Hola, Y'all! : A great week with a twist ending

Hello everybody!
So I will get the big news out of the way right now: I AM BEING
TRANSFERRED. 😕😢😥😦😧😑😔😖😟. That's about the equivalent of how
I'm feeling right now. It's not time for normal transfers yet, but
President felt some things needed to be changed. So, I am headed to
Little Rock! I am going to the south area with Elder Meza, and Elder
Butler will be coming over here. I'll be fine, I'm sure. Anyway, here
is my new address:

Elder Andrew Reay
4 Wimbledon Green,
Apt. 423
Little Rock, AR 72210

That should be right. Just to be safe, use the mission office address
this week. It's on my blog if you need it. The rest of my week was
pretty good though! It was the 40th anniversary of the formation of
the Arkansas Little Rock Mission, so there was a HUGE party this
weekend. More in that in a bit. :)

So on Monday we didn't do a whole lot. We went to Steak N'shake again,
per tradition. Someone we never saw payed for our meal! It was nice of
them, especially considering how much I'd been worrying that my card
had nothing on it. After that, we did the usual P-day stuff, bought
groceries, went home and napped. We were going to have a late dinner
because it was a surprise birthday party for Bro. G. He knew we
were coming for dinner, but that was it. So we went out teaching for a
bit. We saw some people we had been trying to teach all month, but had
never been home, which was good! They seem pretty cool. Then we went
to the party. He was pretty surprised! A few of the families were
there, and it was fun.

Tuesday was another district meeting! It was really good, everyone
learned a lot and enjoyed it. We had some refreshments (I baked
cookies and one of the sisters randomly gave us a TON of Mexican
sweetbreads) and then we took "family photos" since it was the last
district meeting of the transfer. They were pretty hilarious, I'll
send them. Then we went out to go teaching. It was killer hot outside.
Plus, we were walking most of the time because we were low on miles.
PLUS, no one actually let us in from 1 to about 5. At 5 we got in with
a guy named B. He's pretty cool! He works in construction, like a
lot of the guys we meet. But he also plays baseball and plays the
drums, which is pretty different! We'll see what happens with him.
Then we went and picked up the other guys for dinner at the Torres'
house.

Wednesday we had basically nothing to do. Plus, we were almost out of
miles for the month, so our driving was limited to almost nothing. So
we took that opportunity to make some progress digitizing all of our
records. We did that for a while, then went to go find some people. We
talked to a few, and had some pretty good lessons. We got called to go
give a blessing up in the north part of Memphis, which really made it
short on miles for us. We met some members up there from Venezuela who
went to the English ward. It was cool to talk to them for a bit, I had
never met people from there before. After that, we had dinner at the
T's house, which was super delicious. Then we had to go home
due to lack of time and me running out of insulin.

Thursday was our day to burn some calories from all the dinners we'd
been getting! We didn't have enough miles to make it to our area and
back 2 days in a row, and both of our bikes were unavailable (Heaton's
had a flat tire and mine was being used by Elder Moore) so we had a
member drop us off there. Then we were "kickin' it old school" so to
speak. We only had a couple of appointments, so we spent most of the
day just wandering around talking to whoever would let us! It worked
pretty well. We found a few new people. We also had a really good
lesson with the R kids! They really liked church, and they're
coming next week! After that, we got picked up by another member and
dropped off for another appointment that ended up falling through. We
got picked up by the other elders and their ride, and had dinner with
the Hs.

Friday was pretty slow, mainly because we had so much to do that
wasn't proselyting. It was Elder Moore's birthday so we went to Sweden
Kream to celebrate. We tried the few appointments we had, found a few
new people. Then we did some weekly planning in the car to save miles.
Then we went and did some more record digitizing because we really
wanted to get it done. They're pretty time-consuming and we want to be
able to just leave them and get to work. So we made progress on that,
then we had dinner with the Ds. After that we met with Bro.
R and had a good lesson with him. As we were leaving, we got
surprised by the former Elder Henderson! Since there was the big
reunion the next day, everyone had been coming in to Memphis for the
big day. It was fun to see them. Since we didn't have the miles to
take the North elders home, they spent the night with us. We took the
opportunity to burn stuff. You see, it's tradition in the mission when
you reach 6 months, you burn a tie. At a year, you do a shirt. At 18,
you burn pants. None of us had burned anything yet, and since Elder
Heaton's year mark was Thursday, we all burned our respective clothes.
I'll try and send the video.

Saturday was great! I stayed with Elder Moore for the morning, because
President Wakolo assigned Diaz and Heaton to go to the temple that
morning to help the Little Rock Spanish Branch to do some temple work.
They got back kind of late since there were so many people to do
(which is a good thing really) so we went straight to the T's.
They were having a lunch for Elder Henderson, his family, and some
members. It was good. Then we went to the reunion! It was awesome. I
heard they broadcast it on the Internet, so I guess some of you saw it
already! It was cool to see all these people again, including my old
mission president and his wife, the Petersens! F was there too,
it was great to see him again. It was a great meeting too, I loved it
a lot. After the meeting we helped clean up, and then President
informed me about the emergency transfer. Then we went home, moped,
and packed for a bit.

Sunday was good! We had a few visitors who had come for the reunion.
The H family was there, as well as some ex-sisters that I had
heard of but had never met. It was a good meeting. After church, since
it was fast Sunday we had a "break the fast" party. Basically a bunch
of Mexican food got whipped up in a very short time, and we all had a
good time. I took some pictures with people and said bye. After
church, we went over to the R' house for dinner and to say bye
to his kids, since they didn't come to church. It was sad to say
goodbye to them. I do t think I have made friends with a ward member
faster than I did with Bro. R. Gonna miss that guy. Then we
went and saw A and L, and had a quick lesson with them.

So that's the drama. I'll be sending a LOT of pictures this time,
because I took a lot! Love you guys a lot! Talk to you next week!
Con muchìsìmìsìmìsìmo amor,
Elder Andrew Reay