Trunk or Treat - Hey, wait! Is that a body in the trunk?

Happy Halloween!  Thanks to my favorite member in Arkansas for sending this

Guys, daylight savings is coming and I'm scared

Hello everyone! 

So, this week was great! Transfers happened. We lost Sister Aase and Sister Clarke, and gained Sister Deshauer from Mesa, and a newbie, Sister Bryce from..... Pima, AZ!!!! Sorry, Mom, I know you don't like their kind (Mom note: I actually like "their kind" very much but if you are from the Gila Valley you know about the small town rivalry thing :) ), but she's actually pretty nice. Anyhoo, some of the missionaries in our district and the one in Morrilton are doing a special musical number for our next mission meeting. It's a great song called My Kindness Shall Not Depart From Thee. Dad, I say you look up this song, it's very good for choral things. Also, Sister Deshauer wants to do a duet with me too once she found out I could sing. We may be doing Because he Lives from Lamb of God, if we can find someone to play piano. 

In other news, Luis got confirmed yesterday! He also got ordained a priest, so he is all set. We are helping him towards a mission hopefully! Also, we were extraordinarily blessed this week! So ok, in Conway since I have gotten here, we have found two part-member families that went to the branch before. Total. Until this week. We found THREE part-member families that did NOT go to the branch before, in THREE DAYS. Like, it's incredible. The mission set a goal for 100 baptisms and 100 reactivation (never been done here, btw) and with these, we could get 3 reactivations, at least 5 baptisms, and above all that, bring a LOT of people back into the fold of God. Yeah, this week has been awesome. 

Hope to hear from all of you soon! How are things where you are?

From right to left: Elder Wells, Elder Mitchell, Elder Jones, Elder Dyorich, Elder Durham, me,
Sister Cooke, Sister Deshauer, Sister Armstrong, and Sister Bryce. We all have Yoohoos at Sister Clarke's request. 

Here's a picture we took a while ago. This is one of the coolest recent converts in Little Rock, Alfredo. the missionaries are Elder Ludwig, Elder Dyorich, Me, and Elder Butler. Elder Butler is uper cool, btw. He lived in Monterrey with his family for most of elementary school, so even though he came in after me he is fluent in Spanish and sounds like a native. 

Apparently, I'm here for something specific...

So. for those of you not acquainted with mission transfers yet, basically it lasts a month and a half, and generally you get moved after 2 or three.

That being said, here goes TRANSFER 6 in Conway!!! WOOO super excited for it, I will end up being here 9 MONTHS. That's over 1/3 of my mission. 

Next item of business, LUIS GOT BAPTIZED YESTERDAY!!! I got the privilege of performing it. (my baptismal pants are VERY tight now.) Everything went well, he was happy for it. Also, he got asked out by one of the youth after the service. :) Aw, young love. We totally set them up for it, too. We'll see how that goes. 

So, this week was bike week, but I was totally fine for it because it was actually nice outside! We got to meet some cool people. One lady was selling homemade tamales, which were DELICIOUS. We also met this guy who left his wife and kids ten years ago to work here, and has not seen them since. He just sends them money and can call him occasionally. It gave me a lot of sympathy for the Hispanics working here. We also had specialized training, which was fun and instructive. On a sad note, last sunday night we went to an older member of the ward to give him the sacrament. He looked BAD. I gave him a week to live, personally. He died the next day. So that was sad. But other than that, it was a GREAT week! This one should be good too. Me and elder Dyorich are getting a Chevy Cruze tomorrow, and it needs to be sent in for a recall check. Which means we go back to the dealer snack bar again. :P

I'll probably send some more pictures later on. Hope you all have a good week! 

Luis' Baptism!  

Here's the district at specialized training, showing off our "konway" sign. :P

this is the Ellis family, who feed us a LOT. From me, it's Amy Knight behind me, Claire Ellis (my Tumblr- loving ginger friend who is 11 but looks and acts 16), then Sis. Ellis, Bro. Ellis and Chloe, the whirlwind of sass. 

Meet the Mormon(s)

Well, it looks like we are going to have a baptism this week! Sandra and Samantha have been pushed back a bit because sandra has to work basically every day for the next while, so we should baptize them next month. However, Luis is still set for the 19th! We are all super excited!

So, how was the rest of my week? Well, we tried to visit Sandra and Samantha a few times, but we ended up just helping Samantha with her homework. Wednesday we did an MTC crash course with the youth. They are serving "mini missions" with their own investigator family and rules and all. It was fun to train them, even though a few clearly were not wanting to do it. It was really funny because Luis has been going to youth activities, and he got put into this too! He is already a missionary, forget the fact that he's not a member yet! 

Thursday we had zone conference, and we watched Meet the Mormons a day before it came out. GREAT movie. Everybody, please see it. Multiple times. then we had Book of Mormon class with Bro. Mckinney, which was great, as usual. 

Friday was definitely the most entertaining day this week. We were set to go on exchanges with Elder Wells and Elder Mitchell. We get to their apartment and the zone leaders from across town are there too. (they needed toilet paper. Long story.) But anyway, over the course of about 30 seconds we set up a triple exchange with all of us, because hey. Exchanges. So i ended up with Elder Jones, who is the OTHER ginger-diabetic in our district of 10. ( Yep. We cool. ) So we had a bit of a crazy day. We went to the Chevy dealership to fix a recalled part on the Cruze. We learned that    A) the new Corvette Stingray is SWEET, and B) the dealership has a free snack bar with more candy we could handle. Then we helped give an older lady a blessing (she had diabetes too, it was predestined) and saw a few people. Then we did a baptismal interview for this tiny kid, and then the gale force storm hit, so we took some free Frostie coupons and talked to people at Wendy's. The next morning we helped with an Eagle project, and then switched back. Sunday was good, we had Luis there, but no one came to Gospel Principles so we just went to the English one. 

aaaand that was basically my week! I'll be doing a special musical number with Sister Clarke next sunday before she leaves, which should be cool. Hope you all are doing wonderfully!

This is the 35th weekly General Letter of Elder Andrew McKay Reay...

So how did everyone like General conference? I hope all of you did. I had the sniffles for the second half, but I did manage to stay awake. I especially liked Elder Christofferson's and Elder Bednar's talks. Plus, there were a lot of people there, which is great!

So, on to my week! L., S. and S. are doing well. L. was able to go to Sunday morning's session, and then lunch at the Routt's with all the missionaries in the ward (which was delicious), and he liked it a lot! S. recently moved out of her old trailer (the others kicked her out) and got a job, so she has been a bit busy. We haven't been able to have a sit-down lesson with them this week, but we have kept in contact, and they are fine! 

.....

So, I have been sitting here for a while trying to figure out what to write.... Not to say not much happened this week, but it WAS kinda slow... Here's an idea! What do Y'ALL want to know about what I do on a daily basis? Ask me anything- funny stories, best moments, hardest moments, whatever. Post it on the blog or use andrew.reay@myldsmail.net. Let me know what you want to know!

--

Llamado a Servir,

Andrew Reay

Picture from a Member in Conway