I hope the title speaks for itself haha. After last transfer, our Farmboy missionary that taught me how to work a tractor finished his mission and headed back home to his town of less than 700 people in a break-off of Alamosa Colorado. As sad as it is....I am now the Designated Tractor Driver and am the only one (other than Grandpa Bill whose got alzheimers) who knows how to work that old John Deere of his. So you can only imagine what that means for service......party time!!!! We were basically lumberjacks clearing out Grandpa Bill's ravine and let me tell you...that green machine is unstoppable! Compared to what we were able to get done with the axes, the tractor just tore it up and I am completely convinced that it can go anywhere and do anything!!!! If we take these machines out to war there's just no stopping us!!! Well it was way legit and really made the job SO much easier which was much appreciated in the 104 degree weather (don't forget to add another 15 degrees for the humidity). This August is just killer, but isn't nearly as bad as last year's when I was on bike out in the Cliff....God Bless our bike/walking missionaries because they need it!
Well this last week we seem to be getting deeper and deeper into hick territory as we've started teaching way back in the hills! This last transfer we were given another ward to work with and inherited the Kelsey part of Gilmer which is super super beautiful with so many trees and pastures...but a lot of rednecks. We just started teaching a family that really puts our last find to shame. They're a part-member family that lives in this little community that they started just nestled in a small spot of this forest.
To get there, you've gotta hit way out in the hills and leave any spot of phone service for about 15 minutes, pass a 100 plus acre pasture, and then hit a narrow road barely big enough for one car. You follow that road for about a half a mile until you start to see what looks like a junkyard (given all the broken down trucks/cars) parked in-between trees and what not, and then you find...surrounded by tons of trees and out in the middle of nowhere, the Pritchett community. There's only one way in and one way out of this little neighborhood where the Grandparents live in the Wood house at the top (that's still under construction and has been for the last 45 years). Next to it you'll find a bus where one of the Grandkids live, and as you keep going down, you'll find more broken down cars and a few campers-- the homes of the rest of the kids and grandkids until you hit the (nicknamed) "love shack"...this rickety old...shack...that's been vacated for a couple years now.
Since they're surrounded by so many huge trees, they're somehow convinced that one of the trees will blow over and land on the shack any day now...and it's been any day for over 10 years haha so I'm stoked to see how that'll go down. But it's such an awesome family with some of the most diligent Grandparents I've seen out here, setting aside every thursday as a family so that everyone can sit in their old home to listen to the missionaries in an effort to get their wayward family to live the gospel. We're always crammed together in a small room, knee to knee and elbow to elbow as we teach, but I for reals have never enjoyed lessons so much! There's never a dull moment there while jokes are dropped and pranks are pulled, and you can easily feel the spirit in their home as they magnify family unity.
I just about lost it when we asked if we could start with a prayer and saw about 5 hats taken off simultaneously to be accompanied with 9 heads bowing in unison. It was just classic and this family rings true to every "you know you're Redneck when..." I know I said it last time, but just use your imagination when I say they're Redneck and you're probably not far off. They have the thick beards, the Texas and confederate flag tattoos all over their bodies to go perfect with the barbed wire, crosses, and the last touch with the cow skull right next to some flames. My favorite part was when their teenage daughter Emily, who at first tried to represent herself not as Redneck as they are, got so excited to tell us some story and said "So the other night when I was going to the bathroom outside...." and then her whole family just roared with laughter as they saw the look of embarrassment on her face when she finally realized that some of the details in her story may not have been...very normal to us haha. So everyone accused her of the redneck in her that she had been denying and it was just hilarious to see that it was impossible to dig her way out of it. Then as they started talking about their toilet....a bucket outside with duct tape for the seat, Elder Browning and I just couldn't hold it in any longer and just lost it. But it was like that the whole night. We had a great lesson, where everyone would laugh, and with the attitude there that everyone was family, there was never an awkward moment and we just seemed to mesh right on in and enjoy every minute of it!
This past week the Zone is getting super amped as we started a competition called the "Gilmer Gauntlet" with points for each Key Indicator and everyone is getting sooooooo stoked! I'm so grateful to be apart of such an awesome experience and to see everyone put in better than they ever have before as we had a total of 47 investigators at church this last week, almost doubling the amount of the next highest Zone and we have the highest amount of baptismal dates per missionary! I'm tellin y'all, better watch out for the Gilmer Zone because we're gonna tear it on up!!! We be destroying records every day!!! |
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