March 14, 2011

We drove to Pensacola this week for a 1/2 mission conference . We had Brother Marshall from the mission department come and train us on Mormon.org. I really enjoyed it. It was basically the behind the scenes Mormon.org, which is cool. I am really excited about it, I want to use it, but 90% of the members in the area don't have computers and don't have the Internet. We are really hoping all the members of the branch counsel will create their profiles. We will meet them at the church or their homes and show them how to do it. We are going to print out the basic information you need to create the profiles. We will have them write out their answers. We will then get on help them set up the profiles. We will, also, take the pictures of them on our cameras to upload. The beauty of having a small branch it's not too many for us to create, but it will be a big project, but very due-able. I am excited about Mormon.org. Last night, we were at a family’s home. I was telling her about how excited I was about the future of missionary work. I explained about Mormon.org and the direction the church was heading. I saw her iPhone sitting on the counter, so I asked if I could see it. She said yeah sure. I picked it up and got on Mormon.org and showed her 3 of the videos of people's profiles. She was like wow that is really cool. She loved seeing and hearing from real people. It was a cool experience and the first time I have really got to see how Mormon.org can affect people. It made me really excited to share it more with people and to change my approach to sharing the gospel in a new way.

We had a really great week with service. We realize a lot of people in the community don't know us or about the church. We volunteer at the "To Kill a Mocking Bird" museum every week.

The author, Harper Lee, is from Monroeville and lives somewhere around here in an assisted living place. The old courthouse at the center of the square here is where the movie was film and is now the museum. It's the towns claim to fame. They also run a few other museums in the area. One of which is the river museum that is at the Lock and Dam. They were having a small festival down there that was Indian and frontier camps. The museum was desperate for volunteers. We volunteered for Thursday- Saturday. It was really good. We got to talk with a lot of people and answer some questions about us. One lady who I was working with , I spent the whole day talking religion and answering her questions it was really cool. It was really good experience. It made for a very busy week, but it was really good.

We are getting a 3^rd Sister, I am excited to be getting sister T, Tuaone! We pick her up in Wednesday, so another trip to Pensacola this week. We have gone to Pensacola every week this month! I have wanted to service with sister T forever and I am excited to do so.

Turtle hunting! A family we were visiting have a big pond in there yard. We could see something popping its head up in the pond. They had a fishing pole on the porch, so we were like let’s go fish. We grabbed our rubber boots out of our car (yes we keep them in the car! you never know when you need them!). The 20 year old daughter E grabs her 22 because they have a water moccasin problem, so she could shoot them. Hernandez has a rod and I have a net (I was planning on catching a snapping turtle!). We get down there and the water is super murky from the storm we had on Wednesday. I couldn't see any turtle close or small enough to catch. Hernandez caught a fish but it fell off the hook right before she got it up the bank. The best part of it was E was sitting there with her 22 just pick off turtles out in the pond! She shot easily 25 turtle in the hour we were out there! You could hear when the bullets hit the shell! It was really pretty fun! The only bummer was they sink when you shoot them and float up a few days later. It was fun! They have a huge turtle problem in there pond that is causing problems for there fish so they needed to get rid of some of the turtles! I loved it! Adventures in BAMA!!!