WELCOME TO THE 76 ANNUAL EAST TEXAS YAMBOREE!!!!
Oh yeah y’all, this past week just got real as the largest carnival in all of East Texas came to town.
Question: So what do you do when a town of 5,000 turns into a town of 150,000 confined into a couple hundred square yards????
Tourist's Answer: Take Pictures, Get To Know Where Everyone Is From, Enjoy Everyone's Accent, Eat Crazy Food
Teenager's Answer: Go Pick Up On Some Chicks, Play Games, Ride The Rides, Stay Hundreds of Miles Away From My Parents
Local's Answer: Eat Turkey Legs, Funnel Cakes, Burgers, Fries (Curly/Normal/Grilled/Sauteed), Talk With All The New People In Town, Show Some Southern Hospitality, Square Dance
Missionary Answer:....ALL OF THE ABOVE!!!! I mean honestly, why would you only do a few of them if you can do ALL of them!!!
So that's what we did as we quite literally grabbed the Bull by the Horns and lived a straight Dream Week in Gilmer Texas!!!
Before I really dive into the details on what happened in the Yamboree, I'll just let y'all know that this is the most "talked up" event that I've ever been to in my life. As y'all saw, this is the 76th time that Upshur County has put on this event and it just brings people in by the masses! It celebrates the Harvest of Sweet Potatoes which is apparently a pretty big deal around here (yeah Idaho...yall got you taters...we've got sweet taters...shows how much sweeter Texas is than Idaho). But moving on, this event is kind of a kickoff into Fall and they pull out all the stops by putting on these huge parades and bringing in all sorts of rides and food and shows and artists and they also have this huge competition for becoming the Yam Queen. All I know about that is that everyone hates the Yam Queen and Princesses because all you have to do to become one of them is sell tickets; the girl who sells the most tickets becomes Queen, the runner up is the first princess, the one follow her is second princess and so on. So whoever's Dad writes the biggest check gets a float, crown, and four days of glory to wear it. It apparently started off as a glorified Farmer's Market and then became a huge Fair/Carnival after so many years.
So with all of that info in mind, let me share with y’all some of the highlights of what's gotta be one of the greatest weeks of my mission...just full of failures and successes of every type!
I don't know if y’all remember me talking about how I picked up on the "Talk To Everyone!!!" principle back in the good old days when I was in Plano, but it's a principle that's been my favorite way to find since then, and something I've continued working on polishing and perfecting. I thought I was pretty good at it, until Elder Beck and I talked about how we seem to be avoiding women, especially the cute ones. We had plenty of confidence in the message and the "open your mouth" principle was no problem for us, but we would always somehow manage to find someone else to talk to when a beautiful daughter of God would present herself. Don't judge, but when you become a missionary and are taught to treat single women like the plague, they become scarier and scarier haha. It's a crazy phenomenon, but you'll get it once you experience it. Upon reflection, we realized that the Daughters of God need the Gospel too, so we came to the conclusion that it was time to contact over 100 of those single ladies haha....
Goal....Completed!!!
Again it was full of some successes and some failures, but in the words of ZZ Top, "A girl's crazy bout a sharp dressed man!" And we'll probably start teaching some of their families too so that's an extra bonus!
After losing count of how many people we contacted somewhere after about 300, or 400, (I still have no idea), we decided to check out the real heritage of the Yamboree and left the Town Square and headed on over to the Yamboree grounds. It was there that I received confirmation about all them crazy country stereotypes. As we cruised on in, we saw the "Livestock Auction". And the Auctioneer.....was....un....believeable....I seriously don't even know how to explain him. I guess y’all will have to wait until I can show you the video we took, but he talked at about 8,000 miles an hour with the sounds of "bing", "bang", and "boing" while throwing in a "500!!!" and "CANIGETA6" (you have to put it all together because he did not use that question in a complete formal sentence) and then "600!!!!" The guy was like a talking banjo...it was like a dream come true just hearing him just roll it all off like it wasn't nuthin haha. Elder Nuckols had to drag me outta there since watching it was somehow intriguing as they sold off your typical but pampered farm animals for such ridiculous prices. It's the only time I'll ever see a chicken sell for 800 dollars. I was tempted to buy a pig just so people could acknowledge our presence but stopped raising my hand once we got into the thousands.
We held the First Place Yams....I felt so honored.
We cruised around the booths by the Yamboree grounds seeing vendors selling all this junk...so I think I finally know how Dad feels whenever we go to some function and just feel that we need to buy SOMETHING. We would bring the stupidest merchandise to him...like binoculars from the zoo...and he would just say, "You really want THAT???? If you'll go for that why don't I just go buy you a bowling ball as a keepsake."
The missionaries here normally have had a booth, but this year they didn't get one for us because they were too late to get us a spot...which is awesome because I didn't want to join the rest of the crew selling all sorts of ridiculous stuff, and I think I would have tazed myself to death with one of the dude's "tazer stand" articles if I had to stay there and couldn't contact people all day. Besides, the only people that had visited with the missionaries at their booth were members...so the freedom was a definite win.
Free Fooooooddddd!!!!! During the Yamboree we gained tons of member trust there because we were contacting machines!!! Contacting all day everyday, and the place was loaded with members from all over the country. Once we ran into one of them, they would ask us if we've eaten and either take us somewhere or just give us some dinero for when we got thirsty out in the blazing 75 degrees (haha I'm tellin y’all...straight living the dream!!!) The Gilmer 2nd ward also ran one of the food stands...so our trips around the square always involved a start at the Gilmer 2nd Stand by eating a Burger or a Turkey Leg or just getting some fries or a water/soda. We would make a round...get a million contacts, and then make a pitstop at the stand for another Burger/Water/Turkey Leg/Soda/Fries...etc. Wednesday to Saturday baybay...all day erryday. I seriously ate like a king and was never forced to eat too much, but I could eat anytime I was hungry! Be it 9:30 in the morning or 8 at night, I'd be able to chow down and then get back to our contacting and finding! One of my favorite contacts was when we, for once, didn't go up to the Church's food stand and went to one of the Carnie one's for a funnel cake. I decided we would contact the lady up there. Even though we were fully prepared and willing to pay....she enjoyed the contact along with our smooth talk and jokes, so she gave us the cake for free and said, "Alright now just walk away real fast!" Life is just too good to the Lord's missionaries at times.
The Carnies were pretty much my favorite people to contact and talk to. They've all got crazy life stories, and they're all from some out of the world country and once we got on their good side and talked to them enough, they’d ask us why we don't play their games and we'd just tell em we don't have tokens. Since they haven't really played by the rules their whole lives, they'd let us play their games/shoot their hoops and it led to great opportunities to let some contacts try some games for free. Sometimes the blessings of knowing how to speak Spanish pay off!!!
Big Sandy will most likely burn in Hell. We've tracted some of that city and all of the contacts from there went terrible. If y’all know how to bless me with the charity that I need for these people please tell me how.
Square Dancing.....I'm not going to go into detail...but I mean honestly....if you're in Texas surrounded by people in Cowboy hats with wannabe artists on the stage singing nothing but Country Hits....what are you gonna do???
As for Staying Hundreds of Miles Away from my Parents....It wasn't my favorite part of the Yamboree, and I was thinking I'm going to need to bring y’all sometime, but when you're from Southern California, the home of who knows how many theme parks and tons of people, it's not that big a deal, but when you're stranded in a town of 5,000 for four months, it's pretty much the greatest thing since the invention of the wheel. But if I ever bring anyone over here, I'll let them know that I'll buy them just as many things as I bought myself haha.
Love y’all and miss ya tons!!!! By the way...I finally got my Texas Driver's License!!!!
Much love from the pastures of East Texas
Elder Wilson
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