 4. They said that Chris was no where to be found and Samantha was at her grandpa's house and his truck had broken down so they coulnt get to the church, and Elder Furrows or myself needed to be in Hopkinsville in an hour to interview some people for baptism up there. We ended up having exchanges and canceling most of our plans for the day driving around and getting everyone interviewed in the zone we had 7 baptisms this last weekend. It was fantastic. We've also been working with a young lady named Kylee Turbish, she is set to be baptized on the 12th of September I believe and she's really excited about it, we've got I think 5 dates going into September and more to come. So things here are going really really well. Then with the weird love triangle situation thats gone quite well too. Crystal and her husband have decided to try and make things work out so he's moved back in with her and she wants to be baptized in a week or two. He also showed some interest in learning more, we'll see how things go with that, we're both very hopeful and very excited about it, and Chris the guy Crystal was living with has moved up to Ohio I think, we're going to try and get his address so we can send missionaries to him up there.
I was on exchanges at the beginning of this week up in Hopkinsville and we came back on Wednesday morning had district meeting here in Clarksville, then we had interviews from the President, and then we drove back up to Hopkinsville for Stake Correlation meeting and then we came home. That was about it.
Sept. 21, 2009: Things here are doing fantastically. The mission is struggling as a whole but the Clarksville district is doing amazing right now. We had 2 baptisms on Saturday and 2 last weekend and then the Fort Cambell branch had a baptism on Saturday as well. Then we have I think 7 more baptismal dates set fot the next three weeks or so. Transfer information came in and Elder Furrows and I are staying together, this is his last transfer before he goes home. Then we have 2 missionaries who are going to be trained here this next transfer, and other then that things are staying the same in our zone. There are some struggles up in Hopkinsville, but things are starting to pick up there, and Hartford is a tough area as well. Its a really old country region where most people who are born there never leave. The good part of that is they have some really valliant members there and everyone knows who they are so they're giving the church a really good image there.
We also did an interesting zone conference two fridays ago, they wanted us to spend a few hours doing an activity to build zone unity. They left it up to the zone leaders to choose what kind of activity we do. We have an interesting combanation of missionaries here and due to some health issues we couldnt do a lot of physical activity, anyways a long story short we ended up doing a missionary version of Whose line is it anyways. It worked out really really well, I have some videos of it, but it seemed whenever I was video taping nothing too interesting happened. It was fun though.
Oct. 2, 2009 (not on p-day because the library where they send e-mail was closed for re-carpeting): Yesterday we set 2 baptismal dates and we set another one earlier this week with Gordan Avery, Cody Lahaie, and Vanessa Gibson. They're all prepairing to be baptized on the 17th of this month so we're very excited for them and we've got another 2 or three on deck to be baptized as well.
Oct. 5, 2009: Things here are going really well. We got to watch conference at the mission home because we had our ZLC over conference weekend. That was an interesting experience, but really good. I loved Elder Holland's talk. I never thought about the Book of Mormon being a rock of offense or a stone of stumbling but those words really stuck out to me and for people who desire to mingle scripture with their own philosophies the Book of Mormon and a modern prophet with priesthood authority would be a stone of stumbling and a rock of offense.
The down side of being in Brentwood all weekend was that we haven't had as much time to work with our investigators this weekend, so as of right now I don't know how a lot of them are doing. We have appointments tonight with some key people. Cody watched conference at our ward mission leaders house so we're really excited to see how he enjoyed that. Then with Gordan its just a matter of getting him to quit smoking and really want to be baptized. I really love this area and this ward, so its good to know that because Elder Furrows is goig home in November that I'll probably still be here for at least one more transfer.
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