The Spirit Got Me

 Preparation day in Charlotte went a little slow since we did not have anything to do. President Heap laid the heat on preparation day. We can't leave our areas anymore unless it's district pday. Lots of chilling in the Charlotte apartment. 

This week I made a goal to drink a ton of water and workout for a full 30 minutes everyday. Brooklyn was nice enough to send me some ab workouts on Monday that were for Tuesday-Saturday. She better watch out because with the core strength I have I might replace her on the dive team. 

I have to talk about this so I have it in my emails. On September 6th, 2021 I emailed President Heap about concerns to the Preaching By The Way pond (door knocking). I expressed to him how I find this pond very frustrating because I didn't find any success from it. I gave Elder Elliott the hardest time because we knocked for three hours and no success at all, you know the mood I get in when I'm frustrated. If you know Luke then you know that that mood haha. This is what President Heap replied back to me,"I promise you as your Mission President, that as a missionary this will be one of the most powerful ponds in your personal mission experience. You will become so powerful in that pond Elder Clouse it may at times dominate other ponds. I promise that will happen." Fast forward to today, HE LITERALLY prophesied of it. My testimony of the authority of his calling increased out of this world when I stumbled upon that earlier this week. Preaching By The Way is my strongest pond in the mission. Elder Nelson and I have found 20 new friends in the past two weeks just in that pond. It boggles my mind how President Heap promised that it would dominate other finding ponds sometimes. It does. I just had to write about that since I thought it was so cool. 

We had a really awesome experience door knocking. We were door knocking in a trailer park and no one was being nice at all. It was the usual door knocking environment. We knock on this trailer and the nicest guy comes out. His name is Dustin. Since it was raining outside he invited us in. We taught him the full restoration with his gf there too who's name is Kayla. They ate that up so much. During the whole lesson, their dog Zion kept humping Elder Nelson's back on the couch. It was hilarious. Elder Nelson got scratched up pretty good on the face from the paws. As we were leaving they both said,"I have never been more interested in a religion than I have been right now!" We are going back tonight to go eat dinner with them since they invited us over!

Wednesday evening we went to a Bible Study at the biggest church in town. It is called the Assembly of God. The Church is massive! The whole praying, sermon, and studying was different, but good to see what other people do with their faith. The Pastor named Shane came up to us after and chatted for 45 minutes with him. He wants to learn more about our faith since it peaks his interest. This pastor is about to be the new Sidney Rigdon. If you don't get it, Rigdon had a huge congregation of people in Ohio that all became converted and nearly doubled the size of the church's membership. 

As we were door knocking this week, I interacted with my first Jehovah's Witness in my life. We discussed her beliefs on her doorstep for about 30 minutes. Their religion has no hope, it was actually so depressing to hear. They believe the 144,000 that will make it to heaven are already chosen and the girl who we were talking to won't ever make it to heaven because she wasn't "chosen" by God. They also think birthdays are of the devil rip.

Funny thing happened as we were meeting with an inactive older couple. As we were leaving they offered us ice cream and cake so of course we said yes. Little did I know they would give us the three biggest scoops of vanilla ice cream on a plate with strawberry cake. As I finished up the slice of cake and ate one scoop of ice cream I looked at Elder Nelson and we both just started laughing so much since we both knew what was going to happen to me. I made a plan to distant myself and distract the member while I walked over to the trash and threw away the remainder of the ice cream on my plate. Mission accomplished.

I made a personal goal this week to drink at least 80 ounces of water a day. Since I made this goal I usually drink closer to 120 ounces which is awesome! Extreme downside is that I need to urinate every 25 minutes. It stinks when we are door knocking and we have to ask people if we could use their bathroom haha. Most of the time people take pity on us and let us in. 

One of the other goals we set as a companionship this week was being more dignified so we can feel the Spirit stronger. Everytime someone says a filler word such as,"dang, Frick, heck, crap, etc," we have to do 5 push ups right there on the spot. It is working pretty well to help us be more dignified in all that we do and not use slang haha. If you have met Elder Nelson, you know this is an ambitious goal for him to set. Sure love you Elder Nelson. 

We decided Saturday afternoon that we would walk 1.5 miles to church with our friend Cody who doesn't have a car. I took a selfie while we were walking. I then had the chance to speak in a Sacrament meeting for Mothers day. We were supposed to have three speakers, but one was sick. The other one was a boy who was the branch president's son. He got up and gave a 45 second talk so when he concluded it was my turn. I went forward with the talk I had prepared and the spirit led me to speak for 25 minutes, filling all the time necessary. The Spirit got me.

During the week we went over to the DeLongs home. They are that family we teach which consists of four kids. Two of them we are teaching and are thinking about baptism. They said we could take some of their clubs to go golfing and they gave us two full sets of clubs and a handful of balls to go play golf. Then a member offered to take us golfing tomorrow for pday so we are so excited for that! 

This week is going to be so good. The weather is looking like it'll be all sunny and 80 degrees everyday. Everyone will be nicer to us since they got their vitamin D. When it is cloudy people are generally more rude to us. I love you all so much. I am excited to chat with you today. Please reach out, I love you! As always #FindTime4Me