1/6/14 "Shafts in the whirlwind"

"...When the devil shall send forth his mighty winds, yea, his shafts in the whirlwind, yea, when all his hail and his mighty storm shall beat upon you, it shall have no power over you to drag you down to the gulf of misery and endless wo, because of the rock upon which ye are built, which is a sure foundation, a foundation whereon if men build they cannot fall."

- Helaman 5:12

Missionary info for the uninitiated:

Each missionary companionship is assigned an "area," generally a ward's geographic boundaries. (Though when I was in Pineville, I got the eastern half of my ward and the Zone Leaders got the western half. And the car.) A minimum of three areas is generally grouped as a "district," sometimes more, and a "zone" corresponds to a stake. My zone has about 30 missionaries in the about thirteen wards and branches of the High Point stake.

So, I am in the same district as the sister missionaries of the Lakefield ward, usually referred to just as "the sisters," and the Gate City Spanish branch elders, referred to by me as "Spanish," "The Spaniards" or "The Conquistadors," to make a district of 7 missionaries among three companionships. We all go to the same church building on Sunday.

Our district is what we call a "tri-share," which means we all share two cars among three companionships. We each get a car for two weeks and are on bikes for one week. Last week the Lakefield Elders, which areElder Mejia and myself, were on bikes.

Every once and so often we get a text message from Higher Up which has a referral from Mormon.org, meaning that someone had gone on the website and requested something, like a Book of Mormon, a Bible, or a missionary visit. It is then our duty to contact that person within twenty-four hours.

***

On Thursday we got one such referral, a person asking for a Book of Mormon. I checked the address and discovered that it was eight miles away, which is a decent bike ride there and back but nothing too major.

We looked out the window to see a sky overcast with light grey clouds.

Elder Mejia: "Do you think it's going to rain today, Elder?"

Elder Fisher: "Nah, I don't think so. Wrong color of clouds."

...Five hours later, after one lesson and three-and-a-half hours of biking in the pouring rain, we returned home, badly needing a new change of clothes and pretty confident that we had earned our salt that day.

It is at times like these that one just breaks down and makes himself a double-decker Nutella sandwich.

Thankfully it was a pretty good lesson which we had with the woman who wanted the Book of Mormon. She was extremely impressed that we would bike that far for that long in that kind of weather just to deliver a book to her. She'd darn well better read the blasted thing.

***

We realized this week that the majority of people we are actively teaching are either Spanish or have Spanish family members. So, after thinking this through and considering what would be best for the investigators, we had to man up and hand over about 11 people to los Conquistadores, reducing our teaching pool to a grand total of 1 person. Thankfully that one person isn't going to go anywhere anytime soon...

Finally, I wish to inform you that one of my favorite things about North Carolina is that it gets very foggy here. We've had thick fog almost all day every day the whole time we've been on bikes. I think it's the coolest thing ever. My imagination has a field-day with it.

Love you all. The Church is true. Hurrah for Israel!

Elder Fisher