Monday, December 14, 2015

Week 80 in the Field: Zone Conference White Elephant and Fun in McMinnville!

 Zone Conference


Hey guys what's up?

Okay so Monday was kinda boring compared to Pdays in Nashville. We pretty much went and grabbed food with a member for lunch, hung out at the church for a bit, and then got the car back.

Elder Harrison and the 40oz frosty. He literally went up to the Wendy's and asked what their
 largest cup size was, and asked them to fill it with frosty. In case you were wondering it takes
two large frosty's to fill it up. He finished it a few days later.

We helped out a lot taking down from the Nativity. Majority was packing fake Christmas trees into little boxes. That was fun. I also practiced for the Christmas sacrament meeting musical number that I'm doing. I'm playing my own arrangement of "What Child is This?" on piano and I'm also playing guitar for the New Years Eve Ward talent show. Excited!

Beginning of the White Elephant. I'm on the far right of the picture next to Elder Powell.




Tuesday we went to the "Assembly Hall" basically a large gym owned by the church, used for stake conferences and youth basketball. We had our Christmas Zone Conference there which was fun. What wasn't so fun was having black boxes installed in our cars to monitor our speeding. The ol' Demaree lead foot will have to hold back a few more months. Thankfully I'm not driving this transfer. We also had a white elephant gift exchange. I gave the game Phase 10 and technically got a Christmas "man satchel" which a sister missionary quickly asked me to trade her for a bike pump. So I got a bike pump. We also received a Christmas card from the First Presidency which was cool. After that, I spent time talking with Elder Powell and we all went out for dinner together. It was cool seeing him again. We tried a few people after that and that was it.

Wednesday we went over to a member's home to help them work on their new house. I must've been breathing in something weird cause I got sick right after lunch. Not having too much to do, I set out working on cleaning up the area book. I hope to have it manageable by the time I leave here. We didn't really do too much except rest.

Thursday I was feeling better and off we went. We got a bit of a late start, but as we were walking down the road, Bishop pulls us over and asked us if we could help him move a fridge which we agreed to do. He was happy for the help and also bought us lunch. We walked over to this area south of town and on the way there, I saw this really, really cool dam or something. The bridge over the dam had been built before the Civil War and was used by troops in like 1862 or something. A lot of it is really worn but it was really cool. We tried a few people, but most of them were no longer interested. We then went north of town (still walking) and tried people up there. We found one person but she wanted us to meet after the holidays. We ended up walking about 13 miles that day which was fun.

Really cool carving off the path of a trail

Friday we were absolutely exhausted from walking. Elder Harrison was sick and so was I. Once more, we spent time cleaning the area book. In the evening however, a member came and took us to Cookeville, TN which is basically restaurant heaven. They had everything from Olive Garden to Golden Corral. They took us to Outback and had us order steak. It was hard to eat that kind of stuff after being sick, but we dealt with it. They also ordered a bloomin' onion which made me think of Matt Frederickson.

Saturday was interesting. We tried loads of people with little success. I then felt we should go try some people in the northern part of McMinnville. There are a ton of partial addresses in the area book, but we found a few homes. One of the guys we found was Ronnie. He wasn't interested, but he referred us to an excommunicated member who lived upstairs. The guy was pretty cool, but not interested in coming back to church, but he gave us Christmas presents which was nice of him.

Sunday, we actually had a pretty normal Sunday. We had a few less active's show up which was great. One of them had to bring their kid who has down syndrome. To help the less active attend Elders Quorum, we babysat his kid. It was kind of stressful at first and it reminded me a lot of dealing with my little brother David, but then I got an idea to start walking with him. So holding his hand, we walked for about 15 minutes straight all around the church inside and outside. He would giggle and smile, but he never screamed or anything when we walked. When I stopped he would try to run off screaming, so we ended up walking. And walking. And walking. And walking. All the while I was talking with him and joking with him. We ended up walking for about 45 minutes straight before it was time to go. His dad came out and said "Well it looks like he listens to you more than me!" It was cool.  Afterwards we tried a boat load of people, but not one door opened.

In the evening I found out some pretty bad news. Hannah Brown, one of my first and favorite solid investigators in Smith Springs back in July-August of 2014 who had a baptismal date but backed out, passed away some time in the past 48 hours. She was a little younger than me. I don't know what happened, but I found out thanks to my trainer. If you guys could pray for her mom Rachel that would be awesome. I can't imagine how she must feel. I had tried to see them last transfer, but Elder Ihler told me that he had helped move them out the transfer before I got there. That was really hard.

On that sad note, that's pretty much what happened this past week. We have interviews with President Andersen coming up which will be fun. Also Star Wars comes out this week which will be depressing. If y'all could do me a favor, please don't spoil anything till I see it in five months. If you spoil it, I might not talk to you guys again haha. Anyways I'll talk to you next week.

May the force be with you,

Elder Peery

Please contact me:
Elder Andrew Peery
Tennessee Nashville Mission
1646 Sunset Road
Brentwood, TN 37027





Barren Fork dam and Bridge. Incidentally, the guard tower looking
thing off to the right was a mill back in the day when the dam was
made. The dam generated power to it for awhile, until a giant flood wiped it out. All that remains is what you see here.

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