People Can Change!

November 30, 2020 

This week has been decently busy. Tuesday we had a great district council and Stanley was able to join us with Charleen. He had a lot of great insights and stuff. **Editor's note-Stanley is Charleen's roommate that was making life choices that were not conducive to the Gospel and she was hoping to evict him from her home. He is now trying to learn more about the Gospel and make some changes in his life.

Wednesday we had a good lesson with Tamaka and Julie (her fellowshipper from the war). It was good to talk with both of them! 

We had our pre-Thanksgiving feast as I told you about. Thursday was filled with Tamaka, Charleen, and the Fullers. We even got "exposed" to covid at the Fullers. I guess one of the girls' friends had it but we haven't had any symptoms so the nurse wasn't concerned.  

Friday we had exchanges and I went with Elder Hoyt and we spent most of the day on Facebook.  Saturday we had dinner with the Whites and it was good to talk to their son. He is almost ready to go on a mission. He was having a hard time though because they won't hold scholarships for cross country. 

Sunday was crazy with having Charleen AND Kayla at church plus lessons with Tamaka and Charleen and a dinner appointment.  

Busy week and we have a big goal next week to try and find 50 people as a zone!

Slooow week

 November 23, 2020

This week was pretty slow so I don't have any updates besides Kayla has made a lot of progress and we had a good lesson on part of the Restoration! She got a job and her boss is a less active member who owns a cool model house museum! 

Busy Busy

 November 16, 2020

This week has been so crazy I don't even know where the time went.

Tuesday we had a great district council.  It was nice because we haven't had one for 3 weeks. It was awesome to get a lot of council and guidance from the Lord through other missionaries. 

Wednesday we had a great lesson with Kayla! She is homeless currently, but trying to clean her life up and go to church. It was awesome cause she made it to church this week! 

We also had a lesson with Lucille, an old lady who was a service referral. Then we went and gave Charlene a blessing for her knee. Please be praying for her. 

Kaitlyn fell through, but we are trying to get some district shirts made through her because she has a t-shirt printer. The goal is to get to know her and her fiance on a more personal level. 

Friday we had a good lesson with Ken and we met with Jeff. We are probably going to have to stop teaching Jeff because his circumstances make it that he needs a lot of help but we are too far away to consistently drive to help him with little things.  We used almost all of the miles for this month already most in this week.  Are we gonna stop driving? No. We got work to do! 

Saturday we had service for Charlene.  

Sunday, Sister Smith, a less active member came to church, and Charlene and Kayla too! So good. The other Elders also had their youth investigator join too! 

We are worried for Tamaka. She doesn't really have the desire anymore. We still meet, but her lessons just haven't been that spirit filled. Pray for her as well. Thanks!

You Know You're In the South...

 November 9, 2020

This week has been super busy with lessons. We helped Charleen a lot and she came to in-person church! She enjoyed it. She is still trying to get the guy living with her to move out so be praying for her. We are going to teach her the law of chastity so that she can be strengthened and have God on her side more. She is really close to Baptism and being put on date. We got her a few new friends in the ward too!

We are a little concerned about Jeff. We had a lesson with him and he wanted us to call him to make sure he was ok (aka not dead). We weren't able to call that evening because we had a bunch of lessons. But we called him the next day and he didn't answer or called back ! 

Tamaka is doing pretty good. We are trying to figure out how to help her progress more. 

 

This week Elder Grant and I made fried chicken for dinner, then Charlene made us fried chicken and a member bought it for us. I think we've had enough for a while!

All in all, it has been a good week! 

The Greenwood Elders

We got so much chicken this week!

One of the members has a Lamborghini!

Slow and Steady

 November 2, 2020

 There was a good deal on a shoulder roast so I am going to attempt Carne Adovada. I even found new Mexico chili at a Mexican shop with the help of Elder Grant!

Charlene is doing really well. We painted her house and yesterday had a good lesson with her. She wants to get her partner out of the house because he isn't changing and is doing drugs. But she doesn't have money for an eviction notice.  She is doing really good with quitting smoking and coffee unless her partner is around.

She is wanting to come to church as well. 

Tamaka is doing ok. We are trying to get more fellowshipers so she can learn and understand more about the gospel.  She has been taught but the understanding isn't quite there yet. 

Lea canceled because of Halloween but we rescheduled. No word from Nathan. Will probably reach out this week. 

That's pretty much it. Been a short week. We did the flags for Bishop with the football team again but it was more boring. 

One of the companionships got removed from the district but they hopefully will come back. It doesn't feel the same without them.

Round 3!

Elder Grant and I are staying in Greenwood again this transfer!!! 3rd transfer here! (Taylor has loved Greenwood, SC, and has told me many times he would love to spend 6 months or more there). 

Tuesday we picked up some paint the bishop had so that on Saturday we can hopefully paint the inside of Charlene's house. 

Wednesday we had a lesson with Charlene and we talked again with her about being baptized. She said she would pray about it! 

We were supposed to teach Ken's family but we ended up just talking with him. He is struggling with how to help his family get on the right path.

Thursday we had a bible study with a lady named Belinda who we have been trying to contact for the past two months and we finally taught her. We were supposed to go by on Tuesday but it didn't go through. We did find a member who wanted to do a member video which was awesome! 

We had a lesson with Katelyn and she was interested in being baptized! Pray for her because she has some concerns about the book of Mormon, we haven't talked about it yet.

 
Friday/Saturday was supposed to be exchanges but due to me getting sick AGAIN  the other elders each went to different lessons. Jeff is a guy we got from a member and he was told he has 3 weeks to live. Elder Grant and Elder Hoyt went and he wants to get baptized and they said they gave a strong promise he would never want to smoke again! We are meeting with him tomorrow.

Sunday we had a lesson with Charlene and she was struggling with remembering the loss of her son. She said she is thinking about joining our church though! Later, we had a lesson with Tamaka again and her fellowshiper invited her to think about baptism! 
Tuesday we showed the member video we made with her and her family loved it!

Last week for p-day we hiked to some waterfalls.

Making some pizza

Newest skill-- balancing a wheel chair!

A dog (Taylor loves dogs)

Sick Week

 October 19, 2020

Tuesday we had zone conference and that was good. President Monson gave a great training on the Atonement. The spirit was really strong. 

I now understand why they put fog in Halloween movies because we were driving to zone conference in some of the thickest fog I have seen on the roads ever. It is definitely "spooky season"!

Wednesday morning my companion woke up sick with the flu or cold so we had to cancel all of our great plans and relax. It was kinda a bummer cause we were going to have a ton of lessons! 

Thursday he was feeling a lot better so we went on exchanges. I was with Elder Hoyt which was a lot of fun. This is his first transfer. We went and taught Wesley, a guy we found last week. He is really spiritual and has gone through a lot! We are hopefully going to teach him again Wednesday or Thursday. 

Funny thing is because I was still in my area I had the sim card in my phone and one of the sisters calls and tells us that they were potentially exposed to covid at church and then didn't find out until then, so they exposed all of us . Fortunately it sounds like none of us we actually exposed but we all lost it because Elder Grant was sick.

Friday I started feeling crummy so we took it a little easier. We still went and did some service for this lady the other elders are teaching. For some reason they didn't really contact much of the ward to try and get some members to help and tools etc. So we hit up one of our favorite member boys who is a senior in high school. He said he would come and pulled up with tools and a truck and two friends! He's awesome.  One of his friends gave him some Klondike bars but they decided they wanted to go to Brusters, an ice cream place here. And we were driving and he threw the bars through the windows.  Fortunately we caught them and they didn't splatter all over the car 

Saturday we did some service for some members demolishing a building so that was fun. We were pretty exhausted after that. 

Sunday we had the opportunity to speak on missionary work in church we both were only supposed to speak for 10 minutes each. But somehow we both spoke for 15+. Guess that will be the only time I talk too long! LOL! We had a lesson with Charlene. We had not one, but two member meals this week. One with the Whites and one with our Relief Society president's family. 

Love,

Elder Jenkins