17 Weeks left. :) - 6/26/17

We have been about 40 degrees cooler than y'all this week. I wish that I could say that I was sorry, but I am not. :) I am enjoying it while I can! It was cloudy for a week straight and the lack of sunlight was getting to me, but the sun has come back out and all is right once again!

We were once again pretty busy this week. Yesterday everything that could have gone wrong, did. Our investigator and her nonmember friend who she was going to bring to church went to Denny's together the night before and someone must have spiked their eggs because both got sick and couldn't come! Then a young man who was going to come to church forgot it was Sunday. None of the less-actives we were working with came to church either. Bummer! Then this happened when we went to help in Primary...

Ok so maybe that wasn't a bad thing.. lol. We are very close with the Primary Chorister and she gave us some ties to help the kids sing loud. The louder she sang the louder the scissors moved up the tie, and at the end she cut it! The Elder Latimer and I sang a duet for the Primary. We sand "We'll bring the world his truth". And yes, I sang in front of 30+ people. I can't believe I did it to be honest! I know that the Spirit was helping because we got several comments on how good we were!

We got a pretty funny concern from a guy we were talking to on the street a couple weeks ago. After trying to explain to him what our church believed in, we invited him to attend church. He said he couldn't because he couldn't afford to fly out to Utah. At first we were confused but then we realized that he thought that Mormons only lived in Utah and we had to fly out every Sunday to go to church! After we got that cleared up we received confirmation that his source on our church (probably his preacher) was very wrong because then we had to explain that there is no multiple wives thing and how if he went he would not receive a wife. I wish that I could say that concerns like that were uncommon, but they aren't. :) But that is why we are here! I help resolve those concerns!

No much else happened this week. I am hoping that this next week will be better than the last week! I love you all!

Elder Ciminski

Yaight? - 6/19/17

Translation: Are you alright?

I love the accent here. You don't think of North Carolina as being the south, but it is very much so! We will be going to a pig pickin' later on today, which will be my first, and I am excited. A pig pickin' is essentially a barbecue where the pig is roasted whole over a fire. Pretty cool.

This week was good. As expected, this week was very hard for our investigator. Satan does not want anyone to enter the waters of baptism and she was no exception. She persevered and got baptized on Saturday! The service was beautiful and the Spirit was very strong. My companion baptized her and confirmed her the following day. Now I know what people are talking about when they describe someone as "glowing", because that is what she was doing! We are so happy for her, and because of her example in her home, her granddaughters who she is raising (they are 7 and 10) and her adult son who is living at home will hopefully be baptized at some point too! The son is warming up to us already so we are particularly excited for him!

Other than that not much happened this week. We did get transfer calls and I am staying in Smithfield with my companion for another transfer. We are both pretty excited about that! We have also had a lot of stormy weather this week which has made for some gorgeous skies. I will never get tired of them. We also bounced around from appointment to appointment this week with not much time to do anything else. Being busy is good, but I learned this week that it will tire you like nothing else and isn't always the best thing. We are still doing ok on miles, which I am grateful for.

We have several other promising investigators that we are working with, but none are close to baptism yet. We are continuing to work with them and help them progress! I hope y'all have an awesome week! Love you!

Elder Ciminski

Oh, and on the baptismal day we could not go wrong with finding people! We went to the Outlets and visited a member who owns a popcorn shop there (It is actually really good, and I don't even like flavored popcorn! It is called Popcorn Haven, they have over 250 flavors). While checking out we talked with the GM about what we do and gave her a ton of cards so that she could give them to her staff. Awesome!!! Then we made some visits and just before going in for the night we went by Wal-Mart to get some Neosporin and ran into a potential who is close friends with our investigator who was baptized! We got her contact info and will be going by soon! So even though we technically are supposed to do that stuff on Monday we still were about our purpose! :D

Hola! - 6/12/17

Our investigator is still on track to be baptized this Saturday! She had her interview yesterday and passed! She almost didn't come yesterday because many things went wrong in her life, which all it was is Satan trying to derail her and prevent her from being baptized. Once she realized this she texted us "Well Satan just lost this battle. I am coming to church today!" Her faith is amazing and is such an example to us!

We also picked up two new investigators this week. They are a mother and a son who last year lost their brother/son and are still struggling with that. We shared the Plan of Salvation and they really enjoyed that lesson. We think they are fairly promising and are looking forward to working with them more! The only reason that they didn't come to church is because they got the time of church and our return appointment mixed up! But they should be coming next week!

Other than these three stellar people not much happened Investigators wise! We did have a visiting General Authority, Elder LeGrand R Curtis Jr. He spoke to us a lot on The Book of Mormon and the blessings of serving a mission. Overall, it was a really good conference. We also found out that 87 missionaries LEAVING the mission in the next 6 months. That is about 1/2 the mission! So the entire mission is nervous for that! Haha logistics are scary sometimes.

Anyway, that's about it for this week. Have a wonderful week!

Elder Ciminski

Hot week! - 6/5/17

It was quite warm all of this week. Not as hot as Arizona, but still warm. The humidity doesn't help at all either, lol. Glasses, camera lenses, YETI Tumbler lids, windows...all fogging up!

We had some pretty cool experiences this week. One happened on Saturday. We had just unsuccessfully been walking around Smithfield proper for over an hour because an appointment had fallen through and we were returning to our car when someone honked at us. He rolled down his window and asked us if we had time to chat, which we did of course, and he than said he would meet us at the chapel. He pulled away, leaving us wondering who the heck he was and how he knew what the church is. My companion and I decided that one of three things were going to happen. 1) He thought we were Jehovah's Witnesses and he was going to lead us to a Kingdom Hall. 2) He will murder us at the chapel. 3) He is a Less-active member or a former investigators and we are going to have an awesome lesson.

Number 3 is the winner! We didn't actually have a lesson though, but he was a less-active member and was going through a rough patch and we suppose he needed some upliftment. We gave him a blessing and he want on his way. He did come to church on Sunday which was a good thing.

The Spanish Elders found us a new Investigator at a Quincenera on Saturday! She is a lady overcoming an addiction of some kind. She seems pretty solid and the reason I say that is because she came to church yesterday! She had a really cool experience and has the beginnings of a testimony! The ward befriended her quickly (which is always a blessed occurrence) and I am quite excited to teach her. The reason we are teaching her and not the Spanish elders is because she speaks English. Anytime they find and English speaker to teach they hand them over to us, and we do the same for people who speak better Spanish than English.

Ou investigator with a baptism date is still progressing! She prayed this week that if joining the church is what she is meant to do that he help her out with going back to school. She had a 45,000 debt waved and is now going back to school, and being paid $250 to do it! She came to church again yesterday and is still very excited! We have a lot to teach her, but all of the tough lessons (Word of Wisdom, Tithing, and Law of Chasity) have been covered! We are so excited!

Other that that this week was normal. I look forward to writing y'all again next week! I love you!

Elder Ciminski

My companion and a snake!