20th Birthday Pictures

Sister & Brother Gourley from Palatka, FL drove 2 hours up to Waycross, GA to take Calvin to lunch on his birthday and brought him a cake!  We will forever be grateful to the Gourley's love and support!  They ate at Calvin's favorite - Zaxby's - which is like Cane's but with more choices.  Also, he is wearing the new orange tie I sent but it has little gators on it and I guess you can't wear characters on your ties.  Bummer, oh well!

Blood Alone Moves The Wheels Of History!

GOOOOD MORNING VIETNAM!!!!! How's everything going with everyone?!?! I hope it's all going fantastic! This week was fantastic for me because obviously it was my birthweek! I had such a great birthday thanks to all of you! Thank you all for wishing me happy birthday and everything you do! Now I have a ton of junk food which is both good and bad but hopefully somehow my metabolism speeds up lol! Thank you all for all the love and support!

This week we had trade offs with the zone leader but all four of us stayed in Waycross so they spent the night at our apartment. It was super fun because the Elders that stayed were Elder Andrus who I was companions with in Palatka and Elder Birch who is also super crazy dude! We had a good time though and didn't stay up too late lol! 

We also had a trade off with the Elders in Blackshear wich was really fun because I got to spend the day with Elder Berg who I served with in Fleming Island so we had a good time. We visited an old lady in their ward named Justine who has some pretty awesome stories about how she beat a guy with a frozen raccoon and also how she shot herself in the knee because she wanted someone to buy her a moonpie! She is super crazy but also super funny haha!

On my birthday we did some early morning service for the Wilkersons in our ward and helped them cut some branches off some of the trees in their backyard. After that they took us all to Jerry Js, which is a local restaurant chain in Waycross, for my birthday. And of course everyone there sang happy birthday to me! If you didn't know I'm not very fond of that! Anyway it was a very good breakfast though. Then the Gourleys from Palatka drove all the way up here from Palatka just to take me out to lunch for my birthday! They are so awesome! You can't find anyone like the Gourleys anywhere else! They're are the best! Then for dinner our ward mission leader, who we call Papa because he adopted us as his grandchildren, took us out to Dick's Wings for dinner! It was super good and he gave me a dollar to choose a song on the juke box to play! Of course I chose "All Along the Watchtower" by Jimi Hendrix! It was a good time! Then everyone in the district had a birthday party for me at night time which was super fun also! It was a really good birthday with a lot of really good people and food! 

We are still working really hard to find new people to teach and get those that we are already teaching to progress. Right now Melissa Corbitt seems the most interested but her and her family are in a very tough situation with her always bein in the hospital with her lung disease and her big family living in a really old and small trailer. So please pray for them and her health.

Right now we don't have anyone with a baptismal date but there are a few people who are getting baptized in the next few weeks for other missionaries in our district so we are very excited for that!

I'm so grateful for all of you and everything yall do! Thanks again for wishing me happy birthday and for any cards or gifts yall gave me! I couldn't ask for better friends and family! Keep on keepin on!

Love,
Elder Plumb

Can you feel it now Mr. Krabs?

It's been a great week!  We had a lot of success in finding new people to teach!  Other than that there wasn't too much that happened this week but it was fun non the less!

On Tuesday we found 3 people!  That never happens!  I don't know what we did but it was awesome to find those people!  So far we haven't done too much with any of them but we'll see how far they progress!

We found 3 more people the rest of the week which just shows how crazy Tuesday was!  We also had some people come to church too and it wasn't anyone we invited!  Crazy how that works out!  Anyway we are hoping to get those we found this last week to progress.

An update on how Melissa Corbitt is doing.  She is supposedly going to be released from the hospital today or maybe tomorrow and then she will be home for a month or two and then she will go back.  We are hoping to teach her and her family during that time and get them to church.  She has expressed how much she wanted to get out of the hospital so she can go to church with us so we are very excited for that!  Everyone in the ward knows her and her family because of how much they have done to help her and her family in this very tough situation they are in.  This ward does a very good job on taking care of those in need that's for sure.

Sadly we had to stop teaching the Ryals because it turns out she actually didn't believe in the Bible.  I don't know how it took this long for her to tell us this considering we had been using the Bible a lot to teach her but we just left her with the invitation to ask God if the Bible and Book of Mormon are true.  We told her that she can't just read them like she has, she has to have real intent as she does so and she also can't go into reading it with the thought of it not being true already in her head.  She said she would and that she would reach out to us or whatever missionaries are here when she gets and answer.  We told her it may take a lot longer than we expect to receive an answer but as long as she has faith that she will then she will receive an answer.

Faith is something I continuously ponder on.  It's definitely the most important thing to have because without it we literally have nothing to believe in.  None of us saw Jesus heal people or teach multitudes but with faith we can come to know our Savior and that everything he did he actually did.  It all starts with us planting that small seed of faith in our hearts and then doing the necessary things to nourish it and help it grow so that we can come to the point where our faith can't be wavered or shaken.  I love all the teachings about faith in the Book of Mormon!  Alma 32 and Ether 12 are two of my favorite chapters in the Book of Mormon and they are both on faith.  Every time I read those chapters and can literally feel that seed of faith grow inside me.  They really help me understand the importance of faith.  I invited you all to read those chatpers because they are very good chapters.

Also I go to the temple on the 27th so I'm super excited for that!  I love you all so much and I hope that everything is going super good!  Email me if y"all can!  Keep on Keepin on!

Love,
Elder Plumb

Toasted Flatbread Asiago Ranch Chicken Club

This week has been pretty great! We had zone conference which was pretty awesome! It was a little different though because at the end of it we usually listen to the testimonies of missionaires going home and a recap of what was talked about by President Lee but instead we had three 15 minute classes on how to eat healthy and stay fit and overall making sure we are taking good care of our bodies. I kinda liked it because it was something different. Anyway before that they talked about how important the spirit is in people's conversion and how important the Book of Mormon is as well. They also talked a lot about how the Lord is hastening hs work with technology so we need to use technology for that purpose and not get distracted by the world.

We weren't able to meet with the Ryals this week because they have been pretty busy but they said that they would meet with us this week for sure. We did however find a new family to teach as well! We just talked to the mom and taught her about the Book of Mormon. Her name is Sabrina and she said that we came at the perfect time. She had recently had some tragedies in her family and was not doing very well but she said we helped her feel peace and God's love fore her. She was very interested in learning more and so we will be seeing her on Thursday.

Also I heard there is a Hurricane coming this way so I'm kinda excited for that in the sense that I want to live through one! We'll see what happens though. 

There was also a face to face yesterday with Elder Quentin L. Cook of the quorum of the 12 Apostles and two church historians. They talked a lot about the new book called Saints that the church released and it talks a lot about Joseph Smith and his familie's life. I've started reading it and it is super good and has definitely helped me understand more about the Restoration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There is no doubt in my mind that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God. I love learning more about him and the hardship he faced and more importantly the work he accomplished. 

I love you all so much and hope that everything continues to go well! Feel free to email me!

Love,
Elder Plumb 

It's been a whole year since I've seen a basement!

Wow! What a week! It was a super busy week but fun and productive none the less! It was a very good first week for our district! Everyone is working very hard and we have seen some amazing miracles because of it! The work is movin in Waycross!

First this week I was able to go on another trade off with my trainer Papa Kunde! We had a ton of fun and it brought back some really good memories of our days together in Fleming Island! It's crazy that he goes home in just a few months! Time is flying!

We were also able to meet with the Ryals which was pretty good because we were able to set some good expectations with them. We talked about the importance of baptism with them and Krystal talked about some experiences she has had in the past with that and said that she isn't ready for that at all. She said right now she just wants to go to church with her family and get some friends for her kids. That definitely showed us where they were at and confirmed to us that it may take some time to help them progress further but we are very excited for them to start coming to church!

We found a few new people to teach this week and some of them are showing a lot of interest so we are very excited about that! We were very blessed to be able to find some of these people with the very busy week that we had because we had very little time to fing this week. Lately we've been trying to get a good ward mission plan for our ward and so we've been meeting with our ward mission leader and the Bishop a lot this week. It has been very buy but very productive! Us and the sister missionaries in our ward are both working hard to strengthen the Lord's work here and we are ready for the miracles to start flowing in! I love being a missionary!

I can definitely testify that faith can really move mountains. If we have the faith to do anything and we put forth the effort then we will definitley see the fruits of our labors. God will help those that want to improve and show their faith in doing so. I seriously love being a missionary and seeing this amazing Gospel bless so many people's lives. There is nothing better than witnessing the Spirit work to completely change someones life for the better. The Book of Mormon is the key to their conversion and has been the key to my conversion as I prayerfully and faithfully read it. It truly changes lives. 

Please pray for Melissa Corbitt also! She is a mother of 5 that we have been teaching and she is in critical condition with a lung diesease so please pray for her.

I love each and everyone of you so much! Thank you all so much for all the love and support and for all the amazing advice and stories yall sent for my year mark! I loved reading each one! They made my day! This next year is gonna be the best one yet!

Love,
Elder Plumb

1-4:  We played with kittens at a members house!

5-7:  I burned my shirt! BURN BABY BURN!

8: Our area borders another mission so we walked to the border and found the line!