I LOOKED AT THE SUN - 8/28/17

The picture shows how dark it got here. We were kinda underwhelmed. We did watch it thanks to 4 pairs of sunglasses and the reflection in our car window. It was pretty cool, and creepy.

A lot of things happened this week! We had a crazy storm come through. It knocked over some cinderblock walls, picked up a metal car port, wrapped sheet metal around poles, and took out trees everywhere. We were meeting with a family at the time and are glad we weren't in town where the damage was the worst. It looked like a tornado came through because all the damage was in a small area and was linear, but the news says it was strong winds. I am counting my blessings and am grateful I'm not in Texas. Hurricane Matthew was originally supposed to be a Category 4 passing through Currituck. So glad it wasn't.

We have a family on a firm baptismal date now! September 9th! Their interview is this Saturday. They are amazing and the entire ward is excited for them. The ward is supporting us pretty well. We are so very excited for them. THE STARS HAVE ALIGNED.

We also got a new investigator and he is Hindi! The Spanish Elders found him and we finally got in contact with him and started teaching. We are not quite sure how to teach someone who has 0 Christian background, but we will be trying! We have the pamphlets and The Book of Mormon in Hindi, so at least he will be able to read it in his own language.

The rest of my week is explained in pictures, so be looking for those! Have a great week!

Elder Ciminski

The district made me a birthday cake!

Not today Satan! - 8/21/17

We had Stake Conference yesterday. We were 10 minutes late! BUT IT WASN'T OUR FAULT!!!!! We were driving down and someone's truck caught on fire and they blocked off the highway for a while. It was funny because when we walked in, we saw the High Priest's Group leader hurrying in with his wife, then we pulled in right next to a large family from the ward running out of their van, watched another family pull in and park kinda illegally in the same neighboring parking lot, but before they could get out the Elder's Quorum President pulled in behind them (it was parallel parking). All within 30 seconds! Then we ran in ourselves dodging other cars plastered with BYU memorabilia frantically looking for nonexistent parking. It was pretty funny! The message was good. We got to hear our Mission President and his wife speak as well as Elder Smith of the 70. Turns out that he had the same career that I want to have! International Relations working with Senators and the lot! Pretty dang cool!

We also had a Zone Conference on Friday. That was an all day affair, but enjoyable. Lots of training and talks on just about every aspect of missionary work. I do like them... but meetings from 9-5 are a bit tiring! We are having interviews this week. My 2nd to last one! Also, I will be starting to plan for going home! I received an email telling me to start "My Plan" soon. Kinda crazy that it's here!

Other than those things this week was pretty slow. We weren't able to meet with a ton of people this week for many reasons. We still worked hard, but it was one of those weeks where you get to the end and you are like "Did we even do anything?". It's times like that where we need to push through and endure to the end! This week is shaping up to be a better week though, for which we are grateful. We have some good dinners with less-actives planned and several appointments set up. In addition, the family we are teaching should be receiving their baptismal interviews this weekend! It sounds better and better as I type it out! :D

We are going to try and not go blind during the eclipse. We are going shopping again this week, and helping a youth missionary shop too. Looking forward to checking out some of the shops around here too. It's going to be a good day! I love you!

Elder Ciminski

Busy week - 8/14/17

We stayed busy this week. Lots happened and everyday was full of fun stuff. Yesterday was a roller coaster. I was feeling pretty bad about our week, felt like we didn't do much. Then I was filling out our progress record and realized that we had filled it up with lessons! That and expecting 5 investigators at Sacrament Meeting made me feel pretty good! We started to call said investigators to make sure that they were still good to come. Every single one cancelled. That made me feel bad again. Then we went to church disappointed, and had a ton of less-actives show up unexpectedly! That was awesome! Such is life, and missionary work!

We had to move the baptismal date again. They are pretty much ready and very excited to be baptized, but the only problem now is scheduling. Lots of things (like football, school, cheer, family, etc) is filling up their schedule big time. They will get baptized at some point!

We handed the other investigator over to the Clayton Ward missionaries to teach him. He was referred to us by a member of our ward, but lives in neighboring Clayton Ward. It was tough to do it but it needed to happen. We will miss him though!

The weather here is so cool for this time of year! Some of the trees are already starting to lose their leaves. We are not complaining one bit. Apparently there has been some "white supremacist" stuff going on and now a lot of African-American people around here avoid us. It has always been hard to work in these neighborhoods, but man, now it's getting tougher! lol. Then again, Selma's welcome sign read "Welcome to Selma, Home of the KKK" until 2005. And also a billboard until recently. So that is to be expected.

Anyway, that is all that happened this week. I can taste fall, and am looking forward to it! I love y'all!

Elder Ciminski

Don't mince your words. 8/7/17

Crazy week!

The Transfer was completed with only my companion's bike being lost. Haha. They thought that we were in Virginia but we were in North Carolina so we will be getting it later this month. On Tuesday, while my old companion was still here we met with a lot of people for the last time. One sister has a goal is to get to the Temple here pretty quick before it closes. Our investigator family is still on track to get baptized on the 19th! They came to church yesterday and we have an appointment with them on Wednesday! One member of our ward in particular is amazing. She takes such good care of us. In return we try to do a lot of service for her. She is single-handedly cleaning out and preparing to sell the home her parents lived in before they moved in with her.

The drive up to Virginia (equivalent of driving to Flagstaff) went well with no incident. The funniest thing was we passed an old car that was going slow and there was an older gentleman in it with an oxygen tube and tank, the whole 9 yards... and a cigarette. We joked that he was like the mines in Finding Nemo. One tap and BOOM!!!! lol. Some people aren't the smartest. My new companion is from Spanish Fork Utah! He is a great missionary and already knows a lot! We are already friends and working hard! On Thursday we had to stay in most of the day because of Weekly Planning (3 hours), Planning for District meeting (2 hours), Companionship Study, (90 min) on top of the normal studies! It was awful but we lived and had some appointments to break up the monotony. We met with the one Episcopalian Sister again! She is liking what we are teaching, even though the Plan of Salvation is something that she had never heard before. We are meeting with her again tonight after we have dinner with some of her neighbors who are members! We are quite excited.

We also met with another man. We are passing him over to be taught by the Sisters since that is the ward that he lives in. We don't want to, but it is what's best. He set a baptismal date of September 9th. That's the summary of the week! We have a full schedule so it should be another great week!

District meeting was a struggle, but everyone said it was good. The best part was where I mixed up my words a bit. I was very nervous when conducting it and due to me having less than 24 hours notice to plan it (I didn't get the binder with the outline until Thursday) I was just rolling with it. We had just set some District goals and I was going to say that I thought they were very attainable and go into how we should avoid unattainable goals. Instead I combined them and said "I think the goals are unattainable". Upon seeing a Sister's horrified expression and the other Elder's confusion I quickly evaluated what I said and fixed it and had a good laugh. I have no intention of doing something like that again! I think that despite not having any instruction from the previous Elder (All I had was a note saying "Well Elder Ciminski, by the time you read this... I will be home... Good Luck!) I will figure things out!

I hope that y'all have a great week! I love you!

Elder Ciminski

I haven't been to Virginia in over a year! And actually, the other side of that building is the Richmond Mission. We have to pass though it to get to Portsmouth.