Wassssup!

Hey everybody! Sorry I didn't email last week. It was a short week because we had pday on Wednesday two weeks ago. I hope everyone is doing great!

Palatka is literally the best place ever! We have the most crazy conversations with people in the government housing neighborhoods! Most of the people we talk to are either really drunk or high and talk to us about how they pray to the sun and that there are giants in the center of the earth. One guy told us that he didn't need to read the Book of Mormon because he already knows what it says because it's a religious book. Then he said that we didn't believe in vaccines because we believe in Jesus Christ. It was pretty funny. 

Saturday night we had 4 people that said they were coming to church so we were super excited! Then in the morning we called them again and two of them said that they couldn't make it so we still had two coming. Then about halfway through sacrament meeting we texted the two people who were going to come and one of them said they couldn't make and the other one said they would be late. They never showed up but that's ok they will hopefully come next week. 

Our most progressing investigator right now is Linda. She had three of her son's baptized a few years ago but she wasn't baptized. She wants to read the Book of Mormon and go to church so we will see where that goes. We basically started from scratch here because the Elders before us were super lazy and didn't do anything and all of the investigators hadn't been taught in like 6 months. We are finding a lot of people though and are going to teach them this week so hopefully we can get more progressing investigators.

I love you all! Keep on keepin on!

Love,

Elder Plumb

Wednesday P-Day!

Hello everybody! Sorry if y'all were expecting something yesterday they changed pday again to Wednesday and they let us send an email on Sunday about it but I forgot so my bad haha! 

Palatka is the promise land! It's so awesome here! It's like the most ghetto part of Arlington mixed with ghetto country! I love it so much! The people are so great! Elder Andrus is super awesome! We are almost the same person! He's from California and played a lot of football and basketball. He's only been out a transfer longer than I have and he's already been a district leader for 2 transfers and a trainer for 3! He's a really good missionary so we work really hard and have tons of fun on top of it!

I've told a lot of people here that I was trained by Elder kunde and they all get super excited! They love elder kunde. This ward takes really good care of the missionaries mainly because of brother and sister gourley because they do jus about everything they can do for us! They feed us twice a week and sister gourley makes sure we have dinner appointments everyday! They are super awesome! 

We got whitewashed into this area though which means we are both new to the area so we have had a lot of work to do. It's been challenging but a good learning experience. We had a baptism on Saturday too with a guy named Rex. He's a really good guy and fortunately the missionaries that taught him were able to make it to the baptism. They probably couldn't have had a better turn out for them by teaching Rex and getting him baptised and then leaving right before they have to do all the paper work for the baptism. So we got to do it! Yay! Just kidding it wasn't that bad it was just another thing added on to out already over flowing plate. Like I said it's been challenging but we are having a lot of fun doing it and we know the Lord is blessing us for our hard work and dedication. Now that we have a lot of things planned out and mapped out and are starting to know our way around the area its getting better and better each day! This is probably going to be my favorite area so far which is saying a lot because I LOVED Arlington. The people here are great and hilarious! We've already had so many interesting and crazy encounters with people! I love it here!

Also we had Lynn G. Robbins of the Presidency of the Seventy come to our mission which was a really cool experience! Just being in the same room as him brought a good spirit. He talked a lot about being 100% responsible for our mistakes and not having excuses. It was definitely something that I needed to hear because with a lot of things that go wrong on missions its pretty easy to say its not my fault like with investigators not coming to church when they said they would. I just need to always ask myself, "Did I do everything I could to get them to church?" The answer is almost always no because even through we don't realize it we actually have a lot more controll over situations than we think we do. Also when we make excuses we are doing something on the anti-responsibility list which are the tactics that Satan tempts us with to either say or do to avoid being responsible. Excuses don't equal results. Laman and Lemuel used all of the excuses in the world and that didn't help them to obtain the brass plates. Nephi was able to obtain the plates because he never went to the anti-responsibility list. It's easy to find excuses for things when being white washed into an area but Elder Andrus and I know that being 100% responsible and having no excuses will help us gain trust from the ward and find the results we are looking for.  

 "A determined man finds a way; the other man finds an excuse." - Elder David B. Haight 

I love y'all so much! My new address is 105 Nicole Dr. #2

Thanks for all the love and support! 

Love,

Elder Plumb
                                                New Companion - Elder Andrus!

Goodbye Arlington, Hello Palatka!

As y'all can tell from my title I'm getting transferred to Palatka! I'm so sad to leave Arlington! I love it here! I've heard so many good and interesting things about Palatka though so im also super excited! Elder Kunde started his mission there and really loved it so I'm excited! 

I said goodbye to a whole bunch of people in church yesterday which is honestly the worst part about leaving areas. It was super awesome though because this month is missionary March so our whole ward did a fast together for missionary work this month and we had a big break the fast party last night so I called it my farewell party. Lol! It was really fun though spending time with the ward before I leave. Of course Calvin was being his usual self and took a million pictures of me and everyone else. I even got a video of him singing to me! It was so funny! He showed us his YouTube channel and he has so many funny videos on there! One was him dancing and some ward party a few years ago! I was dying! It was a great last day though with the ward.

Also we have this crazy new investigator who wants to be baptised but he has a lot of problems. One is his girlfriend left him and some how cancelled his social security so now he has no money and he doesn't have a job except he worked at some Chinese restaurant by cutting some of their branches. He is super addicted to smoking too so he has no money cuz he spent them all on cigarettes and he's got a week left before he gets kicked out of his apartment. He hadn't gotten payed by the Chinese restaurant so we walked with him there to get some of the money because he said that e wouldn't go get his money unless we went with him. So we get there and we said that he needs to go inside and ask for the money and we would stay outside. He wouldn't go in without us but we finally convinced him to. We didn't really trust what he was going to do cuz he was really desperate. So we wait outside and then we hear some Chinese people start yelling a whole bunch and our investigator came out with two angry Chinese people yelling at him in Chinese. Then he told them that he didnt get payed for working there a few days so they gave him like $40 and then looked at us and said, "What's going on here! What do you want!" They were looking at us like we were a threat and that they wanted to fight us. We were just like, "um we just walked here with him." Then they started mumbling some words in Chinese and they went inside. It was really weird but he got some money to get himself on a bus to the social security office and fix whatever needed to be fixed. We were very explicit with him that he needed to only use that money to get to the social security office and not to buy cigarettes. He said ok and we left. Then the next day we found out that he bought cigarettes and burger king with the whole $40 so now he's in really big trouble. He said he's going to get a job now or he's going to get one of his family members to come from Washington and pick him up but we'll see. 

Other than that this week was great. We got Shanika to stop drinking coffee and tea which was super easy because she is seriously the perfect investigator. We told her what the word of wisdom was and she didn't understand why she couldn't drink tea and coffee and then she was like, " actually that kind of makes sense" and she went on a explained why she shouldn't drink them! I'm gonna miss her so much! She's so awesome!

I love you all so much! Keep emailing me! I'll let y'all know how great Palatka is next week. By the way pday will be on Tuesday next week because of some stuff thats happening so I'll email then. 

Love,

Elder Plumb

1.- 2. Last pday we got every single ball into the hoop! It was so awesome!

3.- 10. Ward party!