New Kicks- December 15, 2014

First off, ladies, gentlemen, and my siblings, I am no longer living in Walnut Ridge. That's right, I'm kicking it up in Pocahontas now. If you want my new address, please email me and I will give it to you.

It's got quite a few pros and cons to it.

Pro: Closer to the church and the majority of the members.

Con: Lots of hills; bike week won't be fun.

Pro: A full-sized Walmart.

Con: Even further to drive for meetings and to visit out current investigators.

Pro: A bigger house.

Con (kinda): Still no dishwasher.

I'll send some pics in the next email.

We've been super busy with moving and such with moving that this past week was crazier than normal, which means it's just a slightly-strange week for your standard missionary. We've been driving between Pokey (Pocahontas) and Walnut Ridge quite a bit moving food, furniture, and clothes. We are now all moved in though, and just need to finish deep-cleaning the old place tonight. I think it's interesting: Elder Raiford, my last companion, was the one to make the move down to Walnut Ridge almost 9 months ago, and now here I am making the move back to Pocahontas.

On Tuesday we received a call from a recent convert moving to Ravenden, a super small town within Branch boundaries. We drove out there, about a 30 minute drive one-way, and helped him unload everything off of a trailer about 7.30 at night. It was fantastic! I wearing work gloves and a t-shirt and everyone couldn't understand how it was that I could stand the cold. It was about 38 F, so not quite freezing. I handled it like a boss. On the way back we got these sweet pic in front of a giant Raven, hence the name Ravenden I guess. I thought it was cool.

Anywho, while we were driving home from the service we stopped in at a icecream place (It never gets too cold for icecream) and who should we meet but an inactive member of the church who lives in Walnut Ridge who I've never met. It was awesome. Plus we got icecream.

One of our investigators, G***, pulled the nicest surprise for us on Wednesday. We had gone over to her house, and she was acting really sketchy. Like, she was clearly hiding something, which was something that she had never done before. We go over there, not sure what to expect and then she commands us to go and sit down on the couch, and even told us where to sit, another few things she'd never before done. Then her son goes and hits play on the DVD player, and what turns on, but Frozen. Elder Holden had started his mission just before it came out, so he's been hearing all about it, but has not been able to see it yet. G*** found out about it and decided that she would just turn it on when we came over and we would all watch it together. I felt so bad when I told her we weren't able to watch movies, at all, instead of just at our house. She was super disappointed and I could tell that it was really bugging her. So she went out an bought us icecream. #TwiceInAWeek  We spent a good length of time with them so she wouldn't feel like her surprise was a failure. We taught H***, her son, a game called Liars' Dice. Google it, it's fun. We are going back there as soon as I'm done here to spend the rest of our P-Day with them playing Liars' Dice and Monopoly. It's going to be awesome.

One last interesting thing. Yesterday we were able to go and be a part of a meeting for The Compassionate Friends, a support group for people who have lost a child/family member. One of our investigators was speaking so we made every effort to be there, and I guess it was because I was in a tie, but they asked me to say the prayer at the end of the meeting. It was awesome; there was about 60 people there. The funniest part was that there was a door raffle. Both Elder Holden and myself put our names in... and we both were chosen. We got a lot of crap (all in jest) from all of the other people there that it was because we were the only ones in ties. What made it better is that we were chosen back-to-back.

Stay awesome, my friends!

ELder Jayden Barker, Soon to be Grand World Champion at Monopoly

1. This house is much roomier than the last.