01/30/17 - Wilmington, North Carolina

Howdy folks, it's that time of week again! Wow, my whole world has changed as a missionary!! Not sure if you have already heard about all of the changes, but they are revolutionary! To start, last Monday we went to Fort Fisher for our preparation day. It was so much fun, we got to walk through a muddy marsh and discover a WWII bunker! Our ward mission leader, Brother Allen, was kind enough to take all the Elders in our district down and boy was it fun! As we went to work that night, we spoke to one of the neighbors of a member family. Her name is Nancy. She is so kind!! She currently goes to a Unitarian Universalist church, but she absolutely fell in love with the message of the Restoration! She is thrilled to get the chance to read the Book of Mormon. Tuesday morning we met with one of our Hispanic less actives and we talked about how to be a good member missionary. We told him that we really desperately need his help to start this Spanish group! We then tried accounting with our missionaries using the Family History Center computers, but we got kicked out because the ladies came in and for some reason don't like us haha! Yeah, it's an ongoing battle between missionaries and Family History people all over the mission.. We then had to go get a flat tire fixed and it took quite some time. But we studied Swahili and it was a bundle of effectiveness! We tried to visit a lot of Spanish people that night, but no one was home! It was actually pretty difficult to teach any of our Hispanics this week.. But we tried! Wednesday, we went down to Shallotte for District Meeting and afterwards we watched the worldwide broadcast for all the missionaries in the world! It was incredible. They spoke to us of the importance of the Holy Ghost in the work and the Doctrine of Christ. I loved every single minute of it! There were also many changes made! Our schedule has now changed allowing us to go to bed an hour earlier if we feel the need (definitely feel the need haha).. We don't plan at night anymore, but now plan in the morning! A few changes like that to the schedule, and I love all of them!  We as well have changed all of the numbers we report! We went on exchanges with the Shallotte missionaries after the meeting and I brought Elder Lambson up here to Wilmington. It was a great exchange! We had some powerful lessons and learned a lot from each other. The following morning we drove an hour back down to Shallotte to exchange back and then Elder Nadauld and I drove another hour down to Tabor City to do a blitz in their area. It was successful! We found some people to teach and we also went to visit the North Carolina / South Carolina border! We only had time to do a 3 hour blitz and then we had to drive 2 and a half hours up to Jacksonville to take a car that is broken up to Raleigh on our way to a meeting the next day. We went to Raleigh that night and spent the night back at the old apartment with the Raleigh zone leaders. We drove over 7 hours that day in total!! Friday was a great day though, our MLC was incredible. It is when all of the zone leaders and sister training leaders in the mission come together to meet with President and the assistants to discuss different mission wide matters. There were many instructions given that I learned a lot from and we also got a lot of new rules and things decided and put in place. Excited to see these new changes! We drove 3 hours back down to Wilmington following the meeting and we taught our Congolese! We taught all of the commandments and got them ready for their baptismal interviews. We will be baptizing Furaha, Petro, Sakina, and Zawadi this Saturday!! We are so excited!! Saturday morning we got news that the black panthers were having an armed march in Downtown Wilmington so we tried our best to stay out of that area for the day.. On a slightly happier note, my Swahili book finally came in that I ordered at Barnes and Nobles and it is outstanding. I am learning so much faster now! We helped a less active move out that afternoon and I was reminded how much I love doing service! We've been so busy that it had been a little while since we'd done any! Sunday was as always a wonderful day. We had two Hispanic less actives come to church! We hope they continue to come.. We had to jump out of the YSA for a minute to drive up and teach Nancy again. Another great lesson with her! We got a new branch mission leader in the YSA and he is awesome!! He is a marine stationed up in Camp Lejeune and he has written out a whole 3 stage plan on how we are going to turn around missionary work with the YSA. We ended our week by again teaching the Congolese last night! They are so great.. We wrapped up all of the lessons and they are very excited to be baptized for their dead! I actually spoke quite a bit of Swahili during the lesson and we were all laughing about it. It is amazing that I am starting to understand them when they speak! The gift of tongues is so real.

Baptizing our Africans,
Elder Shearer