Gator Head
Date
September 6, 2021
Area
Brunswick, Georgia
Companion
Elder Alekisanita Molisi
Gator Head
Ah hello everyone! I think this was just about the quickest week of my life! It's crazy how fast time flies when you forget yourself. I'd like to take a page out of my ex comp Elder Bailey's book and tell ya'll a joke! What do you call boiled peanuts with no salt? If you know the answer shoot me an email! And if you don't know the answer... also shoot me an email! Smooth Elder Bailey ;)
We had a lot of opportunities open up this week. If you're always looking for chances to reach out and serve someone, they will come. Even at Bdubs or Walmart! We did a ton of service this week! One of my favorites was going to this super cool farm. We pretty much just fed and groomed all the animals. Swamp farms are cool!
Southern Hospitality is real. Even if someone doesn't like you, they'll still sit there and talk to you (for the most part haha)! They may heavily disagree, but they'll talk to you. In fact people in the south love to talk so much, but they are very very bad at saying bye. So many of our 30 minute checkups on people will turn into 30 minutes of checking up, and 2 and a half hours of trying to leave.
I know that compared to where I'll live in Bolivia, the apartment I'm in right now will feel like a 5 star hotel, but recently this week I had a life changing discovery! Sinks have 2 knobs, one for cold water and one for hot water yes? Well I'm pretty certain that my bathroom sink actually has one knob for cold gross water, and one knob for cold less-gross water. What a life changer especially for brushing my teeth! Now I just need to find the less-gross water knob for my shower...Also me and Elder Molisi have rearranged the place so that the couch area is very open. That way we can hit the pickleball back and forth using our home made coffee table (aka cardboard box covered in pictures from Ensign magazines) as the net. Our practice definitely paid off today against the old dudes at the courts.
Ok so I had 2 really cool experiences this week. One of my zone leaders, Elder Copley, was called Spanish speaking but his companion right now is not. So on Saturday night we went on a quick Spanish tradeoff. It was so fun! We went to 4 different small Mexican tiendas and just talked to as many people as we could. I quickly was reminded that I hadn't really spoken Spanish in almost 3 weeks, and even then it was only MTC Spanish. Spanish speakers are so friendly! We even got some of them to come to church. We also went and had a lesson with a Spanish speaking family in the area. It was my first actual lesson on the mish, so it was kinda cool to have it be in Spanish. We taught them a little about the plan of salvation, but mostly ended up talking about baptism. They said they would pray about it, but they really want to be baptized! The family was so amazing and so interested and involved in the discussion. My favorite part was that we did the lesson on their front porch and the whole family sat on these colorful hammocks. Just swingin and chilling during the whole thing.
Also Elder Molisi and I tried to find this member family that live in the middle of nowhere. After being lost for 35 minutes and driving past at least 8 do not trespass signs we somehow managed to find their property. It was absolutely beautiful! The best way I can describe it was like we entered someone's farm on HayDay who had been playing for years. Beautiful pastures with brown cows chillin under big huge trees. Perfect dirt road with neatly kept grass in the middle of it. Ponds everywhere. 7 or 8 alpacas (shout out to my 5th grade band: imagine alpacas) and 2 huge turkeys just roaming free. A huge log cabin house with a separate garage and big ol barn. It was the coolest thing. That family was so sick! They're huge baseball fans so me and one of the sons ended up playing catch for about 30 minutes. That was so surreal! The best part was that the oldest son had recently been deer hunting when an alligator charged him so he shot it. They had the gator head just chilling on the driveway to the garage AND they let me hold it. You could tell it was fresh because it was still bleeding. My bucket list dream of holding a gator is complete. Told ya it'd happen mom!
I'm sorry this is so long! I'm sure my grandma is the only one still reading and the rest of you have already skipped to the pics ;) so I'll go ahead and share a spiritual thought for you grandma! President Wood used a very good analogy of likening knowledge about the gospel to a grand jigsaw puzzle. So many people get hung up on one truth that they can't understand, and end up discrediting the entire gospel. While doing a puzzle, as my mom and I have discovered during this pandemic, when you get a piece that doesn't seem to fit anywhere you can either 1. Say this is the dumbest puzzle anyone has ever made and throw it away. Or 2. Put that piece to the side and work on other pieces until the place for that first piece makes sense. We may not know exactly where all different truths fit, but we are promised that 1. All truth fits together like a grand jigsaw puzzle and 2. In time we will understand all things, and every single piece will fit in place for us! How cool!
I love you all and appreciate the support!
¡Que tengan un día bendecido!
Elder Barker
~playing catch at night with Elder Molisi
~view from one of the members backyards
~me and comp
~the boys doin some service
~me and a 3 legged goat
~me and pigs
~Spanish moss is so cool
~me and my house buddy named rico
~me and Elder Copley at a Spanish tienda
~me holding a fresh gator head!!
~epic cook book a member had
We had a lot of opportunities open up this week. If you're always looking for chances to reach out and serve someone, they will come. Even at Bdubs or Walmart! We did a ton of service this week! One of my favorites was going to this super cool farm. We pretty much just fed and groomed all the animals. Swamp farms are cool!
Southern Hospitality is real. Even if someone doesn't like you, they'll still sit there and talk to you (for the most part haha)! They may heavily disagree, but they'll talk to you. In fact people in the south love to talk so much, but they are very very bad at saying bye. So many of our 30 minute checkups on people will turn into 30 minutes of checking up, and 2 and a half hours of trying to leave.
I know that compared to where I'll live in Bolivia, the apartment I'm in right now will feel like a 5 star hotel, but recently this week I had a life changing discovery! Sinks have 2 knobs, one for cold water and one for hot water yes? Well I'm pretty certain that my bathroom sink actually has one knob for cold gross water, and one knob for cold less-gross water. What a life changer especially for brushing my teeth! Now I just need to find the less-gross water knob for my shower...Also me and Elder Molisi have rearranged the place so that the couch area is very open. That way we can hit the pickleball back and forth using our home made coffee table (aka cardboard box covered in pictures from Ensign magazines) as the net. Our practice definitely paid off today against the old dudes at the courts.
Ok so I had 2 really cool experiences this week. One of my zone leaders, Elder Copley, was called Spanish speaking but his companion right now is not. So on Saturday night we went on a quick Spanish tradeoff. It was so fun! We went to 4 different small Mexican tiendas and just talked to as many people as we could. I quickly was reminded that I hadn't really spoken Spanish in almost 3 weeks, and even then it was only MTC Spanish. Spanish speakers are so friendly! We even got some of them to come to church. We also went and had a lesson with a Spanish speaking family in the area. It was my first actual lesson on the mish, so it was kinda cool to have it be in Spanish. We taught them a little about the plan of salvation, but mostly ended up talking about baptism. They said they would pray about it, but they really want to be baptized! The family was so amazing and so interested and involved in the discussion. My favorite part was that we did the lesson on their front porch and the whole family sat on these colorful hammocks. Just swingin and chilling during the whole thing.
Also Elder Molisi and I tried to find this member family that live in the middle of nowhere. After being lost for 35 minutes and driving past at least 8 do not trespass signs we somehow managed to find their property. It was absolutely beautiful! The best way I can describe it was like we entered someone's farm on HayDay who had been playing for years. Beautiful pastures with brown cows chillin under big huge trees. Perfect dirt road with neatly kept grass in the middle of it. Ponds everywhere. 7 or 8 alpacas (shout out to my 5th grade band: imagine alpacas) and 2 huge turkeys just roaming free. A huge log cabin house with a separate garage and big ol barn. It was the coolest thing. That family was so sick! They're huge baseball fans so me and one of the sons ended up playing catch for about 30 minutes. That was so surreal! The best part was that the oldest son had recently been deer hunting when an alligator charged him so he shot it. They had the gator head just chilling on the driveway to the garage AND they let me hold it. You could tell it was fresh because it was still bleeding. My bucket list dream of holding a gator is complete. Told ya it'd happen mom!
I'm sorry this is so long! I'm sure my grandma is the only one still reading and the rest of you have already skipped to the pics ;) so I'll go ahead and share a spiritual thought for you grandma! President Wood used a very good analogy of likening knowledge about the gospel to a grand jigsaw puzzle. So many people get hung up on one truth that they can't understand, and end up discrediting the entire gospel. While doing a puzzle, as my mom and I have discovered during this pandemic, when you get a piece that doesn't seem to fit anywhere you can either 1. Say this is the dumbest puzzle anyone has ever made and throw it away. Or 2. Put that piece to the side and work on other pieces until the place for that first piece makes sense. We may not know exactly where all different truths fit, but we are promised that 1. All truth fits together like a grand jigsaw puzzle and 2. In time we will understand all things, and every single piece will fit in place for us! How cool!
I love you all and appreciate the support!
¡Que tengan un día bendecido!
Elder Barker
~playing catch at night with Elder Molisi
~view from one of the members backyards
~me and comp
~the boys doin some service
~me and a 3 legged goat
~me and pigs
~Spanish moss is so cool
~me and my house buddy named rico
~me and Elder Copley at a Spanish tienda
~me holding a fresh gator head!!
~epic cook book a member had
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