November 25, 2013

Welcome to Little Rock Spanish North.

Elder Dalton (my first district leader in the field)

What can I say about my new area..... it is wet, cold, and has no shortage of the biggest hills that I have ever seen. And because I am so lucky I am on bike week. It is really cold but that is life.

Happy Birthday everyone that is having a birthday.. (t2 (double T), kokopuff and Madre)

There is not a lot of Hispanics in my new area and the branch is really small but overall the area is pretty good.

My cool story of the week is about when I got to meet Santa in the south.

So we had done service that day and we were with the pinnacle mountain Elders that live right next to us and they were giving us a ride a little closer to where we were headed to teach. We got in the car with the Elders they took us to this bbq place to drop us off. When I was pulling the bikes off the car this guy drives up and asks me what I was doing I told him just taking off the bikes, and then asks me where we were going... (Please note at this point I am weirded out, thinking what does this guy want). Elder Dalton my comp comes over thinking I am getting chewed out but some old guy in a truck. The man continues to ask where we are going and we respond “to the Lopez family just down the hill 3miles. That is when he says “Would they care if you were late?” Dalton says “we don't have our appointment until 5”. That is when he offers us BBQ! We had felt bad that the English Elders had driven us around so much so we asked the man to give the food to them. He paused and said you are going to give away your food? We explained to the man that these other Elders had driven us around all day. Then the man said I will just get all 4 of you food. The man said his name was Nick and he is Santa's cousin. He lives in North Little Rock and is inactive (we need to fix that).

Moral of this story is..... Santa is a southerner that is a member of the church (thus the church is true and so is Santa’s cousin) and Sims BBQ is really good.

Love y’all and hope all is well.

Elder Kevin Ludwig
7820 West Capitol Ave. apt 1203
Little Rock, AK 72205

November 18, 2013

I am leaving Spanish south..... And I did not get to see Graceland, Even if it was only a 20 minutes from where I live. I did get to see Bellevue and the school that the blindside guy went to. I got the call today saying that I will be leaving but not where to. Elder Child's thinks that I will be going up north to Northern Memphis. But we are not sure. Tell mike and Dottie that it is OK they didn't get to see me. Graceland is kind of in a sketchy area..... Like where I work. I was actually pretty close to Graceland today.

No I did not have any tornadoes. We had a lot of wind some days but for the most part it was not bad. Not a super exciting week. Basically just work as normal. Got a picture with some of the people from the branch and tried to write. In specialized training they showed us the IPads that we would be getting in the coming months. They are the IPad minis and it is going to change how we work completely but I am excited.

November 11, 2013

So I find out on Monday if I am getting transferred or not. I have a feeling that I might be but am not exactly sure. We are right now trying to get some new progressing investigators we have a few dates. there is this one family that I just know that I have to baptize but the wife is doesn’t want to commit to a date she knows it is true but she said that she wants to read the whole bible and book of Mormon before she sets a date. We have a date with her dad who lives with them and I think if that goes through that she will follow we just need to get her to church... church attendance is kind of lower than what we want it. yesterday we went over to one of the investigators houses to knock on his door we knocked on the door to his bedroom and he still did not get up to come to church.... it was not the happiest moment but we have a date with him we are just going to talk to him about not staying up so late so he will actually make it to church.

so I saw that you guys have 60 degrees and beautiful.... some days here are nice around 60 but the sun goes down really early around 6 and that is when it gets cold.... and we have been on bikes this week so it have been really cold but we have tried to make the most of this week and keep working but we had a lot of days that no (Hispanics) answered the door.

This week I got to do a blessing in Spanish a member has a friend that has cancer and a daughter who is pregnant so Elder Childs and me went over and talked with them and gave them both blessings. They said that we could come back and teach them and that they would try to come to church. We are planning to go and talk to them again this week. Along with 2 other referrals that we have that are too far away to bike to.

Not a bad week I am really excited to get a car and start get some more dates set.... and get out of the cold. Love you all and hope everyone is doing well.

Congrats Kira, Paul and Otto on the new baby... Blossom? I am getting that right?

November 4, 2013

Ok so this week was a pretty good week, yes I did get the package the day before Halloween thank you very much I wore the tie and socks just for the occasion.

We had a baptism for Abelino. Both me and Elder Childs had to do because Abelino can't more his knees really well but it was good and after all the stuff that we had to do to make it happen (having to find 3 different rides for him and 2 new speakers) it worked out really well. He got confirmed Sunday and stayed all 4 hours which for him was really impressive because it hurts to sit for a long time. Church is 4 hours for us on fast Sunday the branch has this thing called “break the fast” where people bring a bunch of food and eat right after the meeting block. It was a good service. We have a new branch mission leader named brother Zuccherro he is a good guy and his assistant Eikel is a great guy too. They really want to start to get the work moving in the branch again and with the baptism this week and Memphis east having one planned for the 16th I hope it happens. Post baptism is weird because you are exhausted form all that you had to do for the baptism but no time to rest you have to start looking for the investigators that will be next to be baptized. All the ones that we have been working with fell through. We started going through people that had been progressing previously. We chose to go see this guy named David who we contacted a few weeks ago. We had a great lesson with him about the plan of salvation and he committed to be baptized. When we taught about the Holy Ghost we taught about what we have to do in this life (faith, repentance, baptism, Holy Ghost, endure to the end) when we listed them he asked us “what was that 4th one" so we started to teach about the Holy Ghost. He asked us how he could get that in his life because that is what he and his family needed. We told him he needed to be baptized again and he said alright so we set a date. He has a date for the 1st of Dec. because he is going out of town for a week but we said if he was ready we would do it earlier.

The weather on Thursday was not the best really hard rain but I was very grateful that we had a car this week but we go on bike week this coming week and it is supposed to get very cold and wet. With the rain the last few days it has just got colder and colder. It is 50 yet it feels so much colder with all the humidity.

Thanks for the pictures. Otto is much larger than what I remember it is weird thinking he will be 2 when I see him next. Congrats Kira, Paul and Otto on the new baby (born on my half birthday by the way and as well as Grant Jones birthday). Love y'all and hope all is going good with you in la montanias.

Elder Ludwig